NBC's Ken Schanzer Could Announce Retirement In Coming Weeks

NBC Sports President Ken Schanzer is preparing to announce his retirement from the network where he has spent the past three decades, according to sources with knowledge of his plans. A formal announcement could come within either days or weeks, a source said. Word of Schanzer's pending retirement was first reported by the L.A. Times' "Company Town" blog and comes a week after longtime NBC Sports head Dick Ebersol resigned from the company.

Schanzer, who has been president of NBC Sports since '98, was a close confidant of Ebersol's. It is not clear whether new NBC Sports Group Chair Mark Lazarus will fill Schanzer's post. The departure of NBC Sports' top two execs comes just over four months after Comcast's acquisition of NBC gained regulatory approval. The resignations also come just a couple of weeks before the IOC plans to accept bids for the '14 Sochi and '16 Rio de Janeiro Games.