For NBC News President, a Week In the Hot Seat

Capus was assigned to work with the new South Jersey reporter, Brian Williams. When Williams was riding around in a van chasing stories, he recalls, "Steve was the island of calm in my day."

After being laid off, Capus signed with rival station KYW, where he caught the eye of then-news director Randy Covington. "Someone called in sick and this kid writer said he thought he could fill in producing a show," Covington says. "His work was better than some of the other producers. He was smart, hard-working, soft-spoken, diligent and, what's really unusual in this field, he was a nice guy."

Capus tired of local news when budget cuts claimed the station's helicopter and satellite truck. "They took all our toys away," he says.

In 1993, a year after his first marriage ended, Capus was tapped to handle news feeds for NBC's affiliate stations, working the overnight shift in Charlotte. He moved to New York to join "NBC News Sunrise," anchored by Ann Curry. After his shift, he hung around the "Today" control room, where Zucker, then the executive producer, later brought him on to the staff.

It was at "Today" that he met Sophia Faskianos, who was also of Greek heritage -- Capus's grandfather had changed the family name from Kapitoutous -- and they were married in 1996. She recently stepped down as a "Dateline" producer, and they have 7- and 5-year-old boys; Capus also has a teenage daughter.

In 1996, Capus was shipped across the Hudson River to the startup cable channel MSNBC, where he was soon reunited with Williams as producer of his prime-time newscast. Disappointed at first to be swimming in a smaller pond, he nonetheless got all kinds of opportunities, traveling to London after Princess Diana's death, to Hong Kong for the British handover and to Athens for the Olympics.

After Capus was recalled to Manhattan to run the Brokaw newscast, the two men became so friendly that the anchor chartered a plane to Daytona Beach, Fla., for Capus's 40th birthday. The highlight for Capus, a big NASCAR fan, was visiting the Daytona 500 racetrack.

Over time, the nightly grind "took a lot out of me," Capus says. "It was a pressure cooker." In 2005, after Capus had managed the anchor transition from Brokaw to Williams, Zucker elevated him to senior vice president. "I was a little worried that a front-office job might be a little boring," Capus says.

Within months, Zucker promoted him to news division president. "He had excellent journalistic credentials," says Zucker, who talks to Capus several times a day. "He had a terrific relationship with Brian Williams. It was clear to me that he was the right guy."

Staffers came to regard him as an all-around Mr. Fix-It. Alexandra Wallace, the "Nightly News" producer, recalls frantically trying to reach Capus when the editing equipment crashed during a broadcast, only to learn he was huddled with the technicians. "I was kind of amazed he had gotten himself up there before I could call," she says.

Capus had just returned from taking his family to Legoland when the Imus controversy exploded. As criticism mounted over Imus calling the Rutgers women's basketball players "nappy-headed hos" -- and the radio host repeatedly said he was sorry -- Capus initially imposed a two-week suspension from MSNBC. "I was replaying in my memory 10 years' worth of Imus programs I've been a fan of," he says, and weighing the "enormous amount of good" that Imus has done through his charity work. "I thought he should be able to continue his efforts to apologize."

The turning point came the next day, when Capus hosted what stretched into a contentious, two-hour meeting of two dozen staffers, most of them African American -- from Al Roker of "Today" and correspondent Ron Allen to junior-level producers -- with more employees joining by conference call. Many of them were angry, some were talking about their daughters, arguing that such comments should not be allowed on the NBC airwaves.