Success Quote by Dick Ebersol

A television executive saying he will "never be cynical again about people" reads less like a conversion story than a hard-won business memo written in the language of feeling. Dick Ebersol built a career in an industry that trains you to distrust motives: ratings are currency, sincerity is often a costume, and the crowd can turn on you by the next news cycle. Cynicism is the default posture of power because it keeps you from being surprised, and surprise is expensive.

So the line lands as a deliberate renunciation of a professional reflex. The phrasing matters: not "less cynical" or "try to be optimistic", but "never" - a total ban. That absolutism hints at an inciting event big enough to reorder his internal rules. In Ebersol's public life, that kind of pivot is typically triggered by crisis: tragedy, an outpouring of support, a moment when the audience stops being a market segment and becomes a community. The subtext is gratitude sharpened into principle: people, en masse, did something he didn't think they would do. They showed up. They gave. They behaved better than the system designed for them.

There's also a quiet PR intelligence here. Cynicism is fashionable but sterile; it flatters the speaker as the only adult in the room. Rejecting it positions Ebersol as someone who has seen behind the curtain and still chooses faith. The intent isn't naive trust in everyone. It's a recalibration: stop confusing protective suspicion with wisdom, and let evidence of human decency count as real data.