Speaker 1: My dad said to me, if you retire from a
Speaker 1: company and they give you a gold watch for twenty
Speaker 1: five years of service, I will be so ashamed of you.
Speaker 1: My father was a union man. You're ashamed if I
Speaker 1: stay with a company for twenty five years and get
Speaker 1: a gold watch. And my father said, why would you
Speaker 1: stay one place that long and make the white man rich.
Speaker 1: You must own your own. So from early on, my
Speaker 1: two older brothers and I learned we were expected to
Speaker 1: be excellent.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Money News powered by Greenview finance podcast
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Speaker 2: world's leading celebrities, entrepreneurs and experts, and tech, business and more.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, angel investor, technology enthusiast and media personality
Speaker 2: Tanya Sam. Each week we talk with guests who are
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Speaker 2: are making their money through here someone who's looking to
Speaker 2: make your money news. You're in the right place, so
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Speaker 2: this podcast will give you the keys to the Kingdom
Speaker 2: of financial stability, wealth and abundance you so rightly deserved.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to our first episode of season two and
Speaker 2: we wanted to do something a little bit different but
Speaker 2: special for you. Our executive producer had an opportunity to
Speaker 2: interview trailblazing journalists and media pioneer Paula Madison.
Speaker 1: I started out years ago in nineteen seventy five as
Speaker 1: a print journalist. I worked for newspapers. I remained as
Speaker 1: a newspaper journalist until around nineteen eighty two, when I
Speaker 1: crossed over into the world of television news not on camera.
Speaker 1: My role in television has always been a manager of boss,
Speaker 1: so I ultimately, after working in Texas and Oklahoma, I
Speaker 1: became assistant news director at ANBC four in New York,
Speaker 1: my hometown I'm from Harlem. At that point, I was
Speaker 1: so sure that it would just be a short amount
Speaker 1: of time before I would be the first African American
Speaker 1: news director in New York City. But it took six years.
Speaker 1: And it took six years because they kept hiring pretty
Speaker 1: inadequate white guys to be news director while I remained
Speaker 1: assistant news director. Who was interesting was that every time
Speaker 1: I stepped into the role of acting news director, our
Speaker 1: ratings would go up. So ultimately, what did happen was
Speaker 1: after six years, I did become vice president and news director.
Speaker 1: For the first time in sixteen years, NBC four had
Speaker 1: not been number one in every newscast in every day part.
Speaker 1: So having accomplished that, I stayed in that role. I
Speaker 1: think for a total of from nineteen ninety six to
Speaker 1: two thousand, I was news director. And what ultimately did
Speaker 1: happen after that was I was able to accomplish some
Speaker 1: other kinds of successes, which led to me being promoted
Speaker 1: to president and general manager of NBC four in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: My charge was not only to get the station to
Speaker 1: number one, but to become the most profitable station in
Speaker 1: the market. It took about three months for me to
Speaker 1: pay attention to that, and I quickly concluded it was
Speaker 1: an impossibility. When I met with the president of the
Speaker 1: TV station's division and everybody's ultimate boss, the chairman of
Speaker 1: General Electric, and told them that it was like, well,
Speaker 1: you're giving up sounding defeat after a few months, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, what was not accounted for was Spanish
Speaker 1: language television. When you take into account Spanish language television,
Speaker 1: for which the ranking in English language television the number
Speaker 1: one market is New York, and Spanish language television the
Speaker 1: number one market is Los Angeles. So what we were
Speaker 1: facing here was a combined market, and when you combine
Speaker 1: the market, the Spanish language market was actually going to
Speaker 1: generate much higher ratings and therefore probably greater profit than
Speaker 1: English language. So when I explained this, it was well,
Speaker 1: so what do we do? And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: think that we need to expand into Spanish language. How
Speaker 1: so we're going to have to buy a Spanish language network.
Speaker 1: So that was the beginning of the analysis which led
Speaker 1: to NBC buying Telemundo. When that happened, I became the
Speaker 1: president of NBC four, the English language NBC station and
Speaker 1: the two Spanish language Telemundo stations here in La Historically,
Speaker 1: that was the first and only ever triopoly that existed
Speaker 1: in the history of television, meaning that one company owned
Speaker 1: three stations in one market. The FCC generally did not
Speaker 1: allow this, but because of the argument that we could
Speaker 1: make that two television stations were owned by Telemundo when
Speaker 1: NBC bought them, we managed to get that through and
Speaker 1: so I had the distinction of being responsible for these
Speaker 1: three TV stations. We set a number of goals, but
Speaker 1: the personal goal that I set for myself at that
Speaker 1: time was my hometown is New York and my hometown
Speaker 1: station is WNBC in New York, where I had been
Speaker 1: vice president news director. As I referred to earlier, I
Speaker 1: wanted KNBC, the Los Angeles owned an operated station, to
Speaker 1: be number one in profitability. Never happened in the history
Speaker 1: of television. Remember at that point in the ranking English
Speaker 1: language and Los Angeles is number two, market New York
Speaker 1: is number one. I set a personal goal. I wanted
Speaker 1: to beat my friend who was running the New York station.
Speaker 1: We came up in the world together. He was VP
Speaker 1: of sales, I was VP of News. Employing some strategies,
Speaker 1: I was able to accomplish my goal. KNBC became the
Speaker 1: most profitable station for NBC. We beat WNBC by more
Speaker 1: than a million dollars. That got me champagne toast in
Speaker 1: Bob Wright's office and a commendation from Jack Welch. And
Speaker 1: ultimately what does that mean? So in terms of the accomplishments,
Speaker 1: if I stay in that line, right in the line
Speaker 1: of my journalism and television career, you know, I certainly
Speaker 1: meet with my boss. With my then boss, I would
Speaker 1: meet with my supervisor and we would set financial goals,
Speaker 1: performance goals, et cetera. But then I have my own goals, right,
Speaker 1: and they don't ordinarily end up on my list of
Speaker 1: things that are going to get me RSUs and stock
Speaker 1: options and a big bonus or whatever. But I put
Speaker 1: in my head that I know I can beat the
Speaker 1: New York station because I worked at that New York
Speaker 1: station and I knew where there was significant inefficiency inefficiencies
Speaker 1: and the strategies that were in place were not nearly
Speaker 1: as good as the strategies that I put in place
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. So after a year, we ended up
Speaker 1: as number one.
Speaker 2: Yay for me.
Speaker 3: So I think that the follow up to that is
Speaker 3: really I want you to take me back right, because
Speaker 3: I feel like what you said was really important is
Speaker 3: you have your own spectrum for what success is. So
Speaker 3: inside of describing what that spectrum is for success for you,
Speaker 3: I really want you to take me a step back
Speaker 3: and let me know where it came from. Sure, where
Speaker 3: you first start to understand what success? Was it young
Speaker 3: or was it professional life?
Speaker 1: Sure? Well, my parents are They were immigrants to the
Speaker 1: United States from Jamaica. My mother's father immigrated from China
Speaker 1: to Jamaica, and my father's parents had been in Jamaica
Speaker 1: some generations, right, so when they came to the United States.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I learned early on, when
Speaker 1: I was in the third grade, I who had always
Speaker 1: gotten a's. I went to Catholic school. My brothers and
Speaker 1: I went to Catholic school, always gotten a's in every
Speaker 1: top every subject. And I came home one day and
Speaker 1: present my report card to my mother. Now, I should
Speaker 1: say that in my neighborhood, Harlem, there was a general
Speaker 1: interest on the part of most adults about what the
Speaker 1: children were doing, what our accomplishments were. So we had
Speaker 1: people in the neighborhood. They'd see me walking along, and
Speaker 1: they'd see you walking along with your you know, the
Speaker 1: report card was in a little gray envelope and it
Speaker 1: was like, hey, baby, how'd you do? And show them
Speaker 1: your report card? Oh my god. And maybe you get
Speaker 1: a quarter, maybe you get fifty cents. You actually got
Speaker 1: rewarded from the elders in the community, because you know,
Speaker 1: they were proud. So you know, I'm walking along happy.
Speaker 1: I got my report card and I went inside our
Speaker 1: apartment and I handed my report card to my mother
Speaker 1: and she studied the front. She flipped it over and
Speaker 1: studied the back and she put her face very close
Speaker 1: to mine and she said, I did not come to
Speaker 1: this country for you to get a be. It was
Speaker 1: a threatening statement. It wasn't a hey, that was good,
Speaker 1: It was do you know what you've just done? And
Speaker 1: so I was chilled by that. But I was also
Speaker 1: made very clear what my responsibility was. Right. It wasn't
Speaker 1: why did you get a be? It was I did
Speaker 1: not leave kith and kin, I did not leave familiarity.
Speaker 1: I did not go into an entirely different place for
Speaker 1: you to fall short. I said, but mommy, She said,
Speaker 1: do you understand, yes, mommy, And that was that right.
Speaker 1: So now what I understood was my role, my job,
Speaker 1: my responsibility was to excel. So from childhood, what I
Speaker 1: was told was you don't get to be adequate, you
Speaker 1: don't get to be mediocre, you don't get to just
Speaker 1: get by, because if you do that, this is going
Speaker 1: to be hell to pay, right, And I knew that
Speaker 1: years later when I started my rise, and I was
Speaker 1: very young. In the rise, my father, who was a
Speaker 1: tool and die maker and who had been deported when
Speaker 1: I was three years old because he came to the
Speaker 1: United States under an assumed name. He was a stowaway
Speaker 1: on a ship. Years later, my dad, who was the
Speaker 1: first black shop steward for the United Auto Workers Aircraft
Speaker 1: Engine Division on Lawe Island, New York. My dad said
Speaker 1: to me, if you retire from a company and they
Speaker 1: give you a gold watch for twenty five years of service,
Speaker 1: I will be so ashamed of you. My father was
Speaker 1: a union man. You're ashamed if I stay with a
Speaker 1: company for twenty five years and get a gold watch.
Speaker 1: And my father said, why would you stay one place
Speaker 1: that long and make the white man rich. You must
Speaker 1: own your own. So from early on, my two older
Speaker 1: brothers and I learned we were expected to be excellent. Sure,
Speaker 1: get a job, but then what do you do with
Speaker 1: the proceeds of that job. Proceeds of that job, you
Speaker 1: invest as much as possible, as long as it's not
Speaker 1: conflicting with your company's rules. So my mother's saying was
Speaker 1: three moneies is better than one money. There were three
Speaker 1: of us, so the expectation was we would jointly put
Speaker 1: our money together. So when I was twenty one years old,
Speaker 1: we started buying Brownstones in Harlem. Mind you, we had
Speaker 1: grown up on welfare, right, But as my mother said,
Speaker 1: this is a one generation circumstance. You will not be
Speaker 1: poor in the next generation. She actually said to me,
Speaker 1: if the Rockefellers can do it and the Carnegiese can
Speaker 1: do it, then you're going to do it too. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, Ma, do you know we're black
Speaker 1: and this is different to my mother and my father.
Speaker 1: That was inconsequential. It did not matter. Now. When I
Speaker 1: was in college, I came home. My parents split when
Speaker 1: I was like four years old. When I was in college,
Speaker 1: I came home to my dad's house in Queen's and
Speaker 1: he said, my nickname is p Pee Pee. Come here,
Speaker 1: Sit down, Sit down. It's like, okay, Daddy, sit down,
Speaker 1: listen to this music. Listen to this man's message. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay. My father put this music on and
Speaker 1: the music was Fela. So understand, I am nineteen years
Speaker 1: old and my father is telling me listen to this
Speaker 1: man's message. Listen to the fact that he's talking about
Speaker 1: pride and nationalism and what you're not going to do
Speaker 1: is succumb to whatever racism has done and whatever the
Speaker 1: beliefs are that in the United States hold black people back.
Speaker 1: My father was like no, and my mother's adage was
Speaker 1: better that you die fighting than live going along just
Speaker 1: to get along.
Speaker 2: Tune in Wednesdays we continue the conversation with pale blazing
Speaker 2: journalist and media pioneer Paula Madison. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 2: today's episode. If we helped you make your money move,
Speaker 2: please share it with your communitybscribe and leave us a
Speaker 2: review on iHeartRadio and Apple podcasts. Follow us on social
Speaker 2: media at Greenwood and visit us at Gogreenwood dot com
Speaker 2: for more financial tips and remember, money movers. If this
Speaker 2: were easy, everyone would do it. So take the lessons
Speaker 2: you've learned from this episode and apply it to your
Speaker 2: life until next time. Money Moves is an iHeartRadio podcast
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