I understand what you’re saying, but in a case like this when a prominent person gets fired quickly I have a different take. I assume the employer knew about the guy’s story for years, and looked the other way all along. They fired him this time because it was about to become a public story outside NBC.
And the evidence must have been incontrovertible. Otherwise, NBC would have allowed him to continue and deny the allegations.
Also, when a major company tells the press they have just received the “first” complaint about someone, that can involve some careful (Clintonesque) parsing of the term “complaint.” Even if they are not blatantly lying (big “IF”), it can mean that no one has been willing to go through some specific institutional grievance process.... doesn’t mean that higher-ups were unaware of the problem(s). It need not even mean that the person(s) had not told anyone in official HR or management positions. It might only mean that the victim(s) had not chosen to engage in a specific company grievance procedure to demand an investigation.
As I listened to a local DJ read the report this morning, he played a clip of someone from nbc reading a letter from nbc brass. The letter said, in part, something about "living our values of a safe work place for all our employees" or some such nonsense, and I replied to the radio, BS. I believe the brass knew about this for a while now and their "safe work place" schtick only applied to the important people at nbc.