In Recession, NBC Page Gig Loses Luster

Stop by NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters for a tour, and you’ll be shown around by cheerful 20-somethings, cheerfully working 50-hour weeks for $10 an hour. Why? Because this is the NBC page program! Michael Eisner started as a page, as did Steve Allen, Willard Scott and others. But these days, such career climbing seems non-existent. The jobs just aren’t there, the New York Observer reports.

“If you can make it into the page program, that means something,” said one former page. “You’re being groomed for a career in television. But almost everyone I know who just left the program doesn’t have a job.” Adds another: “I no longer recommend the program. Essentially, it has been a sort of negative experience.”