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is goosed out
Sex-harass rap leads to impresario's ouster
By Jeff Bercovici
With allegations of sexual harassment hanging over his head, C. Michael Greene has stepped down as president of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, the group responsible for the Grammy Awards.
Greene, an outsized personality who is widely credited with turning the Grammys from a sleepy industry function into a major annual TV event, had served as president and CEO of the Santa Monica-based non-profit group since 1988.
Greene resigned on Saturday night, apparently under pressure from the 38 Grammy Foundation trustees who had gathered in Los Angeles for an emergency meeting.
The purpose of the meeting was in part to brief board members on the findings of an inquiry into the sexual harassment charges leveled at Greene by Jill Marie Geimer, a former NARAS official in charge of human resources.
Greene has consistently denied that he harassed Geimer. But in February Geimer's attorneys threatened to bring forth at least two other female executives with similar claims, and at that point Greene acquiesced to a $650,000 financial settlement.
After finding out the purpose of the emergency meeting mid-last week, Greene, who has three years left on his $2 million-a-year contract, began negotiating his exit.
Thanks to the support of several outspoken board members, he was able to secure a severance package reportedly worth as much as $8 million.
Certainly, Greene, a former saxophonist, can claim to have had a successful tenure. When he took over in 1988, NARAS had a mere 14 employees and 3,500 members. Nowadays, the group boasts 120 staffers and 17,000 members, along with more than $50 million in assets, up from $4.9 million in 1988.
Further, CBS recently agreed to extend its broadcast rights to the Grammys for five more years at a total cost of more than $100 million.
But Greene's detractors say his faults extend well beyond the sexual harassment charges.
Above all, they say that while he has succeeded at increasing the visibility and influence of the Grammys, he has largely failed at achieving the organization's philanthropic goals.
While NARAS has spent $2 million a year making Greene the best paid non-profit executive in the U.S., it has devoted only a fraction of that sum to helping out struggling artists. Its MusiCares charity has routinely spent three times as much on administration and fund-raising as it has in handouts, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Greene's confrontational style has also gotten him in trouble. In 1999, the Grammys moved from New York to Los Angeles after Greene clashed with New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. (With Giuliani out of office, next year's telecast will again be held in New York.)
Dick Clark sued Greene in December, claiming that the latter had threatened to blacklist musicians from the Grammys if they performed on Clark's American Music Awards.
Meanwhile, Grammy ratings have been in free-fall, with critics complaining that too many of the winning acts, such as Steely Dan and U2, fail to appeal to younger viewers. This year's telecast earned a 12.5/20, the lowest ratings in a decade.
April 29, 2002
© 2002 Media Life-
Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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