Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: You actually were the guy who inspired us to do
Speaker 1: animated logos. Do you remember this? I said, well, what
Speaker 1: are we going to do in between the videos and
Speaker 1: the VJs that are we gonna do jingles? And he went, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we can't do jingles? And I said, what do we do?
Speaker 1: He said, how about this? Imagine it's a picture of
Speaker 1: a cow. I said, yeah, he said, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, an X comes down and cuts the cow's
Speaker 1: head off and it falls to the ground and you
Speaker 1: see the veins coming out and the blood spurting out,
Speaker 1: and the cow vomits, and in the vomit is the logo.
Speaker 1: I went, Oh, my god, I can do anything I want. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Bob Titman, and welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
Speaker 1: from the Frontiers and Marketing and we're doing something special
Speaker 1: on today's episode. One of the pivotal moments of my
Speaker 1: life was leading the team that created MTV. I've had
Speaker 1: the good fortin of having all the co founders of
Speaker 1: MTV on this podcast with me and in each of
Speaker 1: the interviews, whether it was chatting with Judie Grath and
Speaker 1: Fred Cyber, John Sykes or Yarramon and of course Tom Freston.
Speaker 1: We've always spent a little time talking about MTV, So
Speaker 1: what we wanted to do for you today was pulled
Speaker 1: together those stories for the first time ever. Tell the
Speaker 1: story at the beginning of MTV through the eyes of
Speaker 1: people who were actually in the room when it happened,
Speaker 1: because all of us who are really in the room
Speaker 1: often laugh about how far off other people's accounts can be.
Speaker 1: So let me set the stage. It's the beginning of
Speaker 1: the eighties. Cable TV was still a crazy idea. Most
Speaker 1: business executives and most of America didn't understand it or
Speaker 1: believe in how TV was about to change. And here
Speaker 1: comes this pack of twenty year old with an attitude.
Speaker 1: None of us had ever done the jobs before. All
Speaker 1: we knew is we've grown up with rock and roll
Speaker 1: and we've grown up with TV, and the two had
Speaker 1: never successfully come together. We thought it had always failed
Speaker 1: because TV people always wanted to try and make music
Speaker 1: at the TV form a story. We intended to make
Speaker 1: TV at the music form mood and emotion. MTV was
Speaker 1: going to be about attitude and something people wanted to join.
Speaker 1: We were on a mission. So when I hearts owned
Speaker 1: John Sykes at the time, a twenty four year old
Speaker 1: record executive at CBS Records in Chicago heard what we
Speaker 1: were up to. Well, he wanted in, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about MTV. It's the word gets out that we're working
Speaker 1: on this do music channel. How do you hear about it?
Speaker 1: What does it mean to you? And how on earth
Speaker 1: did you really get connected to us to get on
Speaker 1: that original team. I grew up with three things in
Speaker 1: my life. Radio, television, music. That's all I cared about.
Speaker 1: When I wasn't listen to the radio station, I was
Speaker 1: watching TV or listening to music. Those things, to me
Speaker 1: shaped our culture. So I'm at school, ab TV is
Speaker 1: just starting up, and I saw the cable channels were empty,
Speaker 1: the music was all over the radio. Was it on television?
Speaker 1: So we used to go and shoot the concerts and
Speaker 1: sarcus and we'd pay them and send him to new channels,
Speaker 1: and we played the concerts and people like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can see the band. And all I wanted to
Speaker 1: do at that point was put music on television. When
Speaker 1: I graduated, I went to CBS that let's put music
Speaker 1: on let's run concerts. These three martini lunch guys in
Speaker 1: New York looked at me, and I was crazy. I
Speaker 1: got a job in the record business promoting radio stations.
Speaker 1: I wanted to run the radio station. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to promote them on the rail, but that's the job
Speaker 1: I had. So then I heard from my friend's deep
Speaker 1: Casey was at w LS in Chicago that his great
Speaker 1: friend Bob Pittman was in New York and he was
Speaker 1: going to start a video channel, and I lost my mind.
Speaker 1: It still gives me goose bumps. I was like, this
Speaker 1: is what I was made to do. This is what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. To me, it was like music
Speaker 1: along on television. So I started calling you, and I
Speaker 1: called you, and I called you and I called you.
Speaker 1: And thanks to your assistant and Plunkett, who I was
Speaker 1: annoying so much, she said, all right, Bob, you please
Speaker 1: talk to this guy. And uh we met that day
Speaker 1: with a borrowed support jacket. Because I don't know it,
Speaker 1: but you and I connected that moment because we had
Speaker 1: the same vision. Music and television were the two biggest
Speaker 1: forces in pop culture and they were about to be united.
Speaker 1: You look back on any successful product and it seems easy.
Speaker 1: You were there when we didn't even have approval from
Speaker 1: the board to do it. We just had some money
Speaker 1: to develop it. So give us a little color for
Speaker 1: people who think things are easy and they always go
Speaker 1: exactly the way you plan. What that early development was like.
Speaker 1: It is funny and people like go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you're in the team that started MTV. That must have
Speaker 1: been a magical and great ago. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: was working too hard. We were so in the trenches
Speaker 1: all the time. It only looks glamorous that day looking back,
Speaker 1: but when you're in it, it's a slugfest. There was
Speaker 1: this idea, but to make it happen, we had no
Speaker 1: money and we all quit jobs. You were at NBC,
Speaker 1: I was at CBS. I was the promotion man of
Speaker 1: the Year in Chicago, and I just said, I'm quitting.
Speaker 1: People like us, we weren't going to fail. I never
Speaker 1: thought we were going to fail. I got scared when
Speaker 1: you'd come in and say, you know, they're gonna cut
Speaker 1: the budgets. We've got a few more months. We've got
Speaker 1: to make our numbers. That just made me say, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to work hard to make our numbers.
Speaker 1: I do still remember one conversation we have where I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to the board and we're gonna pitch this
Speaker 1: for approval, and you go, what, we don't have approval.
Speaker 1: I quit my job. We don't have approval. No, no, John,
Speaker 1: this was development. All the blood ran out of your
Speaker 1: face at that moment. I do remember I had to
Speaker 1: look up because there was no Internet. I had to
Speaker 1: go into Dictionary look up the real definition of development.
Speaker 1: I thought, we're developing something. You development means it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen yet, but you know something. I was like,
Speaker 1: who cares if it doesn't work, I'll go sleep on
Speaker 1: my sister's couching another job. We were young. John Sykes
Speaker 1: was so hungry he pounded on our door to let
Speaker 1: him in. He believed in music television from the start.
Speaker 1: But my good pal Fred Cyberg, the one who came
Speaker 1: out of radio and helped create the graphic of MTV,
Speaker 1: his reason for getting into TV was very different. One
Speaker 1: of your great supporters, who I had worked with and
Speaker 1: who I loved dearly, Dale Pond, recommended you to me
Speaker 1: pre MTV. It was in the early days to pay TV.
Speaker 1: You came over to join us in the cable revolution.
Speaker 1: Why did you make that jump? Well, you know this
Speaker 1: is gonna sound flattering. I did it completely because of you.
Speaker 1: Dale had left the country music radio station and left
Speaker 1: me alone, and the guy I was working for at
Speaker 1: that time in radio I had no respect for whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So you called me one day, you said you want
Speaker 1: to be in television, and oh, you said, okay, come
Speaker 1: have coffee with me. I went to Dale's files and
Speaker 1: he had files on everyone in the business, and there
Speaker 1: was one article about you, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy is younger than me and I've
Speaker 1: heard of him, so that's, you know, one check. So
Speaker 1: we go, we have the coffee and I walk out
Speaker 1: and I called my best friend and I said, this
Speaker 1: guy that I just talked to is so much smarter
Speaker 1: than my Boston radio He goes, what do you think
Speaker 1: about that? I said, Well, here's what Dale taught me.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what the job is, work for the
Speaker 1: smartest person you can find. And at the time, you
Speaker 1: were the smartest person I could find. That's what that means,
Speaker 1: to truth be told. When you first told me about it,
Speaker 1: I thought it was the dumbest idea in the world,
Speaker 1: because I was a music guy and I had seen,
Speaker 1: you know, a few crummy music videos. I hadn't really
Speaker 1: thought about it too much, and then luckily somebody played
Speaker 1: me a music video that made, you know, the little
Speaker 1: light go off. I don't know whether it was blind
Speaker 1: faith or I was too naive to know that you
Speaker 1: had to have faith, Like you told me it was
Speaker 1: gonna happen, so I believed you totally. I was just
Speaker 1: talking with Alan Goodman, my soon to be partner at
Speaker 1: that point, and he said, you know, we didn't really
Speaker 1: know what was going to happen, but you looked at
Speaker 1: all the other people that were around you, and it
Speaker 1: just had to happen. I think that's really true. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember, but we went to the
Speaker 1: head of Warner Communications in American Express, and we got
Speaker 1: a meeting with Steve Ross, who is the CEO of
Speaker 1: Warner along with his deputies David Horowitz, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: we got Jim Robinson and his deputy Luke Gershner from
Speaker 1: American Express. We were worried that when we showed these
Speaker 1: videos too from Americans Press, call what So he said,
Speaker 1: let's find the tamest one of my mind. I think
Speaker 1: we found Olivia Newton John if you remember. But in
Speaker 1: the meeting they said you have to play that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, implying Olivia Newton John was too. But to
Speaker 1: their credit, Jim Robinson's the first one to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in from my half. How about you? Steve so
Speaker 1: awesome we locked out. The MTV crew we assembled was
Speaker 1: a bunch of lovable misfits and future Viacom MTV CEO
Speaker 1: Tom Preston was no different. It spent several years living
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, reporting clothes and having adventures across Asia, but
Speaker 1: when things got two political overseas, he made his way
Speaker 1: back and so so you don't think Tom went saft
Speaker 1: sitting to top Viacom. After he left the company, He
Speaker 1: returned Afghanistan and even has a wonderful story about lying
Speaker 1: on the floor and a bar and football with a
Speaker 1: firefight going on all around, the bullets whizzing overhead. I
Speaker 1: was always trying to figure out where would I fit
Speaker 1: in in the business world. There wasn't an artist per se.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a writer or a musician, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to always be around creative people. My first grown up jobs. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we're working in an ad agency. My first account there
Speaker 1: I worked on was g I Joe Now Money. This
Speaker 1: was sort of at the height of the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: and I was in an alienated state to begin with.
Speaker 1: When they were gonna assign me to charm and toilet paper,
Speaker 1: that was sort of my last straw. Called an ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend who lived in Paris. I said, they want me
Speaker 1: to work on a toilet paper account where they had
Speaker 1: segmented the population two rollers, folders and crumplers. And she says, well,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. You should quit that job. Don't
Speaker 1: be a moron. Come with me. I'm gonna go across
Speaker 1: the Sahara Desert up in Paris. So I was on
Speaker 1: a plane like ten days later. That was it for me.
Speaker 1: So Tom set up his clothing company Hidnt Do Kush
Speaker 1: and ran that successfully for a long while. When I
Speaker 1: was riven out of Asia, I thought, whatever I do next,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be something that I also loved deeply,
Speaker 1: and that was music. So I'm methodically looked around getting
Speaker 1: a job in the music business. Through connections. I ended
Speaker 1: up in John Lack's office and I told him I thought,
Speaker 1: this is a fantastic idea. He says, we're looking for
Speaker 1: people who have no experience in television. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: your man. They didn't even have television where I've been
Speaker 1: living in the last eight years. We were both originally
Speaker 1: brought to the company for other jobs, by the way,
Speaker 1: before the MTV development even began, by the incredibly charismatic
Speaker 1: John Lack, who had this wonderful affliction. He liked to
Speaker 1: hire people for roles they had never had before. And
Speaker 1: you and I benefited from that. But you got in
Speaker 1: here the cable revolution wasn't even recognized as being a revolution. Yet,
Speaker 1: what did you think you were getting into? I mean,
Speaker 1: this was still sort of Mickey Mouse compared to the
Speaker 1: TV business. I thought I was getting into one of
Speaker 1: the greatest ideas that had ever come around. I had
Speaker 1: spent parts of the summers in Europe, and I was
Speaker 1: familiar with the music video which were largely unknown to
Speaker 1: American audiences, and they were infectious, and I thought MTV,
Speaker 1: like all of us on the team, was really one
Speaker 1: of the great ideas. And all of us were essentially
Speaker 1: on a crusade. We got paid nothing. It was the
Speaker 1: early eighties version of a startup, very much so. And
Speaker 1: if you looked at the media environment then nothing had
Speaker 1: really changed in years. The only thing that had come
Speaker 1: around knew had been FM radio. There was still three
Speaker 1: TV networks. Pong was only a few years old. Remember
Speaker 1: we used to say we're going to do to FM
Speaker 1: what FM did too a M that was our big
Speaker 1: plane channels in the home. Can you imagine. Judy McGrath
Speaker 1: was another key employee in the early days. She eventually
Speaker 1: rose to be CEO of MTV Networks. Here she has
Speaker 1: reminiscing about what it meant to make the rules up
Speaker 1: as we went along. The beauty and the wonder of
Speaker 1: MTV was that it was really filled with people that
Speaker 1: I thought could not find gainful employment anywhere else. It
Speaker 1: would be somebody who had never really shot anything and
Speaker 1: just wanted to get their hands on a camera and
Speaker 1: try it. And we were willing to do that, so
Speaker 1: I would say absolutely, But remember, don't fall in love
Speaker 1: with your own idea. This is about someone else, not you.
Speaker 1: This is about the person on the other side. They're
Speaker 1: like you, but you can't make this just for you.
Speaker 1: And there are really no other rules aside from you know,
Speaker 1: no full frontal nudity. Go out there and do it,
Speaker 1: and it was so much fun to have the freedom
Speaker 1: to meet people who were far more creative than I was.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I joined, I didn't know anything about television.
Speaker 1: I didn't even like it. My interview was with Fred,
Speaker 1: who said, so, what kind of music do you like?
Speaker 1: And I think I said Bruce Springsteen, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: He said, well, you're wrong, and I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: And then about forty five minutes later, I left, not
Speaker 1: having said anything else. And the next thing I know,
Speaker 1: they were like, well, you know, look, this is just
Speaker 1: a few of us were trying to get this thing
Speaker 1: going if you'd like to join, And it was kind
Speaker 1: of like how fast can I it out the door
Speaker 1: of Conde nas and jump on this thing whatever it is?
Speaker 1: These people are crazy. What's funny is that when I
Speaker 1: asked Fred about it, he remembered the story exactly the
Speaker 1: same way. She said Bruce Springsteen. I said wrong, because
Speaker 1: I don't have a good thing about Bruce. The fact
Speaker 1: that she cared, you know, the Bruce haters are coming
Speaker 1: after you right now. Believe me, They've been coming after
Speaker 1: me my whole life. The fact that she cared meant
Speaker 1: all the difference to me in the world. Not that
Speaker 1: I agreed. You know, I've just found the camaraderie and
Speaker 1: the purpose in the sheer invention of something that didn't exist,
Speaker 1: so irresistible. And again on the math side of it,
Speaker 1: I was saying, I mean this with all sincerity. You
Speaker 1: had a map in the creative group, you had a plan,
Speaker 1: and the plan were promises, and I loved that. I
Speaker 1: am making a promise to you. You sit here, I'm
Speaker 1: going to deliver something that you've been waiting for. It
Speaker 1: is the first music television network. It is exactly for you.
Speaker 1: And I thought, wow, I want my MTV and I
Speaker 1: have no idea what it is, but those are powerful
Speaker 1: words my in an era before social media and social engagement.
Speaker 1: Something for me that felt like mine and want What
Speaker 1: a powerful word, right, I want my MTV. I took
Speaker 1: that very seriously. I took those promises to heart. Twenty
Speaker 1: four hours a day terrific in stereo, not really, but
Speaker 1: you know, hey, it's mart that sounded good. People who
Speaker 1: did have stereo. I remember you saying to me, we
Speaker 1: want people to think it sounds better than regular television,
Speaker 1: and they did. It just felt to me like if
Speaker 1: I could marry all the things I'm interested in, with
Speaker 1: these set of principles and join this crazy band of
Speaker 1: people who have no right and a lot of audacity
Speaker 1: and a firm belief that this can work. What a gift.
Speaker 1: I never looked back, not one second. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to Fred and chat about that iconic MTV logo. Talk
Speaker 1: about the logo you set out, You've got the mission.
Speaker 1: You and I had these discussions. I've naively said, we'll
Speaker 1: do our own Star Wars logo because everybody has a
Speaker 1: Star Wars log and you go to bob Ours will
Speaker 1: look cheap. You said, Look, if we do something no
Speaker 1: one's ever seen before, they won't know it's cheap. So
Speaker 1: tell me about the logo. Well, the logo itself actually
Speaker 1: came about because I was too scared to go to
Speaker 1: someone famous. I wanted to go to Milton Glazer, who's
Speaker 1: one of the most famous graphic designers of the last
Speaker 1: fifty years. And I was like, oh, well, he's gonna
Speaker 1: be really expensive and we'll get all the credit. And
Speaker 1: I wanted a little credit, you know, at least. So
Speaker 1: my childhood friend, who I've known since I'm four years old,
Speaker 1: a guy named Frank Olinsky, had just started a little
Speaker 1: design firm behind a tai Chief studio above Bigelow Chemists
Speaker 1: on Sixth Avenue. And Frank had been the guy because
Speaker 1: he's a year older than me, who would always introduced
Speaker 1: me to every new rock band. He introduced me to
Speaker 1: the Monkeys, he introduced me to the Mothers of Invention,
Speaker 1: to the Who, to Jeff Beck. So I go down
Speaker 1: to his little Taichi studio place and I go, will
Speaker 1: you guys design a logo for this rock channel we're starting?
Speaker 1: And they're like yes, And they didn't ask me anything.
Speaker 1: They didn't ask me how much they were going to
Speaker 1: get paid or anything like that. And this was right
Speaker 1: after you sent out the first memo in June, and
Speaker 1: boy do I wish I had that memo. So for
Speaker 1: a year they designed logos and I just rejected everything,
Speaker 1: probably five hundred designs. Finally they come in the office
Speaker 1: one day. We're actually going to go on the air soon, right,
Speaker 1: and we still don't have anything, and they bring a
Speaker 1: pile and I'm like, no, no, I'm going through the
Speaker 1: whole pile. And at the bottom of the pile is
Speaker 1: a piece of tracing paper. Remember that, you know the
Speaker 1: paper you could see through and it was all wrinkled
Speaker 1: and they had flattened it out. It was just like
Speaker 1: a sketched TV and went, Okay, that's the one I
Speaker 1: can see. Frank like rowling. He and I now disagree.
Speaker 1: But what I had heard is that there's three partners
Speaker 1: and one of them wasn't really a designer. She was
Speaker 1: a production manager and she had done it, and Frank
Speaker 1: saw it and hated him, threw it in the garbage.
Speaker 1: She fished it out and put it at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the pile. He says, that's not true, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a good story. The only reason I said yes
Speaker 1: is that Dale had taught me one lesson about design.
Speaker 1: You need to dominate the space, and that big block
Speaker 1: e M was the only thing they showed that when
Speaker 1: you put it on a TV screen, filled the whole screen. Okay,
Speaker 1: we dominate the space, and in a world of thirty
Speaker 1: channels in a day, when the screen was square exactly right.
Speaker 1: So then I go, oh, you know, we need official colors.
Speaker 1: So they come to my office with about ten different
Speaker 1: boards and then a little board where Frank had illustrated
Speaker 1: ten or twelve of them on acrylic overlays and said
Speaker 1: this one will be for the heavy metal show, and
Speaker 1: this one will be for the new Wave show. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, Frank, We're not gonna have shows, you know.
Speaker 1: I put it aside. So I put all of the
Speaker 1: boards up on my pegboard and couldn't decide, and this
Speaker 1: one on literally for like weeks and weeks and weeks.
Speaker 1: And then I start looking at his little acrylic thing
Speaker 1: with all the illustration, and I said, why don't we
Speaker 1: just use them all at once all the time? Or
Speaker 1: television we move, shouldn't the logo move? And to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, that was my first real revelation that
Speaker 1: I was in television, that we had come up with
Speaker 1: an idea that only worked in television. You actually were
Speaker 1: the guy who inspired us to do animated logos. I said, well,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do in between the videos
Speaker 1: and the VJs that are We're gonna do jingles? And went, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we can't do jingles. And I said, what do we do?
Speaker 1: He said, how about this? Imagine it's like a picture
Speaker 1: of a cow. I said, yeah, he said, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, an X comes down and cuts the
Speaker 1: cow's head off and it falls to the ground and
Speaker 1: you see the veins coming out and the blood spurting out,
Speaker 1: and the cow vomits, and in the vomit is the logo.
Speaker 1: I went, oh my god, I can do anything I want.
Speaker 1: This is the most exciting moment of my life. And
Speaker 1: we started hiring animators to do all that stuff. The
Speaker 1: other thing you did when you did those promos, you
Speaker 1: laid the music bed down first and cut the music.
Speaker 1: People forget this, They don't realize that was an innovation.
Speaker 1: So I got that all from Dale. And when we
Speaker 1: started making our first radio spots, we would film country
Speaker 1: music stars and then he said, we'll go to the
Speaker 1: audio studio and cut the audio track. And I went, well,
Speaker 1: the video guy tells me, no, you have to first
Speaker 1: do the picture. And then he goes, Fred, we own
Speaker 1: the audio studio. It's free. If you get it right
Speaker 1: in the audio studio, then the three an hour video
Speaker 1: studio will go much faster. By the time we got
Speaker 1: to MTV, I realized that he was absolutely right. Now
Speaker 1: fast forward twenty years. I go to MTV one day
Speaker 1: and I go, who's the promo department? Now on the
Speaker 1: one you're the one, Well, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And they said, they make us do the audio. First
Speaker 1: we're filmed. People like why so twenty years later they
Speaker 1: were still doing it. But boy, what it did is
Speaker 1: it brought rhythm. So we had a logo and we
Speaker 1: were a band of believers. But part of getting MTV
Speaker 1: to stick was proving the channel's worth to the record companies.
Speaker 1: Artists loved the idea of being on TV, but the
Speaker 1: labels needed to be convinced. At the time, David said
Speaker 1: music should be heard and not seen. We needed a
Speaker 1: case study, a story to prove we sold records. I
Speaker 1: talked to John Sykes about it. We launch MTV, we
Speaker 1: get it underway. We're trying to get some evidence that
Speaker 1: it's working because the record companies are hemorrhaging money those years.
Speaker 1: They were thinking about cutting videos out of their budget,
Speaker 1: which of course we've been disaster for. So we said
Speaker 1: we gotta get some evidence ahead of the budget cycle.
Speaker 1: And you and Tom Freston go on the road to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Just hold on a second, because we've got so much
Speaker 1: more to talk about. We'll be back after a quick break.
Speaker 1: Some mean what happened in Tulsa. We believe this was working,
Speaker 1: We felt it, but we needed facts. We needed to
Speaker 1: convince a record business. So I was like, we need
Speaker 1: a story, Tom, John, go on their own, don't compact.
Speaker 1: You have a story. And Tulsa didn't happen until we
Speaker 1: went to Syracuse, Houston and we went to the cable markets.
Speaker 1: So Tom and I driving through Tulsa in a rental
Speaker 1: car literally with a map of record stores and going
Speaker 1: into places. So you sold any please records selling Duran
Speaker 1: Duran sold in the Tulips to Nope, Nope, So we
Speaker 1: kept driving driving. I still remember it was a regord
Speaker 1: store in an old house and tomize Trudgin and we
Speaker 1: say solely this only that's only Dan grand Ran. I
Speaker 1: sold two boxes of Duran Duran records last week. What
Speaker 1: is you sold to back? You sold fifty records records
Speaker 1: in a box. Can we have your name and can
Speaker 1: we use your phone? We called the box, said Bob, Bob,
Speaker 1: we have a story. We have a story. We have
Speaker 1: a record store that's selling music only played on MTV.
Speaker 1: And he said, great, get a name, get the information.
Speaker 1: We need an article, and so we hang up the phone.
Speaker 1: I turned to Tom, Tom, we get to go home.
Speaker 1: And we took that and we wrote it as a
Speaker 1: case study and we ran it in bill Board and
Speaker 1: the music magazines to influence the record company keep going.
Speaker 1: I have, of course you do. You have everything we
Speaker 1: ever did at MTV. You are the pack rat. I
Speaker 1: have that one sheet MTV sales records, Joey Smith, and
Speaker 1: boy that Joey Smith. Wherever you are tell us Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: thank you. If you're wondering why we picked those places, Syracuse, Houston, Tulsa,
Speaker 1: it's because those were the few markets where we had
Speaker 1: enough cable density that we could make a point. These
Speaker 1: cities ended up being little laboratories where we could peek
Speaker 1: in and take measurements and show the world just how
Speaker 1: effective MTV was gonna be. So it proved our worth
Speaker 1: to the record companies. But you have to remember we
Speaker 1: still had to convince cable operators to carry m TV.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be paid to carry our channel, and frankly,
Speaker 1: we didn't have the money. So we had to come
Speaker 1: up with a breakthrough idea and genius campaign that could
Speaker 1: do all the heavy lifting. Here, Tom Preston and Fred
Speaker 1: Seibert telling that story, let's start the talk. When we
Speaker 1: launched MTV. You were the head of marketing the cable
Speaker 1: operator wouldn't put MTV on. They wanted us to pay
Speaker 1: them one we didn't have the money, and too that
Speaker 1: was probably a slippery slope, and so we decided we
Speaker 1: would use a whole strategy to get distribution. I want
Speaker 1: my MTV. Well, it was sort of a Hail Mary
Speaker 1: passed because you know, we're about to go under. No
Speaker 1: one in the organization knew we were about to go under,
Speaker 1: So how are we going to get these cable operators
Speaker 1: at us? When we knew in fact that the people
Speaker 1: who actually had it in a few towns where it existed,
Speaker 1: they loved it. They were fanatical about it. So we
Speaker 1: actually had to go over their heads. And the idea
Speaker 1: was that campaign I Want My Mapo, which I remembered
Speaker 1: as a baby boomer in the fifties. I'm obnoxious, I
Speaker 1: want my MAPO, but I want my MTV. The actual
Speaker 1: spot said, they grew up with rock and roll, they
Speaker 1: grew up with television. Now they want their MTV. George Lois,
Speaker 1: who never saw something that he couldn't copy, had already
Speaker 1: copied a famous TV commercial from the fifties called I
Speaker 1: Want my Mapo for a really horrendous tasting, and he
Speaker 1: redid it with Mick Jagger and David Bowie, and on
Speaker 1: the beginning of the spot he had Pete Townsend doing
Speaker 1: it America demand your MTV and people go, I want
Speaker 1: my MTV. I want my MTV. And then Pete towns
Speaker 1: and again with a telephone going toll your cable operator
Speaker 1: and say I want my And they showed us this spot.
Speaker 1: If we could get major rock stars in a commercial
Speaker 1: to kind of hold our logo, validate and hold it
Speaker 1: and command people to call their cable company and demand
Speaker 1: their MTV, make it look cool, put some animation around it,
Speaker 1: and then put it in these markets at very high frequency.
Speaker 1: We go into a market and would be like a
Speaker 1: Blockbuster movie was opening. Most people in the market had
Speaker 1: never heard of MTV. So we went and we pitched
Speaker 1: it to you. I think you saw the feeling of
Speaker 1: it right away. Well, there's a lesson in this too
Speaker 1: that you've always done very very well, which is harnessing
Speaker 1: the power of partners and in the case of I
Speaker 1: Want my MTV, music stars who were willing to be
Speaker 1: in the commercial for free to help us accomplish goals,
Speaker 1: but you also have music companies and others. Dale was
Speaker 1: this brilliant hybrid of a strategist and a creative guy.
Speaker 1: And as a strategist, what he understood is that we
Speaker 1: had no money to spend on this ad. I remember
Speaker 1: going into our boss's office and saying, but HBO spending
Speaker 1: ten million dollars a year in advertising, goes, you're lucky.
Speaker 1: You have to somehow or other. The people in the
Speaker 1: media business didn't actually believe in advertising as the weirdest thing.
Speaker 1: And so I went to Dale. I said, look, we
Speaker 1: only have two million dollars, and he did an incredible
Speaker 1: data dump of where could MTV be put on against
Speaker 1: how much media cost in that particular market, and he
Speaker 1: did three or four or five cross tabs to figure
Speaker 1: out the most likely places that if we put on
Speaker 1: these spots that we would get people calling and making
Speaker 1: the cable operators insane. And god knows, I think we
Speaker 1: made customer representatives from all over America crazy within four weeks.
Speaker 1: Next thing, you know, every cable operator of there were
Speaker 1: eleven of them in a market, which would not be
Speaker 1: unusual time they'd all call up and surrender. So we
Speaker 1: would move a market by market for a couple of
Speaker 1: years across the country, going from like what was seven
Speaker 1: million subscribers ended up being eighty or ninety million. I
Speaker 1: had a guy stopped me at a cable operator and
Speaker 1: said I hate you, and I go, why why do
Speaker 1: you hate me? And he goes because my phone rings
Speaker 1: all day with those people saying I want mam people.
Speaker 1: I can't get any work done. In my chats with
Speaker 1: the co founders, there's a lot of fondness for this
Speaker 1: deviant culture we had. MTV was fine. It was definitely
Speaker 1: anti establishment. And the truth is even the promotions dripped
Speaker 1: with the brand sensibility. In some ways they defined the
Speaker 1: brand sensibility. There's some of the crazy stories too. It
Speaker 1: was fun reminiscing with John Sykes about them. You were
Speaker 1: the guy who did the promotions. You came up with
Speaker 1: these ideas and fortunately, unfortunately the one that also executed them.
Speaker 1: You did to Paint the House Paint promotion with John Mellencamp,
Speaker 1: you did the Last Weekend with Van Halen. What formula
Speaker 1: were you using? Goes back to that connected New York
Speaker 1: thing of being a dreamer, because I was the kid.
Speaker 1: I was the viewer who thought, oh my god, if
Speaker 1: only I could dot dot dot. So when you said
Speaker 1: we've got to put together some promotions. We gotta go
Speaker 1: bigger than life. We go, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: I just said to myself, okay, what would anybody give
Speaker 1: their eye teeth to do? What would be the fantasy
Speaker 1: of all fantasies? And I remember just John had done
Speaker 1: a song called pink Houses. So let's give away a
Speaker 1: house and you're gonna paint the mother pink. Tell us
Speaker 1: about the first house you bought. When you had to
Speaker 1: execute it, I means you got to go find a house,
Speaker 1: got to go buy a house. You had to go
Speaker 1: actually get a team to paint it pink. You gotta
Speaker 1: go fly people in. So we went, and you had
Speaker 1: no money, so we had to buy the chief house
Speaker 1: you could find. So Bob goes, take a cashier's check
Speaker 1: and just go buy a house. And I okay. So
Speaker 1: I flew in Indiana and John Mellencamp, who loved the idea,
Speaker 1: sends his ex wife to meet me to show me
Speaker 1: around it by some house. She's a realtor. So we
Speaker 1: go and I go, okay, I got about two hours
Speaker 1: before I get the flight back to New York. Show
Speaker 1: me four houses. First house we buy, the woman is
Speaker 1: there just cookies for me. The kids are out front,
Speaker 1: they've cleaned it up. This was a shock. I felt
Speaker 1: so bad for her. She was a single mom. Look
Speaker 1: at this house, and I said, we'll do It's a
Speaker 1: we can paint this pink. So I wrote a check
Speaker 1: thirty two dollars, bought the house. Her jaw dropped. No realator,
Speaker 1: just handed the check and got in the car, drove back.
Speaker 1: When you open up Rolling Stone, three weeks later, MTV
Speaker 1: buys house on toxic waste dump. So so I call
Speaker 1: you go Bob. I had no idea. John Mellencamp writes
Speaker 1: me letters I have today. Dear John, I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: read Rolling Stone by now, and I'm sure you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to give a house on a toxic waste dump.
Speaker 1: And I'm going, oh my god, we're stuck with a house.
Speaker 1: So I had to fly back and get an other house.
Speaker 1: But that's not the good double the budget, the budget.
Speaker 1: The good story was The Last Weekend with Van Halen.
Speaker 1: That one really really defined MTV as a serious, dangerous
Speaker 1: rock and roll brand to consumers. There was a movie
Speaker 1: called The Last Weekend. Gray Millan was in there and
Speaker 1: guy loses his mind whatever and so we just said,
Speaker 1: let's do a laws week with the band. Who's the
Speaker 1: craziest band out there right now, van Halen. Van Halen
Speaker 1: wouldn't do any promotion because they were worried about their image.
Speaker 1: We called them with the idea that we're in. We're in,
Speaker 1: and by the way, will fulfill the contest. You don't
Speaker 1: have to do anything, just drop off the fans with
Speaker 1: us and we'll deliver them back on Sunday. So we
Speaker 1: did that. The kid arrives and they take him aout
Speaker 1: four o'clock in the afternoon, right into the backstage, and
Speaker 1: everything you can imagine what happened with Van Halen happened.
Speaker 1: So by the time the band goes on stage at
Speaker 1: nine o'clock at night, this guy is fried. There's been
Speaker 1: things that were not a Warner m X and condoned
Speaker 1: or MT VOUS activity. So he's standing on age completely
Speaker 1: out of his mind, and David Lee Roth goes, we
Speaker 1: have the winner tonight of the MTV Lost Weekend, Joe Smith,
Speaker 1: you know, Joe Congratulations. They bring on a giant sheet cake.
Speaker 1: He's got his hands up from there and the bands
Speaker 1: around him, and they take the sheet cake and they
Speaker 1: push it into his face and the guy is stunned
Speaker 1: and he starts twirling around swinging punches at the band.
Speaker 1: The band feaks out, They take him off and they
Speaker 1: bring him backstage. We say to his friend, what's wrong
Speaker 1: with him? And he said, we forgot to tell you.
Speaker 1: He has a middle plate in his head. He was
Speaker 1: in an accident. He's not supposed to drink, so they
Speaker 1: had to put him in a room with a security
Speaker 1: guard all night. But that kind of made the legend
Speaker 1: of MTV. I wish we could take credit for that,
Speaker 1: but that was it. So the contest. Maybe we're lucky
Speaker 1: we can't take credit for it. You know what those
Speaker 1: contests did, They creates the fantasy and the aspiration that
Speaker 1: makes someone want to be attracted to a product. MTV
Speaker 1: could have been a flash in the pan, but the marketing, spirit, capturing,
Speaker 1: and attitude that Young America responded to. People tuned in
Speaker 1: just to see what was going on in MTV. It
Speaker 1: was a place to hang out, and as the word spread,
Speaker 1: the channel made money. Although MTV was the most radical
Speaker 1: of the cable channels, it was also the first cable
Speaker 1: network to actually make a profit, and we had the
Speaker 1: highest that revenue of any of the cable networks. And
Speaker 1: I remember this was a time when people didn't believe
Speaker 1: cable networks could even be profitable. Boy did that feel good.
Speaker 1: But part of keeping the channel successful was continuing to
Speaker 1: think outside the mainstream and continue to come up with
Speaker 1: new ideas. Here's bread again. We had these creative promo departments.
Speaker 1: Once people came in and started saying, well, I worked
Speaker 1: on promos over here, I didn't want to hire them.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest people I hired had just come
Speaker 1: out of film school and his first job was cutting
Speaker 1: film negatives at a pornell place. I'm like, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: you won't remember this, but one day you called me
Speaker 1: into your office and you said, hey, I need you
Speaker 1: to be you know, the head of production. I said, um, Bob,
Speaker 1: you know I've never seen even the red light on
Speaker 1: top of a camera go on. And you went, oh,
Speaker 1: don't worry, you'll figure it out. And that was that,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden I was in television and
Speaker 1: you did a really great job. Thank you. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just people like Fred who got an opportunity to MTV.
Speaker 1: You're Judy and Tom talking about how he kept an
Speaker 1: eye out from new talent and groom them upward. And
Speaker 1: the culture that the two of them kept going and
Speaker 1: kept building at the company even after I left. If
Speaker 1: you think about it, in the days of MTV, we're
Speaker 1: probably looking back at an extraordinary number of women and
Speaker 1: very important roles. Today would be crowing about it. Probably,
Speaker 1: you know, whether you like it or not. You have
Speaker 1: been mentoring people, You've been setting an example. How do
Speaker 1: you handle that responsibility? What do you do consciously about that?
Speaker 1: I began to see I was sort of a better
Speaker 1: editor coach than I was a player. I can remember
Speaker 1: some things that just felt like personal milestones to be.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the great fun things I got
Speaker 1: to do would be hang out in the rehearsals for
Speaker 1: the Video Music Awards, and I was there and I
Speaker 1: was thinking, Wow, you know, we've got a female director,
Speaker 1: we have a female on stage managing the crew. We
Speaker 1: have a young woman who's the head writer. We have
Speaker 1: a young woman in charge of seating and events. But
Speaker 1: we've got women in roles that were not traditionally women's roles.
Speaker 1: They were just really good. And I do think it's
Speaker 1: incumbent on somebody who gets an opportunity like I got
Speaker 1: to look out for underrepresented people in general. And so
Speaker 1: you know, when Beth McCarthy Miller raised her hand, was
Speaker 1: an easy like, let's let Beth direct, come on, like,
Speaker 1: she can do it. We know she can do it.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows she can do it. And I looked around
Speaker 1: and thought, Wow, this whole thing is kind of really
Speaker 1: looking very different than most of the other sets that
Speaker 1: I've been on. I once heard Tina Fey say something
Speaker 1: about a panel where a bunch of women were sort
Speaker 1: of congratulating each other for different things, and someone said
Speaker 1: they were lucky, and a bunch of other women jumped
Speaker 1: on her and said, oh my god. Women always say
Speaker 1: they're lucky. Men never say they're lucky. You made your
Speaker 1: own luck. And Tina was actually very thoughtful about it,
Speaker 1: and she said, I think timing plays a role in
Speaker 1: something as well as luck and talent. And you know,
Speaker 1: I always felt like I worked with men who are
Speaker 1: not typical and young employees who are not typical. So
Speaker 1: how ridiculous would it be to take a typical approach
Speaker 1: to anything else. We were up ending tradition all the time,
Speaker 1: and not just for the sake of doing it, but
Speaker 1: because you give somebody a chance, they'll knock themselves out
Speaker 1: to show you that they could really do it. And
Speaker 1: we actually talked about it back then. We said, you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody has done three or four things and they're
Speaker 1: not great, we have empirical evidence they won't be great.
Speaker 1: But if we give somebody a shot who's never done it,
Speaker 1: they could be the next Steven Spielberg. Exactly right, And
Speaker 1: the only way we're gonna find out is to take
Speaker 1: a shot. And you continue to do that through your career.
Speaker 1: A lot of focus was on eating a culture that
Speaker 1: would attract creative people. They would want to come and
Speaker 1: live there. I mean we'd have at one point Judd
Speaker 1: Apatow or Ben Stiller or John Stewart, Stephen Cobra, you know,
Speaker 1: Adam Sandler would like be sleeping in the offices. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it was a hothouse atmosphere. You were probably the first
Speaker 1: talent incubator. I don't think they called them that back then.
Speaker 1: How did you pull that together? Because it is really
Speaker 1: remarkable the people you had. Well, a lot of is
Speaker 1: sort of what's the vibe of the place. We always
Speaker 1: wanted to make the room for deviancy. I would always say,
Speaker 1: who is the odd ball person, who's the intern who's
Speaker 1: gonna come running in with an idea like Yo, MTV raps.
Speaker 1: That was like a twenty one year old intern who
Speaker 1: came up with a demo in his basement. Because we
Speaker 1: had these networks, there was a lot of room for experimentation.
Speaker 1: Everything you made didn't have to be really tightly organized.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of room for improvisation and innovation.
Speaker 1: If you have a hallmark for that, people would want
Speaker 1: to step up and follow what's he Just try and
Speaker 1: have good standards, provide guard rails for people, celebrate risk,
Speaker 1: you know, we give creative people a lot of freedom.
Speaker 1: One of the people who was crucial tim TV's early
Speaker 1: success was former MPR CEO y'ar al Mong. Y'arll and
Speaker 1: I went way back. We even had a show called
Speaker 1: Album Tracks that aired after Saturday Night Live. But y'all
Speaker 1: had an incredible eye for programming and when MTV had
Speaker 1: to think beyond music videos. He played a crucial role
Speaker 1: for me. It was a great transition from the radio
Speaker 1: world to the television world because there were so many similarities.
Speaker 1: If you had picked me up and tried to drop
Speaker 1: me into a broadcast network to do scripted filmed entertainment.
Speaker 1: I would have, I think flailed and failed miserably, But
Speaker 1: ultimately we all learned a lot of lessons about the
Speaker 1: fragility of this brand new thing, music videos, and that
Speaker 1: was something that we all kind of had to learn
Speaker 1: in real time. It was humbling, it was embarrassing, and
Speaker 1: it didn't think it stopped working. There was so much
Speaker 1: heat around music videos at the time, and there were
Speaker 1: so many people watching and being really enthralled. But but
Speaker 1: I think ultimately it became less interesting. It was television
Speaker 1: and we were using a lot I was, at least
Speaker 1: using a lot of radio rules for a different medium,
Speaker 1: and people were making four minute decisions of what they
Speaker 1: were going to watch and not thirty minute and sixty
Speaker 1: minute or ninety minute decisions, and ultimately had to switch
Speaker 1: strategy to go to content that people would watch for
Speaker 1: longer periods of time, long form, and that was very
Speaker 1: controversial at the time, but you know, it worked. What
Speaker 1: were your first shows, And we started with the Weekend
Speaker 1: Rock and hiring Kurt Loader from Rolling Stone magazine and
Speaker 1: taking the MTV news segments and making it a half
Speaker 1: hour show, and that worked, and then Rockumentaries a specials
Speaker 1: as the second. The third was Club MTV, Let's do
Speaker 1: an American band stand for today, Let's play music videos
Speaker 1: and hied Downtown Julie Brown. That was a hit. Every
Speaker 1: show that went on did well, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: really cocky and think, man, we really know how to
Speaker 1: make hits. But I think it was more a reflection
Speaker 1: of the fact that music videos at the time it'd
Speaker 1: run their course. The most controversial one remote Control of
Speaker 1: the Game show, and all the research came back said
Speaker 1: you can't do a game show. And I remember saying
Speaker 1: to our good friend Marshall Cohen. We worked with an
Speaker 1: MTV research google. Yes, I said, I think we're asking
Speaker 1: the wrong question. The question should be if we were
Speaker 1: to do a game show, what would it look like?
Speaker 1: And the answer came back, well, it should be irreverencey crazy.
Speaker 1: We used all the information and hired Ken Ober and
Speaker 1: Colin Quinn and Adam Sandler was a regular on the
Speaker 1: show and it was a monster. But the additional research
Speaker 1: the way we asked it indicated that that have been
Speaker 1: a disaster. It worked out great, yep, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So MTV started to a with new formats, but its
Speaker 1: Preston remembers it the limited budgets were actually an engine
Speaker 1: for creativity. We couldn't just innovate it by shuffling the
Speaker 1: music mix or changing things. That was clear. We tried everything.
Speaker 1: We just couldn't play the top ten videos all day long.
Speaker 1: There was always new shows coming around. We would add
Speaker 1: shows on package music and like on hip hop music
Speaker 1: with the OMTV raps and so forth, and it kind
Speaker 1: of came down to the real world that was and
Speaker 1: that was like, well, we've tried everything else, we should
Speaker 1: probably do a soap opera because young people are interested
Speaker 1: in what other young people are doing. So they came
Speaker 1: in with a presentation to me and we had to
Speaker 1: hire writers, and I said, well, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: have any money to hire writers, so we can't do this.
Speaker 1: So then Doug Herzog came back and said, you know,
Speaker 1: we're really good at post production, that's our major skill.
Speaker 1: What if we just rented Aloft and soho and stuck
Speaker 1: some cameras in there and bring these kids in and
Speaker 1: then let them live and then we'll post it afterwards
Speaker 1: and make it into a show. And that was that
Speaker 1: was sort of the birth of reality TV. It was
Speaker 1: an idea that was not born of brilliance but born
Speaker 1: of cheap skateness. MTV was a success story finally, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't long before the competition started circling. Here's Tom
Speaker 1: with the story of what motivated us to start v
Speaker 1: H one. Ted Turner want to come in and basically
Speaker 1: p in our parade. He said he was going to
Speaker 1: launch a music channel that played none of the Devil's music.
Speaker 1: Let me say first that the cable music channel lasted
Speaker 1: a hundred one days on the air and he had
Speaker 1: to fold up and go home. But we decided we
Speaker 1: can't let this happen, and if there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: second music channel, we should have a second music channel,
Speaker 1: and we made the case to cable operations, we have
Speaker 1: a second music channel. You don't want to add the
Speaker 1: Ted Turner channel, because that's just gonna go head to
Speaker 1: head against the one you already have. Add VH one,
Speaker 1: which was called the Very Hot One at the time,
Speaker 1: because it would be more compatible and it would play
Speaker 1: artists for another demo and we would sell it tu
Speaker 1: on a combo basis. Basically, it was free if you
Speaker 1: already had MTV. So we strangled him in terms of
Speaker 1: not being able to get distribution. Therefore no advertising, no revenue,
Speaker 1: no light on the end of the tunnel, and he
Speaker 1: went out of business and we went forward. Of course,
Speaker 1: launching v H one was one thing. It was a
Speaker 1: savvy move, a classic fighting brand. It was essential and
Speaker 1: fighting off ted Turner channel. But once that was over,
Speaker 1: the team had to figure out what to do with it.
Speaker 1: The network struggled for years. Ratings were abysmal, so John Sykes,
Speaker 1: who left MTV by then it was called back to
Speaker 1: lead the charge. Tom Preston calls Jop says, come home,
Speaker 1: needs you to fix a H one. What did you do?
Speaker 1: As you know, Bob, because you taught me so much
Speaker 1: of the stuff. A brand is only valuable if there's
Speaker 1: an underserved segment of the audience that needs it. Hip
Speaker 1: hop was starting to happen. Alternate music was exploding and
Speaker 1: a lot of the traditional rock bands in R and
Speaker 1: D bands were being pushed out and they're going like
Speaker 1: kind off of the cliff. And I said, there's a
Speaker 1: market here because having run a record company, a publishing company,
Speaker 1: we were seeing these artists that used to be called
Speaker 1: middle of the road back then, but now they were
Speaker 1: actually vibrant pop bands. They didn't have a place. And
Speaker 1: then I saw who are those powerful buyers, young adults,
Speaker 1: young college graduates. Here's a generation. It's grown up on MTV.
Speaker 1: They have money, they're affluent, and they have nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: So I was as excited actually about VH one as
Speaker 1: I was about MTV, and MTV is iconic and it
Speaker 1: will be there forever. But the other thing about v
Speaker 1: H one to me also was it was my own
Speaker 1: and I knew if I fell, it would be on me.
Speaker 1: It would be like out at VH one fails. They
Speaker 1: used to call VH point one the rating of it
Speaker 1: again and for those people ratings, ratings are from zero
Speaker 1: to whatever and point one zero. VH one is the
Speaker 1: ugly step child at MTV Networks. I used to say
Speaker 1: it was nails out the back seat of a car
Speaker 1: to put flats and the tires of the cars behind us,
Speaker 1: because we didn't want anybody compete with MTV. But I said,
Speaker 1: now it quietly has their million homes. There's a market
Speaker 1: for this. And I looked in the room and half
Speaker 1: the people like or asleep bicycle that Quenton staying. They
Speaker 1: had a job, but they didn't believe in the product,
Speaker 1: but they're reflecting a paycheck. So I said, listen, if
Speaker 1: you don't believe in this, it's okay. We won't make
Speaker 1: a big thing you. We're gonna fire you, but we'll
Speaker 1: work out a package and you should leave because we
Speaker 1: need people who going to believe in this. There's a
Speaker 1: market for this, and I believe that this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a three million dollar business in the next three
Speaker 1: years if we all focus on that. So people came
Speaker 1: to me and said, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 1: So I didn't think they I don't think it would
Speaker 1: come and like, I don't think you're right, Like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, by bye. They all came back three years
Speaker 1: later looking for jobs. But it was about believing in yourself,
Speaker 1: believing your idea of hiring people around you are better
Speaker 1: than you at executing what they did. And we put
Speaker 1: together a team at v H one hooping on to
Speaker 1: run NBC, Nintendo, Bravo. We put together an all star
Speaker 1: trip so maybe proud and working with some of the
Speaker 1: read Stone, I mean Sun of red Stone was on
Speaker 1: his game. You walked in and said, here's my plan,
Speaker 1: here's what I want to do, and he just say, fine,
Speaker 1: go do it. If you don't do it, I'll fire
Speaker 1: you and say that's all I want to know. Just
Speaker 1: give me the rope, and he did. It was a
Speaker 1: great nine years. We shattered all the records there, but
Speaker 1: all good businesses you've got to reinvent them otherwise they
Speaker 1: paid it off. MTV was the starting point of a
Speaker 1: cable revolution. The channel and the creative engine we built
Speaker 1: gave birth to so much more. Here's some I'm talking
Speaker 1: about just that topic. I was ambitious and I was
Speaker 1: highly motivated for this to succeed. I thought that we
Speaker 1: were in this TV revolution, We had the wind that
Speaker 1: our back. It was all going to come true. Was
Speaker 1: too good of an idea to fail. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of life is about timing and luck, and I
Speaker 1: had somehow ended up once again in the right place
Speaker 1: at the right time, and this was sort of my destiny.
Speaker 1: I was going to meet my opportunity. What you did,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say my time there, we really
Speaker 1: proved it was a business. Were the first cable network
Speaker 1: to make a profit. But it was really you and
Speaker 1: your team, including Shooting Grath, who built MTV and the
Speaker 1: other networks into this incredible media giant. What drove that in?
Speaker 1: Where did that vision come from? And how did you
Speaker 1: get there. There's a compliment to you, Bob, I mean
Speaker 1: you are the guy. Always keep your eye on the consumer,
Speaker 1: find out what the consumer one. We would always see
Speaker 1: this resource the consumer wanted what we were selling, and
Speaker 1: we could tune it up a bit. And we also
Speaker 1: had this sort of slightly subversive underground feel, and you know,
Speaker 1: there was nothing really around like that, and we would
Speaker 1: continue to launch new networks Comedy Central or TV Land,
Speaker 1: and the whole international world of television began to deregulate
Speaker 1: in the late eighties. All these countries really only had
Speaker 1: state TV pretty much as you know. So the confidence
Speaker 1: I had built from my years living in Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: India was actually very transferable because I really knew we
Speaker 1: could go anywhere and do anything. And if we could
Speaker 1: go to Europe, we could go to Asia, we go
Speaker 1: to Latin America. So we build really the first worldwide
Speaker 1: television networking company, and we rolled out not just MTV,
Speaker 1: but also Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, a lot of others
Speaker 1: right down through Africa. So the business gradually evolved from
Speaker 1: one where we would package other people's product like a
Speaker 1: music video, to where we would increasingly own what we did.
Speaker 1: But at the heart of it always a creative machine,
Speaker 1: which again was something that you put in at the
Speaker 1: inception of the company. When we first started MTV, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just entertainment. We built the channel to be the
Speaker 1: voice of young America and that included doing good and
Speaker 1: my time there. MTV made its mark with massive events
Speaker 1: with important missions and the Sky International, Band Aid farm Ade,
Speaker 1: and of course Live Aid. But it was Rock the
Speaker 1: Vote that truly took the channel into politics, and some
Speaker 1: say even got a president elected. Here's Judy talking about it.
Speaker 1: You've always done good, Rock the Vote, chooser, lose AIDS awareness.
Speaker 1: How did you think about that inside of a company
Speaker 1: and how do you think of it for you as
Speaker 1: a as a person. Well, you know, inside MTV, it
Speaker 1: was very interesting when we decided to get into you know,
Speaker 1: and certainly Rock the Vote was not our idea politics
Speaker 1: Jeff ear Off. So Jeff was very passionate about this,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of grewing to Rock the Vote. And
Speaker 1: I remember talking to Tom Freston, with whom I had
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily great creative relationship, and this was one of
Speaker 1: the rare instances where we had a blowout. Really we
Speaker 1: really didn't agree, but I listened to what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, this is a terrible idea. It's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: This is an entertainment brand. Nobody cares about this. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get laughed out of town. We do not have
Speaker 1: permission to do this. There's nothing about us that says
Speaker 1: we should be stepping anywhere near an election or voting
Speaker 1: or any of this. So I went back and I
Speaker 1: thought about it a little bit, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is where I come into the picture. I think
Speaker 1: I grew up in an era where one of the
Speaker 1: many things I loved about music was it's social commentary,
Speaker 1: and it is about the times we live in, and
Speaker 1: it's about all the things that affect you in a
Speaker 1: very deep way. And I thought, I think there's a
Speaker 1: way to do this where it will be engaging. This
Speaker 1: was not about telling young people you need to vote.
Speaker 1: That's not the way I looked at it at all.
Speaker 1: It was saying to people who make big decisions in
Speaker 1: this country, this is a generation that is disengaged from you,
Speaker 1: and you need to address them on their turf, their
Speaker 1: way and we'll invite you to do that. That's your shot.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about trying to be parental or any of
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff to them, or give them boring
Speaker 1: facts or anything like that. And so we got as
Speaker 1: smart as we could get. And I think I didn't
Speaker 1: tell anybody. That's another thing. I sent Tabitha store, and
Speaker 1: Tabitha went to New Hampshire and she called me at
Speaker 1: like midnight. She said, you know, I got up here
Speaker 1: in like a bunch of candidates are like, what's MTV?
Speaker 1: And she said, and then a couple of them like
Speaker 1: got back off the bus, primarily Bill Clinton, and said
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you. And then we were sort of
Speaker 1: off and running. And you know that partnered with incredible
Speaker 1: creative work on those rock the Vote spots, I mean
Speaker 1: Madonna wrapped in a flag. Whatever their disagreement, Tom Preston
Speaker 1: quickly embraced the idea. We knew it was important to
Speaker 1: our audience. I also knew it was extremely important to
Speaker 1: the employee base. Employees would feel better about working there
Speaker 1: if they knew we had some kind of social purpose
Speaker 1: associated with what we would do. And we had a
Speaker 1: hundred sixty eight hours a week. We could certainly squeeze
Speaker 1: it in. It also turned out it legitimized us in
Speaker 1: the eyes of advertisers who formally wouldn't come near us,
Speaker 1: like American Express. But most importantly, the audience liked it.
Speaker 1: And then fast forward to you know, we're gonna throw
Speaker 1: an inaugural ball that's not official, and see if anybody
Speaker 1: comes to the party, and our em is gonna play,
Speaker 1: and and Vogue is gonna play. We tried to make
Speaker 1: it as spirited as MTV, but add a little bit
Speaker 1: of gravitas, if you will, and meaning you know, like
Speaker 1: you do matter. You are young, but you matter, and
Speaker 1: you deserve to be heard and listened to, and we're
Speaker 1: going to help you. MTV was a wonderful ride from
Speaker 1: the very beginning. My co founders and I knew we
Speaker 1: were doing something that was important to culture, but we
Speaker 1: had no idea we were going to change culture. MTV
Speaker 1: changed TV, it changed music, it changed graphic design, and
Speaker 1: it certainly changed my life. No matter how old I
Speaker 1: get or whatever else I've done, MTV is still an
Speaker 1: important chapter in my life, and all of us as
Speaker 1: co founders are still very much a very type family.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, looking back I think we all
Speaker 1: feel the same way. Tom Freston felt when he joined
Speaker 1: the team. I was happy to have a job. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe anyone was gonna hire me, and lucky for
Speaker 1: all of us, we all kept getting hired again and again.
Speaker 1: I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and
Speaker 1: wrangling are wonderful talent, which is no small feat Nikkiatore
Speaker 1: for pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for their
Speaker 1: recording help. Our editor Ryan Murdoch, and of course Gail Raoul,
Speaker 1: Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who helped bring this
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Until next time, m