Brian Williams' troubles are just the latest plaguing NBC's news division

The decision to suspend Nightly News anchor Brian Williams for six months without pay is the latest unwelcome development at an NBCUniversal News Group division that has become a nagging and highly public trouble spot for Comcast Corp.

The problems at NBC News, which date to Ann Curry's tearful on-air goodbye as Today co-host in June 2012, have stretched over two news-division leadership regimes. Williams' suspension now threatens months of speculation on his ultimate fate at the ratings leader Nightly News.

"It's a noisy problem, and it plays out in the public," said Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

The news division's leadership looks weak, with decisions being made over their heads, Sesno said, citing the view of NBC staffers he spoke with. "The troops perceive this as a call made by Comcast and not NBC."

Instead of being consumed with the Williams distraction, the company needs to be "utterly focused" on the shift in viewership toward digital platforms and the government approval of Comcast's proposed $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc., Sesno said.

Christopher Harper, a Temple University professor who has worked as a print and broadcast journalist, said, "NBC has not monitored the crossover between Brian Williams as news anchor and Brian Williams as entertainer."

He said he considered Williams "a news division problem" and not a broader Comcast management problem.

"NBC is in the crosshairs because it has made more mistakes than CBS, ABC, or CNN," Harper added.

Comcast and NBC News officials say the Williams suspension was decided by Steve Burke, chief executive officer at NBCUniversal, and two executives with responsibility over NBC Nightly News, Patricia Fili-Krushel and Deborah Turness.

Burke also consulted David Cohen, the executive vice president at Comcast, and Tom Brokaw, Williams' predecessor as Nightly News anchor, about what to do. Burke and NBCUniversal officials made the suspension decision at a meeting in Burke's New York apartment Saturday morning, and Williams was told on Tuesday.

NBC News officials describe the Williams story as propelled by social media and traditional media after Iraq veterans called him out for embellishing his reporting experiences. Williams said he was a passenger in a military helicopter that was shot in 2003, when his helicopter hadn't been fired on.

During the suspension, Williams - who in December signed a five-year contract reported to be worth $10 million a year - will continue to be investigated internally by Richard Esposito, an NBC News investigative reporter. Esposito will work with NBCUniversal general counsel Kim Harris as he assesses Williams' other public statements.

NBC News president Turness said in a memo to her employees Tuesday that NBC News was "bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can - and should - all be proud of. We will get through this together."

Turness, a British TV executive, was hired to replace former NBC News head Steve Capus in 2013, after Curry was ousted and Today's ratings fell behind ABC's Good Morning America - a historic turnaround.

Turness has helped Today claw back viewers through a focus on content that emphasized "substance, connection and uplift" and reorganized the booking unit to score more NBC News exclusives, a network official said.

In a statement, Today said Thursday it had beaten Good Morning America in the key 25-to-54 age demographic in eight of the last 19 days.

But at the same time, Turness is dealing with a continuing effort to improve ratings for Meet the Press, which replaced moderator David Gregory last summer with Chuck Todd - a move the network has said is successful.

The larger NBCUniversal News Group, meanwhile,  has issues at MSNBC , the left-leaning cable network. Nielsen says MSNBC's average full-year prime-time viewership fell to 624,000 in 2014, from 652,000 in 2012.

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