January 21, 2026 • 37 mins
Tom Freston turned a bohemian streak, entrepreneurial hustle, and serious wanderlust into one of the most consequential runs in modern media. He co-founded MTV, busted through gatekeepers with an original DTC playbook, and built a creative-first house of brands that reshaped music, fashion, art, politics, and advertising. In this episode, the legendary architect of the MTV generation joins Michael to unpack losing it all and rebooting with a single self-help book, what it really takes to empower brilliant misfits and wield cultural power with humility, and what his journey from building a business in South Asia to steering a global media empire to helping fight extreme poverty reveals about balancing instinct, responsibility, and relentless curiosity in an age of disruption.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I had loved traveling and getting into this business and
being an entrepreneur. The other thing I loved was rock
and roll music. They hired me on the spot for MTV.
They said, we're looking for people who don't have any
experience in television, and I said, well, I'm your man.
They didn't even have television where I've been for the
(00:23):
last eight years.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
By and large, I'm Michael Casson, and this is Good Company.
Together we'll explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment,
sports and technology. I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes,
even a couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we
(00:46):
break down how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the
future of business, culture and everything in between. My bet
is you'll pick up a listen or two along the way.
As I like to say, it's all good. Welcome back
to Good Company today. I have a very special guest
with me. Tom Freston's influence on modern media is well known.
(01:09):
The path that got him here, however, is not long
before the editing bays, the studio offices, the boardrooms. Tom
was living and working in India and Afghanistan, running a
clothing business, navigating unfamiliar cultures and learning how to build
something without a safety net. That experience shaped how he
approached everything that followed. He went on to co found
(01:31):
MTV at a moment when no one knew what it
would become, then spent years growing the MTV networks into
a global cultural force, overseeing MTV, Nickelodeon, VH one, Comedy Central,
and other defining brands. Later, as the CEO of Viacom,
he led one of the most powerful media portfolios in
the world during a period when media, culture and technology
(01:54):
were colliding in real time. Today, Tom advises and invests
in emerging media and technology companies, chairs the One Campaign,
and recently published a remarkable memoir, Unplugged Adventures from MTV
to Timbucktoo, that pulls back the curtain on the decisions,
risks and consequences most people never hear. This is a
(02:15):
conversation about instinct, curiosity, and leadership, how they're shaped by
experience and brought to bear when it matters most. Tom freston,
My good friend, Welcome to good company, Pleasure to be here. Michael,
this is the second time that I've had the opportunity
to interview The last one wasn't a podcast. The last
one was in person. It would have been twenty years ago.
(02:38):
It was twenty years ago. And back then I said
to you that for the rest of my career, I
could begin a sentence by saying, when I interviewed Tom Freston.
So guess what I get to do it twice now. Tom,
I've had the advantage over our listeners of reading your
recent book, which was a great treat and something that
(03:00):
I just couldn't put down. What I would love for
you to do is give us the early part of
your career, kind of from cobble to cable. As I said,
your career didn't start in the media business. You started
as an entrepreneur in India and Afghanistan in a clothing
export business. And you know you kind of found your
way without a map. What were you trying to build
(03:21):
back then and what drew you to that region? I mean,
you know, I'm a kid from Brooklyn, That's where I started.
You know what drew you to Afghanistan and India?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, first off, before I had the export business that
I put together, I did work for a spell and
at a top ten ad agency at bent In Bowls,
and it was there where after being on a variety
of accounts, that they were going to assign me to
Sharman toilet paper. That was a line I could not cross.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
That's Sharman toilet paper is pretty soft.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, hey, hanging with mister Whipple was not going to
be in my destiny, although I did meet him years
and years later, But in my sort of malaise about
thinking about that, a girlfriend called me from Paris and
she said, well, you can't sell toilet paper. You should
come with me and cross the Sahara Desert as one does.
(04:14):
So I quit my job. I was on a plane
like ten days later and we went off across the
Sahara Desert. Stayed together for like two months, and then
I continued another ten months on my own, sort of
working my way around Africa, Europe and then Asia. When
I was in Greece, I met another girl who I
noticed was selling these imported garments from Afghanistan and India
(04:40):
in a cafe on a Greek beach. She had lived
in Nepole and Kathmandu for four years, had designed and
made her own clothing. She had looked to escape sort
of the fashion world of New York. We were sort
of kindred spirits in a way, and she planted a
seat in my head that maybe there's a way I
could support myself out on the road. Maybe there's a
(05:00):
way I could continue to travel and develop some fund
So she told me that India was sort of the
greatest show on Earth and that I should head there,
which I did do, and I went overland. I sort
of hitchhiked over through Turkey and Iran and went into
Afghanistan India, and I kind of fell in love with
the exoticness and the distance from modern life I found there.
(05:23):
Decided I wanted to stay and thought I'd start this
business and found a couple of partners in both Indian
and Afghanistan. I knew nothing about this business, and I
looked at it mostly as a way to support my
traveling habit. But it turned out to be a business
of some consequence where we would open showrooms in New York,
in LA and Miami. I would sell through better stores
(05:44):
like Bloomingdale's in the States. This was an arawin air
freight was just beginning. It was an arow and boutiques
were flowering. It was an era when a lot of
sensible people were sort of dropping out of the system
and starting their own business people like Bill Gates, people
like Steve Job, people like Phil Knight. And I was
not comparing myself to any of those people, but I
(06:05):
was looking for a way out of the system too,
So I ran this business. I had a house in
New Delhi. I stayed regularly in Cobble. It was a
wonderful thing. I was a millionaire in my twenties. I mean,
we did really well. I would regularly get editorial coverage
in Vogue, in Mademoiselle and Glamour. I had known people
there for my time in New York, and they love
(06:28):
writing about us. But the Russians invaded Afghanistan in nineteen
seventy eight, which sort of put an end to that business.
And then Jimmy Carter, after all I had been through
in India, all the tumult of what had been really
wild times in these countries in the seventies, India really
was their most tumultuous decade. Humbling to be there. All
(06:49):
I had been through dust storms and strikes and blackouts
and cobras and everything. Jimmy Carter put an end to
our business by declaring an embargo on Indian imports, which
you know, I had this huge empire and it just
came crumbling down. And there I was, thirty three, back
in New York, my tail between my legs, and I
(07:11):
decided I had to change careers. I bought a book,
the only sales help book I'd ever buy. What Color
Is Your Parachute? Made the case that you have skills
that are transferable. You should do things you love. I
had loved, you know, traveling and getting into this business
and being an entrepreneur. The other thing I loved was
rock and roll music. So I chased down a job.
(07:34):
My brother introduced me to a guy who had started
at this thing called the Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company.
That jargon wassak. It was a mouthful, but they hired
me on the spot for MTV. They said, we're looking
for people who don't have any experience in television, and
I said, well.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I'm your man. Perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
They didn't even have television where I've been for the
last eight years, by and large, so they hired me.
And that was in nineteen eighty. I went to work
ultimately for Bob Pittman, who put together a team of
eight of us to take this idea and develop it
into a full fledged network and launch it in August
nineteen eighty one. By nineteen eighty six, I had become
(08:17):
president of the company, Bob Pittman had left along with
a lot of the other original players. Sumner Redstone then
took over the company and a leveraged buyout. I had
befriended him. I had met him secretly in the Carlisle
Hotel and told them we had a company that was
ready to explode if only we had some financing. And
I worked for him for seventeen years as the head
(08:38):
of MTV Networks.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
This is exactly what I think our folks want to hear, Tom,
because you know, we started by saying kind of tongue
in chic, from cobble to cable. But you know you
just brought us to where you got from cobble to cable.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, And you know, when we started in cable in
nineteen eighty eighty one, it was like the tip of
the spear, the really beginning of cable programming.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Per se.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I had existed cable pretty much in rural areas for
distance signals. So with CNN USA Network.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, you know, in the midst of reading Unplugged, I
also read the Barry Diller book and the John Malone book.
And when you combine the three of your stories, it's
quite extraordinary for me. The history of dust to dust
on the cable industry and the three of you. Barry Diller,
(09:29):
John Malone and Tom Freston are three of the names
on Mount Rushmore when it comes to cable. So hearing
the story through your lens is quite interesting. And my
recommendation for our listeners is, in addition to reading your
amazing book, they should read Berries and John Malones as well.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Well, they're both good books, and I'd say I'm further
down the food chain and either of those two, particularly
doctor Malone. But anyway, Yeah, it was a heady time.
We were gonna there was gonna be a TV revolution.
We were the tip of the spear. You know, the
broadcast networks were very vulnerable pretty much, that's all the
(10:07):
American consumers knew, or the three broadcast network BBS.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Let's focus on MTV for a moment here. It wasn't
just a channel, it was a cultural institution. It changed everything.
MTV stands out to me as the shift that occurred
in not just our viewing habits, but just the way
we enjoyed music. And music for me is the soundtrack
(10:31):
of my life and for many of us. So just
that alone, but the cultural shift, and when I align
it with advertising, it's kind of like I give Unilever
credit for this with their Dove campaign, the one that
they came out with twenty five years ago, that was
the campaign for real beauty. It was just a campaign,
but it culturally changed life. It meant that people didn't
(10:54):
look at you if you weren't a perfect size two
or size five or whatever. A perfect size used to
be viewed as for a woman's perspective, you could still
be beautiful. That wasn't just an advertising campaign, It was
a cultural shift. MTV wasn't just a channel. It was
a cultural shift. It changed everything. Did you realize that, Tom,
(11:14):
when you were there in those early days, we really
crafted it to be something with a downtown sensibility. You know,
there was a lot going on in downtown Manhattan. Then
there was a cultural renaissance in away with you. You
think about Boskot and Warhol and music videos as starting
where video clubs and there was a sense of something
new was happening. It's easy today to dismiss MTV as
(11:36):
sort of pedestrian, but at the time it was revolutionary
in terms of the way it looked and felt. So
easy to forget that. But Tom, you know you're saying,
MTV is whatever. I'm looking over your shoulder. I have
an advantage that our listeners don't. And in the background
I see the moon Man, the MTV Moonman. You know,
that's iconic as it can get.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That was it, you know, And we ripped that off
because we didn't have any money. That's the original Andy
Warhole nineteen seventy seven print. He ripped it off too,
because all that Moonman footage was public domain. We had
no money, so we took that Moonman. We said it
would be really a rock and roll thing to do
to rip off Man's greatest moment, landing on the Moon,
(12:15):
put our logo in there, which is what we did
at the top of the hour for six years.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Just as you were an entrepreneur in Afghanistan and India
and selling clothing, you were an entrepreneur with MTV. You
were there at the beginning. You saw that growth. Was
there an inflection point that shifted MTV. Did you know
when that moment happened? Was it when I want my
MTV and dire straits? I mean, what was it?
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Well?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I saw it personally because in the very beginning we
were only in some distant rural markets like Tulsa, Des Moines,
and Wichita, and I was the marketing guy, so I
would go there and no one who worked at MTV
would get it at home.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
No one had any idea.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I mean, we weren't in New York or LA and
we were like nowhere.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
I would go.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And I remember getting attacked by the woman at the
Hurtz Rennekar counter because she saw a button on my jacket.
You got MTV. Where did you get that? I said,
you heard of MTV? Says, are you kidding me? That's
all people here to talk about. It had been on
the air for like a month and a half in Tulsa,
and then I went to a club. Everyone was standing
around looking at TV like it was a Knicks game
or something. By the way, the Knicks this season are
(13:22):
worth watching. Yeah, and they were then too, They were
pretty good back in the early eighties. But I knew
that this had connected with this very large music loving
audience who were in love with this new sort of
program form the music video. But we had a lot
of trouble getting cable operators to carry us. They didn't
want to pay a dime, they didn't like the way
(13:44):
this music looked, they didn't like the people's haircuts. So
we decided, after trying to cajole and sell the cable operators.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You'd go direct.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
We were going to just force them to carry it,
and we launched the I Want My MTV campaign with
George Lowis and Dale Pond, and we took that across
the country. We got rock stars enlisted to validate us,
and every time we went into a market, the five
six or seven monopolist cable operators who were there would,
(14:13):
after a couple of weeks would put up the white
flag and take us. So we've got our distribution like that.
That was an inflection point.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, and Tom, you mentioned George Lois for our listeners.
George Lois was one of the blue bloods both faced
names and advertising and became famous for a lot of things,
but I Want My MTV was one that definitely put
him on the map.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well, he was madder than the Madman, a profane Greek American.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
He was a guy.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
He said, let's rip off. I want my Mapo. You
know he actually did, I want my Maypo. And he
had enlisted Mickey Mahl and Wilt Chamberlain, all these people
to help sell cereal the kids that force their parents
to buy it. And that's what we did, he said.
He basically said, fuck the cable operators. You're getting nowhere
being nice to them.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
But Tom, you know there's a real message in that
you were early direct to consumer, and don't think you weren't.
You were one of the early direct to consumer brands,
and that strategy has worked. You know where it works.
It works right now in martech and ad tech. I'm
going to take you to a place you didn't expect,
Tom Preston. But when we get new ed tech and
(15:21):
martech opportunities and you want the agencies in the advertising
industry to adopt them, you know where you go not
to the agencies. You go to the clients. You go
to the consumer, and you get the consumer to put
the pressure on the agencies. It's exactly what you did
with MTV. The consumer put the pressure on the cable
(15:42):
cowboys who had no choice.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
You know, funny you should say that, No, it's really
busting down the gatekeepers. How do you circummend the gatekeepers?
Another example was in the record companies. The record companies
didn't want to deal with us. We're like a fan
club to them at the beginning, but we found out
we went directly to the artists. They would put pressure
on and they artists they love this idea.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Who knew? Who knew that Tom Freston and the Band
of Jolly's at MTV really created direct to consumer?
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Well never thought of it that way.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, well, you see that it worked. It worked.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
When you got something that works and something's in the way,
you know, you do everything you can to got to
get over the hump.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
We're going to hit pause for a moment, but stay
with us after the break. We've got more insights to share.
You know, you oversaw at Viacom when you were CEO
very different brands under one umbrella, from Paramount Studios to
(16:41):
MTV to Nickelodeon, to Comedy Central and more. Managing a
portfolio with completely different cultures, audiences, and business models under
one roof has got to be daunting. I mean, what's
good for you know? Nickelodeon is not going to necessarily
for sure be good for MTV. Different culture, different people,
different sensibilities, and yet you're managing it all not Unlike
(17:06):
Procter and Gamble is a house of brands, Viacom was
a house of brands. You had that experience.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
And yes, I would say for the bulk of my
career there for seventeen years, I ran the MTV networks,
which was Comedy Central, Nicked Night, TV, Lant, etc. And
each one of these networks I kept with their own
P and L much like on the Procter and Gamble model,
which I also remembered from my advertising days, and I
(17:33):
put in charge of each of those networks a creative
person who was assisted pretty much by a business person.
I always thought that having a creative culture would be
a competitive advantage. We were going to be an edgy company.
We're filled with untraditional people who didn't want to work
in a traditional media company. So putting a creative person
in ours, like say Judy McGrath or John Sykes or
(17:55):
Jerry Laborn sent a signal to everybody there that creativity.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Was our main aptitude. And that's basically what we talked about.
And the names you just said, Tom let me just
underscore for our listeners. Each one of those people are
Hall of Fame quality names in their right and you
had the eye for talent, and that's a critical part
of your success. What is that? What do you see
in that talent A Judy McGrath, that John Sykes, a
(18:21):
doug Herzoug.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Well, you know you always a try and hire people
smarter than you and who are better than you. So
if you had some instinker, you could discern that these
people had a real connection with what they were managing.
My challenge was how do I keep them happy? How
do I keep them incentivized? How do I not put
a thumb over them and kind of give them the
(18:44):
amount of freedom to do what they want to do.
Doug herzis, They're all great examples. Well, but Tom Preston,
I want to say this out loud. This is famous.
When you finally left Viacom, the story is that you
couldn't get out of the building because they were literally
hundreds of people almost blocking the exit of fifteen fifteen
(19:06):
Broadway to shower you with the praise and the affection
that you earned in the culture you built in those
seventeen years, and that's a tribute.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
You know, most times when somebody leaves in that position,
it's that line from that show Silicon Valley that I loved.
It was, don't let the door hit you where God
split you.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, that was the opening chapter of my book. I mean,
I had just cleared out my office. I had the
banker's box, you know, like we see all these people
today leaving government. They're holding this little brown box with
a few photos in it. And I just was so
humiliated to be fired after those twenty six years there
that I just wanted to slink out unnoticed and grab
a cab and go home. And I got out of
(19:47):
the elevator and I couldn't move. I thought it was
a fire drill, but there was the NBC said one
thousand people, who the hell knows. But the lobby was
jammed and everyone was chanting my name like I'd run
the Super Bowl or something, and everything seemed to slow motion,
and it was like, really memorable for me. What a
way to go? I mean, because you're right, most CEOs
don't leave with that kind of thing, and I realized
(20:08):
they they actually love me.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
You've said in the past that companies about to be
disrupted rarely see it coming. Was it Shakespeare who said
something about it happened slow and then it happens fast bankruptcy?
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Yeah, but also.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Everything goes slowly and all of a sudden everything collapses.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yes, when it comes to AI, what do you think
leaders are most misunderstanding or underestimating right now? Have you
given that thought? I guess and I'm no AI expert. Okay,
I don't think any of us are, which is one
of the issues why they tend to underestimate it. But
people in the know would say things like you would
(20:49):
hear these things said about the Internet way back. You
know it's going to change everything. You're beginning that to
see that come into focus and it's it isn't just
like oh, kids gonna be able to cheat at school,
or you know a lot of these things are.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You know, there's going to be twenty percent unemployment. It's
going to really change everything, and we don't know where
it's going to go. So how do you sort of
get in front of that as a manager? You know,
you've got to learn what it is and had the
best embrace us. We had a version of that in
the cable business. We had the cable Revolution. Then it
was superseded by the digital revolution, which took a while
(21:25):
to really get enough traction to begin to dissemble the
legacy media business. Now we have this AI revolution, which
is you know, it's basically displacing the digital revolution. It's
interesting to see how even the digital leaders are dealing
with this so they don't get left behind in the
dust bin.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And you've got the streaming revolution, if you will, which
is I guess streaming is the offshoot of the digital revolution.
But if we look at the current news cycle, it
looks like streaming is eating the world. You know, if
Paramount is successful in acquiring what they're acquiring, whilst they
look to be buying the entirety of Warner Brothers, but
(22:05):
at least that's what they're looking for. They're going after
the streaming. Nobody is confused about that. And Netflix in
their bid, is going after just the streaming in the studio.
So you know, if we're going from cobble to cable,
we are now going from cobble to cable to streaming.
And it looks like streamings eating the lunch of everything else.
So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you
(22:28):
your thoughts about the current news cycle. Tom, I would
have to well, yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It upsets me in a way because it seems like
there's these inexorable forces as the legacy media business sort
of I wouldn't say collapses, but declines, that consolidation becomes
a force that has to happen. We already saw the
Fox studio disappear into the world of Disney, and as
a result of that, there was less feature films release
(22:56):
and the two did separately, and there was another buyer eliminated.
If you had you out a project you could use
to bring it to Disney and Fox. Now you'd only
bring it to one. There's one less buyer around. That's
about to happen again. You hate to see a movie
studio disappear, particularly someone like Warner Brothers, which is really
the jewel in the crown of Hollywood. So you know,
(23:17):
the eleson's wanted badly. I can understand all the reason.
It's going to give them streaming advantage.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
They're going to have a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Of cost savings and so forth. But as a consumer,
no matter who gets it, I don't think that we win. No,
I don't think that we win. If Netflix gets it, it
means we'll be paying a lot more money for Netflix.
If Netflix gets it, it means that's one less shop
that a creator can go to to sell their project,
(23:44):
because you're gonna have HBO and Netflix under the same roof.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
But it's gonna happen. You know.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It's a great segue Tom into power. But I want
to talk about cultural power as opposed to you know,
the power. We were just talking about pricing power. In
the position that you were at for all those years
at Viacom, at MTV Networks, you had extraordinary cultural power influence.
(24:11):
Let's say that there's responsibility that comes along with that.
Were you aware of that power at the time, and
did it increase the level of responsibility you felt?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Well, in the beginning, it was like our wildest dream
that we'd have a power Listen, any startup wanted to
think that their product will be successful at all the
people who need to be stakeholders in it or participants
will enjoy it, that one day it will become profitable,
bringing money, it'll go worldwide, and it will influence other businesses.
In the case of MTV, it influenced the movie business,
(24:43):
it influenced the fashion business, and influenced the advertising business.
I could go on and on it influence politics. So
with that came a lot of cultural power, and we
were dealing with cultural figures in all those areas. And
it took a while to dawn on us that we
actually had that power, because we always thought of ourselves
as like the little guy trying to get inside the machine,
(25:06):
trying to win, trying to get the naysayers to like us,
when in fact we became ultimate gatekeepers. After we derided
the cable operators for being just that. It's like an
abused child turns into something worse. So I tried with
my folks when we had this power. I knew the
(25:27):
record companies in particular would resent us because we could
make or break stars. I tried to insist that we
be humble. I tried to insist that we do favors.
I said, look, these people don't like us. Let's see
how long we can prolong our sense of power here
and sort of be fair and not be arrogant. And
that worked for a good period of time. Not always,
(25:51):
but yeah. We tried to be reasonable with the power
that we had, and we tried to leverage the power
that we had in ways that could help us. There
was a certain amount of space we put aside for
pro social campaigns and so forth. We tried to be responsible,
a responsible company to our consumers into society. But you
took it seriously. You understood it. We took it seriously.
(26:12):
It took a while to know we even had it.
We always dreamt, well, one day maybe that would happen
in our best case scenario, and then you know, in
the late eighties it happened. I mean, there is a
generation referred to as the MTV generation. I mean, when
you think about that that has responsibility attached to it,
good Company.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Will be right back after the break. So I want
to switch Tom to your book release. You've had, as
our listeners now know, a long public career, but this
(26:54):
book tells stories that go beyond what most people think
they know about you. What made this feel like the
right moment a for you to do this? And you know,
I'm sure you didn't do it overnight. And you know
the question I asked authors before as you were writing,
was there a particular story or a chapter that surprised you?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well, you know, the last thing I thought I'd ever
do would be write a memoir. And then the pandemic
came along, so I started writing because I had been
writing some articles for Vanny very like to write. And
then it dawned on me, well, what if I did
this memoir? Some people had encouraged me, And I think,
what if I could see if all these seemingly disparate
pieces of my life connected in any kind of sensible
(27:36):
narrative at all, that I could understand it, maybe my
kids would understand a bit more about what I was
up to all these years. So I focused a lot
on the earlier years when I was sort of in
an exploratory mode, and I was I realized things did
fit together. I had at an early age what I
would call Bohemian exposure. I realized early on that life
(27:59):
on the side of the road could be a lot
more interesting and lucrative, not necessarily lucal, there were a
lot more interesting lucrative in terms of experience than going
right down the middle. So I spent a lot of
time sort of on the edge, and when I had
my business in Asia, that was clearly there MTV Networks.
Our strategy was always to be a niche based business.
(28:22):
We didn't want to compete head to head with anybody else.
We want to be number one on our own category,
not really have to deal anybody else, set up our
own rules of supply and demand as much as we could.
But what surprised me, I guess, was my continual diligence,
the fact that I was always drawn into this corner.
I was always drawn into doing something untraditional, to having,
(28:45):
you know, this tolerance for unusual people and wanting to
be around them, people who are sort of larger than life.
I was attracted to the entertainment business. And I look
at it today and I say, a lot of the
outsized characters, I wasn't an outsized character.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
They were.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
There's a lot of people there that really made it fun.
I want to have fun wherever I was, and some
of those have sort of disappeared.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
That's the problem of getting old, my friend. But let
me say this. You are being humble. You are an
outsized character, and this story of the last fifty years
of this business, you are about as outsized as it gets.
Don Preston, Let's talk about how that has propelled you
in an area that I know is very important to you,
and that is philanthropy and impact and responsibility. That's a
(29:31):
consistent throughout your life you're involved now with the one campaign.
What drew you to that and what's kept you engaged?
And you know, tell us a bit about it, but
kept you engaged at that level. I was raised with
a lesson and a fraction to use in life, and
that was a third of your life you spend with
(29:53):
your family, a third of your life you spend with
your business, and a third of your life you spend
with your community. And I've tried my best to do that,
you know, throughout my career and you have as well.
Your name has been associated with important movements and important
philanthropy over the years that I've known you. But can
(30:13):
you talk about one? And you know particularly.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
I thought this new chapter.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
When I left Viacom, I said, well, you know, I
would do something totally different, so I wanted like to
give back. Bono approached me. He was one of the
first people to reach out to me when I got
fired by Redstone and just said, hey, watch you come
on red I knew about red because I'd run some
PSA stuff for them when I was at Viacom. I said,
(30:38):
I just got fired last night. I'm not ready to
make any decisions. So he had Steve Jobs call me
and Gates and all these people trying.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
I said no.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
But three or four months later I got sort of
roped into it because his manager had called and said,
Bono started these do gooder organizations focused on Africa. They're
running off the rails that could use a little something.
Watt over to France and hang out.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
With us a bit.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I said, I do a study and I'd try and
figure out in three months how we could better organize them.
And when I finished that, I one had been really
impressed with all the young people.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Again.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I was dealing with a community of young people like
I had at viacommon MTV networks, but these were activists.
They were working harder than their entertainment industry counterparts for
far less money, and they were looking for justice. And
I had been really struck in my years in Asia
where you know, in India, when I lived there, sixty
(31:33):
percent of the population was below the poverty line. That
number today is like three or four percent, So it
was pretty humbling. Extreme poverty was something that really connected
to me, so I signed on to become the board chair.
I also went back to Afghanistan for twelve years to
help start up a TV network whose social mission was
(31:55):
to better inform and connect Afghans to the outside world,
breed tolerance, you know, pushed things like gender equality and
girls in school and so forth. So I did that.
I worked for OPRAH for a while. I was very
involved working I would not all in the not for
profit sector, but you know what I would call purposeful
work that did some good. I wasn't looking to make
(32:17):
a fortune. But the one campaign I'm still the board chair,
and it's an advocacy organization fighting for justice for the
extreme poor in Africa, particularly on the health front. So
we've been involved in swinging billions of dollars of money
to do the right things in some of the poorer countries,
(32:37):
particularly on the health front, anti retroviral drugs, like big
part of you know, the whole war against AIDS that
the US kind of fought, you know, the biggest health
intervention in the history of the world for a single disease,
PEPFAR and the Global Fund. So I've been doing that
for eighteen years now and I enjoy that work. I
was back in Afghanistan until the Taliban took over again,
(33:00):
which was quite a shock. But so this period of
my life has been largely about doing purposeful work, which
I find really rewarding.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Tom Preston, I want to say that the work you've
done over the entire arc of your career has been
purposeful and has changed the world, and the journey you've
had is nothing short of extraordinary. And you know, I'm
just lucky as a friend that I've been able to
watch for at least a portion of that time. Tom,
And you know, I consider myself lucky. But what I'm
(33:32):
really lucky about is what I get to do now,
which is my favorite part of the podcast. We get
to do some lightning round questions. Oh, I like, I like, Okay,
what's the one thing in your life you'll always make
time for, no matter how busy you are?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
My kids?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Perfect answer? Was there a mentor, and I'm sure there
was early in your career, And what's the best piece
of advice that mentor ever gave you. I worked for
a guy named Mike camer You might know that name.
He started He was my boss at Benting and Bowls
and the first time I was in any kind of
corporate environment, and he was a rough task master, six
(34:11):
years older than I, but he taught me how to
write and communicate He taught me how to communicate with
different types of people. Like in an agency, there was
the creative floor, the art directors of producers, and there
was the media people. Where were the media people like
me downstairs in the basement.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah they were downstairs, but I think they're on the
twenty eighth floor.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
I was on the thirty first floor.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I bet you were more Don Draper than Harry the
media guy.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Ah, I had a bit of Don Draper in me.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Well, those three martini lunches, I'll kill you. And this
could be recent, but could you pick the best book
you've ever read?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Wow, that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You're stumping me now, Okay.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I kind of leaned towards nonfiction, which isn't really probably
the best place to pull out the best book I've read.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
I'll come back on this one, you can think, Okay,
all right, I'll answer it. Best book I ever read
was Fountain Who Had by Anne Rand. That's the book
that's stuck in my mind the most. I've read it
three times in my life because it impacted me differently
each time I read it. Is there an industry buzzword
Tom you wish would disappear forever?
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Multi platform.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, good, I like it, content creators. There you go
the final one. And this one's a tough one for
you because you've been just about anywhere everywhere. Are there
three places or any place is still on your bucket
list that you want to visit that you haven't New.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Zealand never been, Patagonia never been.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Oh but you've been to Buenos Aires and to Buenos Ares.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
But I never really went down south.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Right, No, nor did I. I'm with you there, uh
in Antarctica? People going there a lot now. Yeah, our
list is the same. I am embarrassed to say I
have to add India to my list.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I've never been. It's on our list for next year.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
I kind of go every year. This year I'm going
the Jaipur Literary Vessel, which is so fun in this
greatest city in India. This year I'm actually in.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
The first Oh, Unplugged.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I would go in the pass and run the people
like Paul Throw Heroes of Mine, which brings me to
one of my great books. Actually, I could say that
The Great Railroad Bizarre, which came out in nineteen seventy three.
Paul Throw going overland through Asia by trains and working
his way across and in Afghanistan, where there's no trains,
he had to make an exception and take a bus.
(36:37):
But that greatly informed me on terms of how to
be observant, you know, when traveling, how travel writing kind
of would appeal to me, and some of the tricks
of the road for a guy like that.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, Tom Preston, the lessons that I've learned over the
arc of our relationship, the lessons that I know our
listeners will learn over the arc of this conversation, and
the privilege of counting you as a friend is something
that I pride myself on. I want to thank you
for joining me on Good Company today, tom My pleasure.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Mike is always great to speak with you. I'm an
admirer of you and your career as well. It's amazing
mutual admiration society.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Every one of you go out and get that book,
read it, listen to it. I read it because I
had a hard copy. But it'll be enjoyable no matter
how you do it, and it'll be great education.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Thanks Michael, thank you.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
I'm Michael Cassen, thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Good Company is brought to you by three c Ventures
in iHeart Podcasts Special thanks to Alexis Borgier Purdo, our
executive producer and head of Content and Talent, and to
Carl Catle, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced
and edited by Mary Doo. Thanks for joining us. We'll
see you next time.
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I had loved traveling and getting into this business and
being an entrepreneur. The other thing I loved was rock
and roll music. They hired me on the spot for MTV.
They said, we're looking for people who don't have any
experience in television, and I said, well, I'm your man.
They didn't even have television where I've been for the
(00:23):
last eight years.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
By and large, I'm Michael Casson, and this is Good Company.
Together we'll explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment,
sports and technology. I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes,
even a couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we
(00:46):
break down how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the
future of business, culture and everything in between. My bet
is you'll pick up a listen or two along the way.
As I like to say, it's all good. Welcome back
to Good Company today. I have a very special guest
with me. Tom Freston's influence on modern media is well known.
(01:09):
The path that got him here, however, is not long
before the editing bays, the studio offices, the boardrooms. Tom
was living and working in India and Afghanistan, running a
clothing business, navigating unfamiliar cultures and learning how to build
something without a safety net. That experience shaped how he
approached everything that followed. He went on to co found
(01:31):
MTV at a moment when no one knew what it
would become, then spent years growing the MTV networks into
a global cultural force, overseeing MTV, Nickelodeon, VH one, Comedy Central,
and other defining brands. Later, as the CEO of Viacom,
he led one of the most powerful media portfolios in
the world during a period when media, culture and technology
(01:54):
were colliding in real time. Today, Tom advises and invests
in emerging media and technology companies, chairs the One Campaign,
and recently published a remarkable memoir, Unplugged Adventures from MTV
to Timbucktoo, that pulls back the curtain on the decisions,
risks and consequences most people never hear. This is a
(02:15):
conversation about instinct, curiosity, and leadership, how they're shaped by
experience and brought to bear when it matters most. Tom freston,
My good friend, Welcome to good company, Pleasure to be here. Michael,
this is the second time that I've had the opportunity
to interview The last one wasn't a podcast. The last
one was in person. It would have been twenty years ago.
(02:38):
It was twenty years ago. And back then I said
to you that for the rest of my career, I
could begin a sentence by saying, when I interviewed Tom Freston.
So guess what I get to do it twice now. Tom,
I've had the advantage over our listeners of reading your
recent book, which was a great treat and something that
(03:00):
I just couldn't put down. What I would love for
you to do is give us the early part of
your career, kind of from cobble to cable. As I said,
your career didn't start in the media business. You started
as an entrepreneur in India and Afghanistan in a clothing
export business. And you know you kind of found your
way without a map. What were you trying to build
(03:21):
back then and what drew you to that region? I mean,
you know, I'm a kid from Brooklyn, That's where I started.
You know what drew you to Afghanistan and India?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, first off, before I had the export business that
I put together, I did work for a spell and
at a top ten ad agency at bent In Bowls,
and it was there where after being on a variety
of accounts, that they were going to assign me to
Sharman toilet paper. That was a line I could not cross.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
That's Sharman toilet paper is pretty soft.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, hey, hanging with mister Whipple was not going to
be in my destiny, although I did meet him years
and years later, But in my sort of malaise about
thinking about that, a girlfriend called me from Paris and
she said, well, you can't sell toilet paper. You should
come with me and cross the Sahara Desert as one does.
(04:14):
So I quit my job. I was on a plane
like ten days later and we went off across the
Sahara Desert. Stayed together for like two months, and then
I continued another ten months on my own, sort of
working my way around Africa, Europe and then Asia. When
I was in Greece, I met another girl who I
noticed was selling these imported garments from Afghanistan and India
(04:40):
in a cafe on a Greek beach. She had lived
in Nepole and Kathmandu for four years, had designed and
made her own clothing. She had looked to escape sort
of the fashion world of New York. We were sort
of kindred spirits in a way, and she planted a
seat in my head that maybe there's a way I
could support myself out on the road. Maybe there's a
(05:00):
way I could continue to travel and develop some fund
So she told me that India was sort of the
greatest show on Earth and that I should head there,
which I did do, and I went overland. I sort
of hitchhiked over through Turkey and Iran and went into
Afghanistan India, and I kind of fell in love with
the exoticness and the distance from modern life I found there.
(05:23):
Decided I wanted to stay and thought I'd start this
business and found a couple of partners in both Indian
and Afghanistan. I knew nothing about this business, and I
looked at it mostly as a way to support my
traveling habit. But it turned out to be a business
of some consequence where we would open showrooms in New York,
in LA and Miami. I would sell through better stores
(05:44):
like Bloomingdale's in the States. This was an arawin air
freight was just beginning. It was an arow and boutiques
were flowering. It was an era when a lot of
sensible people were sort of dropping out of the system
and starting their own business people like Bill Gates, people
like Steve Job, people like Phil Knight. And I was
not comparing myself to any of those people, but I
(06:05):
was looking for a way out of the system too,
So I ran this business. I had a house in
New Delhi. I stayed regularly in Cobble. It was a
wonderful thing. I was a millionaire in my twenties. I mean,
we did really well. I would regularly get editorial coverage
in Vogue, in Mademoiselle and Glamour. I had known people
there for my time in New York, and they love
(06:28):
writing about us. But the Russians invaded Afghanistan in nineteen
seventy eight, which sort of put an end to that business.
And then Jimmy Carter, after all I had been through
in India, all the tumult of what had been really
wild times in these countries in the seventies, India really
was their most tumultuous decade. Humbling to be there. All
(06:49):
I had been through dust storms and strikes and blackouts
and cobras and everything. Jimmy Carter put an end to
our business by declaring an embargo on Indian imports, which
you know, I had this huge empire and it just
came crumbling down. And there I was, thirty three, back
in New York, my tail between my legs, and I
(07:11):
decided I had to change careers. I bought a book,
the only sales help book I'd ever buy. What Color
Is Your Parachute? Made the case that you have skills
that are transferable. You should do things you love. I
had loved, you know, traveling and getting into this business
and being an entrepreneur. The other thing I loved was
rock and roll music. So I chased down a job.
(07:34):
My brother introduced me to a guy who had started
at this thing called the Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company.
That jargon wassak. It was a mouthful, but they hired
me on the spot for MTV. They said, we're looking
for people who don't have any experience in television, and
I said, well.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I'm your man. Perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
They didn't even have television where I've been for the
last eight years, by and large, so they hired me.
And that was in nineteen eighty. I went to work
ultimately for Bob Pittman, who put together a team of
eight of us to take this idea and develop it
into a full fledged network and launch it in August
nineteen eighty one. By nineteen eighty six, I had become
(08:17):
president of the company, Bob Pittman had left along with
a lot of the other original players. Sumner Redstone then
took over the company and a leveraged buyout. I had
befriended him. I had met him secretly in the Carlisle
Hotel and told them we had a company that was
ready to explode if only we had some financing. And
I worked for him for seventeen years as the head
(08:38):
of MTV Networks.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
This is exactly what I think our folks want to hear, Tom,
because you know, we started by saying kind of tongue
in chic, from cobble to cable. But you know you
just brought us to where you got from cobble to cable.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, And you know, when we started in cable in
nineteen eighty eighty one, it was like the tip of
the spear, the really beginning of cable programming.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Per se.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I had existed cable pretty much in rural areas for
distance signals. So with CNN USA Network.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, you know, in the midst of reading Unplugged, I
also read the Barry Diller book and the John Malone book.
And when you combine the three of your stories, it's
quite extraordinary for me. The history of dust to dust
on the cable industry and the three of you. Barry Diller,
(09:29):
John Malone and Tom Freston are three of the names
on Mount Rushmore when it comes to cable. So hearing
the story through your lens is quite interesting. And my
recommendation for our listeners is, in addition to reading your
amazing book, they should read Berries and John Malones as well.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Well, they're both good books, and I'd say I'm further
down the food chain and either of those two, particularly
doctor Malone. But anyway, Yeah, it was a heady time.
We were gonna there was gonna be a TV revolution.
We were the tip of the spear. You know, the
broadcast networks were very vulnerable pretty much, that's all the
(10:07):
American consumers knew, or the three broadcast network BBS.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Let's focus on MTV for a moment here. It wasn't
just a channel, it was a cultural institution. It changed everything.
MTV stands out to me as the shift that occurred
in not just our viewing habits, but just the way
we enjoyed music. And music for me is the soundtrack
(10:31):
of my life and for many of us. So just
that alone, but the cultural shift, and when I align
it with advertising, it's kind of like I give Unilever
credit for this with their Dove campaign, the one that
they came out with twenty five years ago, that was
the campaign for real beauty. It was just a campaign,
but it culturally changed life. It meant that people didn't
(10:54):
look at you if you weren't a perfect size two
or size five or whatever. A perfect size used to
be viewed as for a woman's perspective, you could still
be beautiful. That wasn't just an advertising campaign, It was
a cultural shift. MTV wasn't just a channel. It was
a cultural shift. It changed everything. Did you realize that, Tom,
(11:14):
when you were there in those early days, we really
crafted it to be something with a downtown sensibility. You know,
there was a lot going on in downtown Manhattan. Then
there was a cultural renaissance in away with you. You
think about Boskot and Warhol and music videos as starting
where video clubs and there was a sense of something
new was happening. It's easy today to dismiss MTV as
(11:36):
sort of pedestrian, but at the time it was revolutionary
in terms of the way it looked and felt. So
easy to forget that. But Tom, you know you're saying,
MTV is whatever. I'm looking over your shoulder. I have
an advantage that our listeners don't. And in the background
I see the moon Man, the MTV Moonman. You know,
that's iconic as it can get.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That was it, you know, And we ripped that off
because we didn't have any money. That's the original Andy
Warhole nineteen seventy seven print. He ripped it off too,
because all that Moonman footage was public domain. We had
no money, so we took that Moonman. We said it
would be really a rock and roll thing to do
to rip off Man's greatest moment, landing on the Moon,
(12:15):
put our logo in there, which is what we did
at the top of the hour for six years.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Just as you were an entrepreneur in Afghanistan and India
and selling clothing, you were an entrepreneur with MTV. You
were there at the beginning. You saw that growth. Was
there an inflection point that shifted MTV. Did you know
when that moment happened? Was it when I want my
MTV and dire straits? I mean, what was it?
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Well?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I saw it personally because in the very beginning we
were only in some distant rural markets like Tulsa, Des Moines,
and Wichita, and I was the marketing guy, so I
would go there and no one who worked at MTV
would get it at home.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
No one had any idea.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I mean, we weren't in New York or LA and
we were like nowhere.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
I would go.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
And I remember getting attacked by the woman at the
Hurtz Rennekar counter because she saw a button on my jacket.
You got MTV. Where did you get that? I said,
you heard of MTV? Says, are you kidding me? That's
all people here to talk about. It had been on
the air for like a month and a half in Tulsa,
and then I went to a club. Everyone was standing
around looking at TV like it was a Knicks game
or something. By the way, the Knicks this season are
(13:22):
worth watching. Yeah, and they were then too, They were
pretty good back in the early eighties. But I knew
that this had connected with this very large music loving
audience who were in love with this new sort of
program form the music video. But we had a lot
of trouble getting cable operators to carry us. They didn't
want to pay a dime, they didn't like the way
(13:44):
this music looked, they didn't like the people's haircuts. So
we decided, after trying to cajole and sell the cable operators.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You'd go direct.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
We were going to just force them to carry it,
and we launched the I Want My MTV campaign with
George Lowis and Dale Pond, and we took that across
the country. We got rock stars enlisted to validate us,
and every time we went into a market, the five
six or seven monopolist cable operators who were there would,
(14:13):
after a couple of weeks would put up the white
flag and take us. So we've got our distribution like that.
That was an inflection point.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, and Tom, you mentioned George Lois for our listeners.
George Lois was one of the blue bloods both faced
names and advertising and became famous for a lot of things,
but I Want My MTV was one that definitely put
him on the map.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Well, he was madder than the Madman, a profane Greek American.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
He was a guy.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
He said, let's rip off. I want my Mapo. You
know he actually did, I want my Maypo. And he
had enlisted Mickey Mahl and Wilt Chamberlain, all these people
to help sell cereal the kids that force their parents
to buy it. And that's what we did, he said.
He basically said, fuck the cable operators. You're getting nowhere
being nice to them.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
But Tom, you know there's a real message in that
you were early direct to consumer, and don't think you weren't.
You were one of the early direct to consumer brands,
and that strategy has worked. You know where it works.
It works right now in martech and ad tech. I'm
going to take you to a place you didn't expect,
Tom Preston. But when we get new ed tech and
(15:21):
martech opportunities and you want the agencies in the advertising
industry to adopt them, you know where you go not
to the agencies. You go to the clients. You go
to the consumer, and you get the consumer to put
the pressure on the agencies. It's exactly what you did
with MTV. The consumer put the pressure on the cable
(15:42):
cowboys who had no choice.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
You know, funny you should say that, No, it's really
busting down the gatekeepers. How do you circummend the gatekeepers?
Another example was in the record companies. The record companies
didn't want to deal with us. We're like a fan
club to them at the beginning, but we found out
we went directly to the artists. They would put pressure
on and they artists they love this idea.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Who knew? Who knew that Tom Freston and the Band
of Jolly's at MTV really created direct to consumer?
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Well never thought of it that way.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, well, you see that it worked. It worked.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
When you got something that works and something's in the way,
you know, you do everything you can to got to
get over the hump.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
We're going to hit pause for a moment, but stay
with us after the break. We've got more insights to share.
You know, you oversaw at Viacom when you were CEO
very different brands under one umbrella, from Paramount Studios to
(16:41):
MTV to Nickelodeon, to Comedy Central and more. Managing a
portfolio with completely different cultures, audiences, and business models under
one roof has got to be daunting. I mean, what's
good for you know? Nickelodeon is not going to necessarily
for sure be good for MTV. Different culture, different people,
different sensibilities, and yet you're managing it all not Unlike
(17:06):
Procter and Gamble is a house of brands, Viacom was
a house of brands. You had that experience.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
And yes, I would say for the bulk of my
career there for seventeen years, I ran the MTV networks,
which was Comedy Central, Nicked Night, TV, Lant, etc. And
each one of these networks I kept with their own
P and L much like on the Procter and Gamble model,
which I also remembered from my advertising days, and I
(17:33):
put in charge of each of those networks a creative
person who was assisted pretty much by a business person.
I always thought that having a creative culture would be
a competitive advantage. We were going to be an edgy company.
We're filled with untraditional people who didn't want to work
in a traditional media company. So putting a creative person
in ours, like say Judy McGrath or John Sykes or
(17:55):
Jerry Laborn sent a signal to everybody there that creativity.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Was our main aptitude. And that's basically what we talked about.
And the names you just said, Tom let me just
underscore for our listeners. Each one of those people are
Hall of Fame quality names in their right and you
had the eye for talent, and that's a critical part
of your success. What is that? What do you see
in that talent A Judy McGrath, that John Sykes, a
(18:21):
doug Herzoug.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Well, you know you always a try and hire people
smarter than you and who are better than you. So
if you had some instinker, you could discern that these
people had a real connection with what they were managing.
My challenge was how do I keep them happy? How
do I keep them incentivized? How do I not put
a thumb over them and kind of give them the
(18:44):
amount of freedom to do what they want to do.
Doug herzis, They're all great examples. Well, but Tom Preston,
I want to say this out loud. This is famous.
When you finally left Viacom, the story is that you
couldn't get out of the building because they were literally
hundreds of people almost blocking the exit of fifteen fifteen
(19:06):
Broadway to shower you with the praise and the affection
that you earned in the culture you built in those
seventeen years, and that's a tribute.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
You know, most times when somebody leaves in that position,
it's that line from that show Silicon Valley that I loved.
It was, don't let the door hit you where God
split you.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, that was the opening chapter of my book. I mean,
I had just cleared out my office. I had the
banker's box, you know, like we see all these people
today leaving government. They're holding this little brown box with
a few photos in it. And I just was so
humiliated to be fired after those twenty six years there
that I just wanted to slink out unnoticed and grab
a cab and go home. And I got out of
(19:47):
the elevator and I couldn't move. I thought it was
a fire drill, but there was the NBC said one
thousand people, who the hell knows. But the lobby was
jammed and everyone was chanting my name like I'd run
the Super Bowl or something, and everything seemed to slow motion,
and it was like, really memorable for me. What a
way to go? I mean, because you're right, most CEOs
don't leave with that kind of thing, and I realized
(20:08):
they they actually love me.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
You've said in the past that companies about to be
disrupted rarely see it coming. Was it Shakespeare who said
something about it happened slow and then it happens fast bankruptcy?
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Yeah, but also.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Everything goes slowly and all of a sudden everything collapses.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yes, when it comes to AI, what do you think
leaders are most misunderstanding or underestimating right now? Have you
given that thought? I guess and I'm no AI expert. Okay,
I don't think any of us are, which is one
of the issues why they tend to underestimate it. But
people in the know would say things like you would
(20:49):
hear these things said about the Internet way back. You
know it's going to change everything. You're beginning that to
see that come into focus and it's it isn't just
like oh, kids gonna be able to cheat at school,
or you know a lot of these things are.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You know, there's going to be twenty percent unemployment. It's
going to really change everything, and we don't know where
it's going to go. So how do you sort of
get in front of that as a manager? You know,
you've got to learn what it is and had the
best embrace us. We had a version of that in
the cable business. We had the cable Revolution. Then it
was superseded by the digital revolution, which took a while
(21:25):
to really get enough traction to begin to dissemble the
legacy media business. Now we have this AI revolution, which
is you know, it's basically displacing the digital revolution. It's
interesting to see how even the digital leaders are dealing
with this so they don't get left behind in the
dust bin.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And you've got the streaming revolution, if you will, which
is I guess streaming is the offshoot of the digital revolution.
But if we look at the current news cycle, it
looks like streaming is eating the world. You know, if
Paramount is successful in acquiring what they're acquiring, whilst they
look to be buying the entirety of Warner Brothers, but
(22:05):
at least that's what they're looking for. They're going after
the streaming. Nobody is confused about that. And Netflix in
their bid, is going after just the streaming in the studio.
So you know, if we're going from cobble to cable,
we are now going from cobble to cable to streaming.
And it looks like streamings eating the lunch of everything else.
So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you
(22:28):
your thoughts about the current news cycle. Tom, I would
have to well, yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It upsets me in a way because it seems like
there's these inexorable forces as the legacy media business sort
of I wouldn't say collapses, but declines, that consolidation becomes
a force that has to happen. We already saw the
Fox studio disappear into the world of Disney, and as
a result of that, there was less feature films release
(22:56):
and the two did separately, and there was another buyer eliminated.
If you had you out a project you could use
to bring it to Disney and Fox. Now you'd only
bring it to one. There's one less buyer around. That's
about to happen again. You hate to see a movie
studio disappear, particularly someone like Warner Brothers, which is really
the jewel in the crown of Hollywood. So you know,
(23:17):
the eleson's wanted badly. I can understand all the reason.
It's going to give them streaming advantage.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
They're going to have a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Of cost savings and so forth. But as a consumer,
no matter who gets it, I don't think that we win. No,
I don't think that we win. If Netflix gets it, it
means we'll be paying a lot more money for Netflix.
If Netflix gets it, it means that's one less shop
that a creator can go to to sell their project,
(23:44):
because you're gonna have HBO and Netflix under the same roof.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
But it's gonna happen. You know.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
It's a great segue Tom into power. But I want
to talk about cultural power as opposed to you know,
the power. We were just talking about pricing power. In
the position that you were at for all those years
at Viacom, at MTV Networks, you had extraordinary cultural power influence.
(24:11):
Let's say that there's responsibility that comes along with that.
Were you aware of that power at the time, and
did it increase the level of responsibility you felt?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Well, in the beginning, it was like our wildest dream
that we'd have a power Listen, any startup wanted to
think that their product will be successful at all the
people who need to be stakeholders in it or participants
will enjoy it, that one day it will become profitable,
bringing money, it'll go worldwide, and it will influence other businesses.
In the case of MTV, it influenced the movie business,
(24:43):
it influenced the fashion business, and influenced the advertising business.
I could go on and on it influence politics. So
with that came a lot of cultural power, and we
were dealing with cultural figures in all those areas. And
it took a while to dawn on us that we
actually had that power, because we always thought of ourselves
as like the little guy trying to get inside the machine,
(25:06):
trying to win, trying to get the naysayers to like us,
when in fact we became ultimate gatekeepers. After we derided
the cable operators for being just that. It's like an
abused child turns into something worse. So I tried with
my folks when we had this power. I knew the
(25:27):
record companies in particular would resent us because we could
make or break stars. I tried to insist that we
be humble. I tried to insist that we do favors.
I said, look, these people don't like us. Let's see
how long we can prolong our sense of power here
and sort of be fair and not be arrogant. And
that worked for a good period of time. Not always,
(25:51):
but yeah. We tried to be reasonable with the power
that we had, and we tried to leverage the power
that we had in ways that could help us. There
was a certain amount of space we put aside for
pro social campaigns and so forth. We tried to be responsible,
a responsible company to our consumers into society. But you
took it seriously. You understood it. We took it seriously.
(26:12):
It took a while to know we even had it.
We always dreamt, well, one day maybe that would happen
in our best case scenario, and then you know, in
the late eighties it happened. I mean, there is a
generation referred to as the MTV generation. I mean, when
you think about that that has responsibility attached to it,
good Company.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Will be right back after the break. So I want
to switch Tom to your book release. You've had, as
our listeners now know, a long public career, but this
(26:54):
book tells stories that go beyond what most people think
they know about you. What made this feel like the
right moment a for you to do this? And you know,
I'm sure you didn't do it overnight. And you know
the question I asked authors before as you were writing,
was there a particular story or a chapter that surprised you?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well, you know, the last thing I thought I'd ever
do would be write a memoir. And then the pandemic
came along, so I started writing because I had been
writing some articles for Vanny very like to write. And
then it dawned on me, well, what if I did
this memoir? Some people had encouraged me, And I think,
what if I could see if all these seemingly disparate
pieces of my life connected in any kind of sensible
(27:36):
narrative at all, that I could understand it, maybe my
kids would understand a bit more about what I was
up to all these years. So I focused a lot
on the earlier years when I was sort of in
an exploratory mode, and I was I realized things did
fit together. I had at an early age what I
would call Bohemian exposure. I realized early on that life
(27:59):
on the side of the road could be a lot
more interesting and lucrative, not necessarily lucal, there were a
lot more interesting lucrative in terms of experience than going
right down the middle. So I spent a lot of
time sort of on the edge, and when I had
my business in Asia, that was clearly there MTV Networks.
Our strategy was always to be a niche based business.
(28:22):
We didn't want to compete head to head with anybody else.
We want to be number one on our own category,
not really have to deal anybody else, set up our
own rules of supply and demand as much as we could.
But what surprised me, I guess, was my continual diligence,
the fact that I was always drawn into this corner.
I was always drawn into doing something untraditional, to having,
(28:45):
you know, this tolerance for unusual people and wanting to
be around them, people who are sort of larger than life.
I was attracted to the entertainment business. And I look
at it today and I say, a lot of the
outsized characters, I wasn't an outsized character.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
They were.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
There's a lot of people there that really made it fun.
I want to have fun wherever I was, and some
of those have sort of disappeared.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
That's the problem of getting old, my friend. But let
me say this. You are being humble. You are an
outsized character, and this story of the last fifty years
of this business, you are about as outsized as it gets.
Don Preston, Let's talk about how that has propelled you
in an area that I know is very important to you,
and that is philanthropy and impact and responsibility. That's a
(29:31):
consistent throughout your life you're involved now with the one campaign.
What drew you to that and what's kept you engaged?
And you know, tell us a bit about it, but
kept you engaged at that level. I was raised with
a lesson and a fraction to use in life, and
that was a third of your life you spend with
(29:53):
your family, a third of your life you spend with
your business, and a third of your life you spend
with your community. And I've tried my best to do that,
you know, throughout my career and you have as well.
Your name has been associated with important movements and important
philanthropy over the years that I've known you. But can
(30:13):
you talk about one? And you know particularly.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
I thought this new chapter.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
When I left Viacom, I said, well, you know, I
would do something totally different, so I wanted like to
give back. Bono approached me. He was one of the
first people to reach out to me when I got
fired by Redstone and just said, hey, watch you come
on red I knew about red because I'd run some
PSA stuff for them when I was at Viacom. I said,
(30:38):
I just got fired last night. I'm not ready to
make any decisions. So he had Steve Jobs call me
and Gates and all these people trying.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
I said no.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
But three or four months later I got sort of
roped into it because his manager had called and said,
Bono started these do gooder organizations focused on Africa. They're
running off the rails that could use a little something.
Watt over to France and hang out.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
With us a bit.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I said, I do a study and I'd try and
figure out in three months how we could better organize them.
And when I finished that, I one had been really
impressed with all the young people.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Again.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I was dealing with a community of young people like
I had at viacommon MTV networks, but these were activists.
They were working harder than their entertainment industry counterparts for
far less money, and they were looking for justice. And
I had been really struck in my years in Asia
where you know, in India, when I lived there, sixty
(31:33):
percent of the population was below the poverty line. That
number today is like three or four percent, So it
was pretty humbling. Extreme poverty was something that really connected
to me, so I signed on to become the board chair.
I also went back to Afghanistan for twelve years to
help start up a TV network whose social mission was
(31:55):
to better inform and connect Afghans to the outside world,
breed tolerance, you know, pushed things like gender equality and
girls in school and so forth. So I did that.
I worked for OPRAH for a while. I was very
involved working I would not all in the not for
profit sector, but you know what I would call purposeful
work that did some good. I wasn't looking to make
(32:17):
a fortune. But the one campaign I'm still the board chair,
and it's an advocacy organization fighting for justice for the
extreme poor in Africa, particularly on the health front. So
we've been involved in swinging billions of dollars of money
to do the right things in some of the poorer countries,
(32:37):
particularly on the health front, anti retroviral drugs, like big
part of you know, the whole war against AIDS that
the US kind of fought, you know, the biggest health
intervention in the history of the world for a single disease,
PEPFAR and the Global Fund. So I've been doing that
for eighteen years now and I enjoy that work. I
was back in Afghanistan until the Taliban took over again,
(33:00):
which was quite a shock. But so this period of
my life has been largely about doing purposeful work, which
I find really rewarding.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Tom Preston, I want to say that the work you've
done over the entire arc of your career has been
purposeful and has changed the world, and the journey you've
had is nothing short of extraordinary. And you know, I'm
just lucky as a friend that I've been able to
watch for at least a portion of that time. Tom,
And you know, I consider myself lucky. But what I'm
(33:32):
really lucky about is what I get to do now,
which is my favorite part of the podcast. We get
to do some lightning round questions. Oh, I like, I like, Okay,
what's the one thing in your life you'll always make
time for, no matter how busy you are?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
My kids?
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Perfect answer? Was there a mentor, and I'm sure there
was early in your career, And what's the best piece
of advice that mentor ever gave you. I worked for
a guy named Mike camer You might know that name.
He started He was my boss at Benting and Bowls
and the first time I was in any kind of
corporate environment, and he was a rough task master, six
(34:11):
years older than I, but he taught me how to
write and communicate He taught me how to communicate with
different types of people. Like in an agency, there was
the creative floor, the art directors of producers, and there
was the media people. Where were the media people like
me downstairs in the basement.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah they were downstairs, but I think they're on the
twenty eighth floor.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
I was on the thirty first floor.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I bet you were more Don Draper than Harry the
media guy.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Ah, I had a bit of Don Draper in me.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Well, those three martini lunches, I'll kill you. And this
could be recent, but could you pick the best book
you've ever read?
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (34:50):
Wow, that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You're stumping me now, Okay.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I kind of leaned towards nonfiction, which isn't really probably
the best place to pull out the best book I've read.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
I'll come back on this one, you can think, Okay,
all right, I'll answer it. Best book I ever read
was Fountain Who Had by Anne Rand. That's the book
that's stuck in my mind the most. I've read it
three times in my life because it impacted me differently
each time I read it. Is there an industry buzzword
Tom you wish would disappear forever?
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Multi platform.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, good, I like it, content creators. There you go
the final one. And this one's a tough one for
you because you've been just about anywhere everywhere. Are there
three places or any place is still on your bucket
list that you want to visit that you haven't New.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Zealand never been, Patagonia never been.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Oh but you've been to Buenos Aires and to Buenos Ares.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
But I never really went down south.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Right, No, nor did I. I'm with you there, uh
in Antarctica? People going there a lot now. Yeah, our
list is the same. I am embarrassed to say I
have to add India to my list.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I've never been. It's on our list for next year.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
I kind of go every year. This year I'm going
the Jaipur Literary Vessel, which is so fun in this
greatest city in India. This year I'm actually in.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
The first Oh, Unplugged.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I would go in the pass and run the people
like Paul Throw Heroes of Mine, which brings me to
one of my great books. Actually, I could say that
The Great Railroad Bizarre, which came out in nineteen seventy three.
Paul Throw going overland through Asia by trains and working
his way across and in Afghanistan, where there's no trains,
he had to make an exception and take a bus.
(36:37):
But that greatly informed me on terms of how to
be observant, you know, when traveling, how travel writing kind
of would appeal to me, and some of the tricks
of the road for a guy like that.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, Tom Preston, the lessons that I've learned over the
arc of our relationship, the lessons that I know our
listeners will learn over the arc of this conversation, and
the privilege of counting you as a friend is something
that I pride myself on. I want to thank you
for joining me on Good Company today, tom My pleasure.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Mike is always great to speak with you. I'm an
admirer of you and your career as well. It's amazing
mutual admiration society.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Every one of you go out and get that book,
read it, listen to it. I read it because I
had a hard copy. But it'll be enjoyable no matter
how you do it, and it'll be great education.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Thanks Michael, thank you.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
I'm Michael Cassen, thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Good Company is brought to you by three c Ventures
in iHeart Podcasts Special thanks to Alexis Borgier Purdo, our
executive producer and head of Content and Talent, and to
Carl Catle, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced
and edited by Mary Doo. Thanks for joining us. We'll
see you next time.
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