February 27, 2020 • 44 mins
All Judy McGrath wanted to do when she grew up was to write for Rolling Stone. Instead, the storied CEO of MTV Networks now sits on the board of Amazon. Discover how the creative giant got seduced by management, why she learned to love a P&L (spoiler: it was to make room for wildly creative programming like Rock the Vote, and South Park), and how she convinced advertisers to get behind The Daily Show. Plus, learn why you probably need to recruit a knife thrower/improv comedian to your staff.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Math and Magic production. I heart radio.
When I joined, I didn't know anything about television. I
didn't even like it. My interview was with Fred who said, so,
what kind of music do you like? And I think
I said Bruce Springsteen. He said, well, you're wrong, and
I'll tell you why. And then about forty five minutes
(00:23):
later I left, not having said anything else. And the
next thing I know, they were like, look, this is
just a few of us. We're trying to get this
thing going. If you'd like to join, And it was
kind of like, how fast can I get out the
door of Conde Nas and jump on this thing? Whatever
it is? These people are crazy. I'm Bob Pittman and
(00:48):
welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing.
Hard to believe, but my last three guests have all
canceled at the last minute because of the flu. But
this week we're gonna give you another best of, and
the best of about creativity and managing for innovation. It's
from one of the original crew at MTV who later
became the chair and CEO of MTV Networks and Well,
(01:11):
by the way, she's also on the Amazon Board of Directors.
Judy McGrath Enjoy. Judy is an old old Palamine. We
started at MTV in those early days when we were
the twenties something crowd. She has done an awful lot.
(01:32):
She started in MTV and worked her way all the
way up to CEO of MTV Networks, which included Nickelodeon
a bunch of other networks. She is a role model
for creatives, women and people from little small towns in Pennsylvania.
Also as a board member at Amazon, which has to
be a treat into itself. Judy is well known as
(01:53):
a magician and probably not as well known and not
appreciate as much as being a pretty good mathematician too.
You made some really hard business decisions as well. So
I want to jump into all that, But first I
want to do you in sixties seconds. Are you ready? Ready?
Do you prefer catch or dogs? Dogs, beetles or stones both? Oh? No, Okay,
(02:14):
Taylor or Kanye Kanye, East Coast or West Coast Coast,
MTV or v H one one early nineties. Ah, that's
pretty good. Okay, beavas or butt head Daria. Oh, that's
why you're creative. You're the off beat. Okay, favorite city,
New York Secret Talent piano plate. I didn't know that.
(02:37):
Would you eat for breakfast? Coffee? Coffee, coffee, and more coffee.
What would you eat for your last meal? Don't say coffee.
I would have a peanut butter sandwich with my daughter
and my husband's childhood hero, Believe it or not, Leonard Bernstein.
I wanted to conduct an orchestra. Favorite TV show, The
Americans historical idol, one of the Bronte sisters, any of them?
(02:59):
I read, Jane, are twenty five times worst fat or
fashion trend you've participated in or that you saw an
MTV super big power shouldered jackets. You looked a great
at it. By the way, what did you want to
be when you were growing up? A reporter? What's one
(03:19):
food you'd never eat? Hua gras. What are you most
proud of early days of MTV? What are you listening to?
Our watching right now? Listening? Oh, listening? I love listening.
Oh you know slow Burn, a lot of the news ones,
the Daily Vox, Bob Pittman's podcast. Yeah, you know. I
still primarily listen to music, and that's my favorite thing.
(03:41):
That's cool. Let's jump into you. Scranton, Pennsylvania, Scranton, Pennsylvania,
small town. I went to college and still in Pennsylvania, Allentown, Pennsylvania,
so you couldn't get out of the state. What influence
did that have on you? You and I've talked about
parents before in the past, and you had some fabulous parents.
Tell me about how they influence you. My dad loved music,
(04:03):
and so growing up in a town like Scranton, let's
just say, the musical tastes were probably what you might
expect from that old time ethnicity. But my dad loved jazz,
and he played Duke Ellington and Earl Hines and Sara
Vaughan and all this great stuff all the time. And
he would hang over the you know, the little crappy
(04:23):
turntable and dropped the needle and have a cigarette. And
he grabbed me by my school uniform and say, listen
to this. Take the a train. And I would think
this is incomprehensible, speaks no sense to me, and I
have no idea what this is, but he's madly in
love with it. And so when I finally started bringing
music home, my music stones, you know the doors, the Beatles,
(04:44):
he wanted to listen with me, which I did not
want at all. But when I think about some of
the things he said, he thought, dare I say the
Beatles were pop crap? And that the Stones were blues,
you know, and the Charlie Watts was a big band
drum right. It was a way to have relationship with him.
I remember thinking later he had a passion that was
(05:04):
separate from family and work, and I really wanted that
for myself. What really motivated me, though, was I had
a sense from reading like Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone and
listening to music that there was a tribe of people
somewhere that were my tribe and I couldn't find them
where I was. And if I could find them, and
(05:24):
if I could have a part of anything they were doing,
I would be all in. And to me, that was
like the dream was in New York City, which my parents,
friends and neighbors felt like I was moving to Moscow
or Brussels or someplace. It seemed like New York City.
It's impossible. You can't do that. No one does that.
(05:46):
So it sounds like you didn't have family connections, So
how on earth did you get the Conde nast. My
mother was like definitely a feminist before her time, and
it was like, go, go go, you can do what
you can do it. When I came to New York,
I thought I cannot walk into Conde Nast. I look
like I just fell off the cold truck. I mean,
this is I don't have the nerve. And she's like,
go in there, do it. You know something will happen
(06:07):
if it doesn't. Try again. She was one of these
people who always said perseverance is an underrated virtue, and
I think she was right about that. Interestingly, I did
not have a Double Wares product experience in Conde Nest
at all. I think I did a little bit of
research and I was a big magazine fan. Before I
get to Rolling Stone, my ultimate goal. I wonder if
(06:28):
I could possibly get in the door of one of
these magazines. Is there anyway? So I made this dummy magazine.
I went in and I went into personnel as they
called it in those days, and this very nice older
woman really did not want to deal with me, and
she said, well, there's a copy test for a magazine
called Mademoiselle that you can take. And I said, would
(06:49):
you mind telling me what the compensation is? Since I
just literally got off the bus and she said, dere
you need to ask that question. You can't afford to
work here. I went home, I took the copy test,
I passed, and I walked through the doors and thought, wow,
you could literally tell who worked at which magazine by
what they were wearing, eating, saying, drinking and where they
(07:10):
were clubbing. And you could pick all that up just
from the lobby. So Mademoiselle, which is no more, it
was kind of the smart girl magazine at the time.
You know, fran Leebowitz was a columnist, and some of
the early sort of the pre Martha Steward people, Mary
and were laying and there were just tons of people there.
I made some of the best friends in my life there,
(07:30):
who eventually led me to you and MTV. And I
got in there and I just would stay up till
four in the morning writing and rewriting these ridiculous things
like women who love men who hate women and why
and models, party tips and whatever it was. I just
gave it my all. I was so thrilled to be there,
and I think I sucked up everything. And what I
(07:52):
also observed was brand. I mean, those magazines have very
clearly defined brands and do not veer off that path.
Alexander Lieberman would come in and look at a display
and say, that's not bog, that's not Glamour, that's not Mademoiselle,
and he would be right. And it was that thing
(08:13):
of learning about what is it that makes this thing
important to somebody? What is it that defines this versus
everything else. You have a story about one of the
editors that you said you wrote something and basically she said, yes,
that won't do. That's one of my favorite stories that
you've ever told. Well, I had a wonderful editor, Karen Andrew.
(08:33):
I get Mademoiselle. I killed myself writing something and she
called me in and she said this is really not good.
And I was devastated. I mean, I thought, oh my god,
I've spent my whole life trying to get a foot
in this door. And then she said, you know, I
think you can do this, but this is really it.
So I'm going to show you how to construct something good,
(08:56):
and I'm going to give you one chance to go
back and do that, and then we'll take a look
and if it's not good, we're going to have a
very different conversation. So here's what a headline is. Here's
what a grabby is. Here's what you know. The middle
of the story is supposed to be tell him what
you're gonna tell him? Well, ballot, So I went back.
(09:17):
I thought about her very clear, very architectural, if you will, feedback,
and also the fact that she said, I think you
can do this, but I'm not sure. And um, when
I turned it in the rewritch, I didn't hear from her.
And then she came out and said, it's it's really good.
It's very good. You got it. Wow. You know, Harvard
(09:39):
Business Review just had a story which we sent around
in the office about innovation and company culture and how
you innovate. I thought of the story actually which I
brought it up, and one of the things that pointed
out he said that actually candor works, not niceness. She
was very direct, and you know it was candor. The
best favor someone can do for you is just tell
you that. It felt like a real jolt. In contrast,
(10:03):
I worked at Glamor for a while, which was a
great magazine. I worked for an editor who would you
turn something in, she would rewrite it all over it
and send it out to you via assistant, demoralizing learned nothing,
start to think like, why don't you just write it yourself,
you know, like a Braddy twenty something would, But you know,
(10:24):
the candor the directness. I appreciate it. You've always been
a great coach, and you've been thought of as a
great coach, especially for creative people. Did it come from this?
Did you take that lesson with you? I think I
definitely took that lesson with me. I don't think I'm
quite as candid as Karen was, But a creative person
does need guardrails and does like some sort of directional feedback.
(10:49):
They don't just want to rubber stamp, even if they
think they do. I thought about a few things. I
mean that the beauty and the wonder of MTV was
that it was really filled with people that I thought
it could not find gainful employment anywhere else. It would
be somebody who had never really shot anything and just
(11:09):
wanted to get their hands on of came and try it.
And we were willing to do that, but we were
willing to do it against a set of promises we
were making to the fans, to the audience, to the viewers,
to the consumers, to the users. So I would say absolutely,
but remember, don't fall in love with your own idea.
This is about someone else, not you. This is about
(11:32):
the person on the other side. Who are they, Who
are you trying to communicate with? What's different about them
today than yesterday? They're like you. But you can't make
this just for you. And there are really no other
rules aside from you know, no full frontal nudity. Go
out there and do it. And it was so much
fun to have the freedom to meet people who were
(11:55):
far more creative than I was. I began to see
I was sort of a better editor code than I
was a player. So many great people got opportunity through
that company, Quirky people like Marcy Braffman, who was there
when I got there, People like John Sykes who could
step out there and ask anybody to do anything, you know,
(12:15):
and just make you want to join the party. And
you know, Ted Demi and Mark Palin's and all these
great people coming in. Fred Cybert here sorry, he was
the person who invented the graphic look of MTV. He
came from radio. He was the promotion director to a
radio station and he was in charge of the visual
well exactly. And I think we were so snotty that
I remember thinking like, I don't want to hire anybody
(12:38):
who worked at an advertising agency or a television network
or magazine. I mean, when I joined, I didn't know
anything about television. I didn't even like it. My interview
was with Fred, who said, so, what kind of music
do you like? And I think I said Bruce Springsteen,
I'm not sure. He said, well, you're wrong, and I'll
tell you why. And then about forty five minutes later,
(12:59):
I left, not having said anything else. And the next
thing I know, they were like, well, you know, look,
this is just a few of us were trying to
get this thing going if you'd like to join, And
it was kind of like, how fast can I get
out the door of Conde Nass and jump on this thing,
whatever it is? How did you get over? I had
some friends who came to work for you. They said, well,
(13:21):
they're starting this thing. It's going to be music on
television and it's I don't even know what it is.
It's three minute clips. And when I think about it now,
I I had another Conde Nass moment that was also instructive.
So many people at Conde Nast were opposed to it.
It was like I was telling them I was joining
(13:41):
the circus or something. If I had said I was.
If I said, well, I'm gonna be Diane Sawyer's p
A or something like that, I think they would have
felt they were like cable television music video clips. If
you stayed here for twenty five years, you could be
managing editor. I think I'm not even thinking about that.
So I thought, well, if this many people think it's
a bad idea, I'm definitely gonna do it. I mean,
(14:04):
it has to be a good idea. You know. I've
just found the camaraderie and the purpose and the sheer
invention of something that didn't exist, so irresistible. And again
on the math side of it, I was saying, I
mean this with all sincerity. You had a map in
(14:24):
the creative group. You had a plan, and the plan
were promises, and I loved that. I am making a
promise to you. If you sit here, I'm going to
deliver something that you've been waiting for. It is the
first music television network. It is exactly for you. And
I thought, wow, I want my m t V. It's
(14:45):
not distributed in Manhattan. I have no idea what it is,
but those are powerful words. My in it in an
era before social media and social engagement. Something for me
that felt like mine and want what a powerful word, right,
I want my MTV. I took that very seriously. I
(15:06):
took those promises to heart. Twenty four hours a day
terrific in stereo? Not really, but you know, hey, it's
Mark sounded it sounded good for those ten people who
did have stereot I remember you saying to me, we
want people to think it sounds better than regular television,
and they did. It just felt to me like if
I could marry all the things I'm interested in with
(15:29):
these set of principles and join this crazy band of
people who have no right and a lot of audacity
in a firm belief that this can work, I mean,
what a gift. I never looked back, not one second.
You know, we used to say back then that all
of us were doing jobs we had never done before. Yes,
(15:51):
so we didn't really know what we weren't supposed to do.
I saw some interview a year or so ago with
Mark Zuckerberg, and the essence of it was he didn't
value experience at all. He valued vision, smarts, etcetera. And
and I thought about it, actually said, you know, in
those days, we were the twenties something crowd. You and
I are the same age with not twenty something anymore, unfortunately,
(16:12):
but we didn't value experience. A matter of fact, people
had experience, we thought that was some excuse for them
trying to be relevant, and it was a negative. Well,
now we're at this age where we are full of
experience and maybe not the share creativity who once had.
Do you think experience has a role that we didn't
appreciate when we were in your twenties. It's hard to
answer that question without stepping outside yourself. You know, as
(16:33):
I said, like you, I never wanted to be away
from young adult culture, and even if I felt like
a vampire at times, I thought, you know, I need
to be near this. And as I've spent time around
subsequent generations from hours, I thought, oh my god, they
are so much more equipped than we were two change
(16:57):
the world. I mean, there's so many more tools, so
much data that we never had. There's so many wonderful
things about who they are. And at the same time,
there's some things about our unconventional experience. I mean, let's
face it, we're experienced, but we're not exactly you know,
we didn't work at IBM. We didn't work at IBM.
(17:19):
I mean, you know, I can still. I have nieces
and nephews who look at me and they're like, you
know who post malone is? They assume I do, and
I do, but do my friends? Now? You know, we
had such a great period of being able to be
young and inexperienced and devoted and into it before I
feel like I'm looking at some of these smaller companies
(17:39):
they start building corporate over structures. And I was just
talking to a group. I said, so, what's your like mission,
what's your vision? And they said mobile first, and I thought, okay,
I mean yes, but what isn't really that doesn't make
me want to get up in the morning and everything
(17:59):
is that to me? It's like, yes, but what is
it about you? What do you know about that person
who's going to share what you do today or listen
or care or what is it about you? I started
to think that my style was out of style or
your style, you know that creatively, lad anything was out
(18:20):
of style, that it was really only about left brain,
it was only about math for a minute. But the
truth is now you can have an incredible marriage of
both even more than we were able to. And let's
face it, one of the things that I admired and
valued in MTV was research. But it wasn't focus groups.
(18:40):
It was what's going on in your life that influences
you and makes you who you are and determines what
you like. It was like qualitative research. Right, there's as
much data as we could get about who loves MTV,
who might like it, who could love it some more.
So that was important. That was very important, but it's
(19:00):
not the only thing, and it can't be the dominant thing,
you know. We did do a concept test of MTV,
if you remember, the board of directors did not want
to do this idea. So I had this idea that
we would get a polster to do a concept test,
and it came back really great, like I like that,
I'd listen to that or watch that channel, And we
used that in the board presentation and finally the board
(19:21):
didn't say yes. Steve were also around Warners and Jim
Robinson run American Express had to getting room and say yes.
But I do think that a little bit of research
made them feel better than a bunch of twenty year
old saying, hey, we got a great idea here, let
us at it. Someone was talking to me about the
incredible data Netflix and the fact that they used data
for casting and everything else, and I said, yes, I
(19:44):
think that is fantastic. I wish I had had it.
It's incredible. But I still believe there's somebody at Netflix
who read a script from the Duffer Brothers for Stranger Things.
They stuck their finger up and read the Zeitgeist and said,
there's some Spieldbergie in nineties kind of retro thing going on.
(20:05):
They hit pay dirt with Millie Bobby Brown, they brought
one own a rider back. They mixed up the stew
of things, and the data alone will not lead you
to that. So you need some people in the mix
who can also just read tea leaves and take a chance.
We're all looking for things that connect and work and hit,
(20:26):
and most of them don't. But that part of it
is I think essential in the mix too well. I
think that's sort of the heart of you know me,
I've used math and magic since I was in my twenties.
That the research tells us what the people are like,
where they're living, what their attitudes are present, tell us
what to do to excite them. Research is not policy making,
(20:47):
and I think we shared that way back when it's okay,
Now I got a picture for these parts. I got
a great idea. Let's do the last weekend with Van Halen.
Let's paint that house paint and get John Mellencamp to
to you know, give it away. Um. And I remember
listening to one of the writers sitting there one day saying,
I hate my miserable life. And we made it a contest.
(21:08):
If you hate your miserable life, sign up here, sign
up here, and we'll change it. Just hold on a second,
because we've got so much more to talk about. We'll
be back after a quick break. Welcome back to Matthew Magic.
We're here with Judy mcgram. We were talking about creatives
(21:31):
running companies. You're one of the few creatives that ran
a very big company. How do you think a company
differs when a creative runs the company than one of
the business people run the company, or the lawyer or
the accountant or the salesperson. You know, I was stuck
in a flight once with Jerry Labourne, who you know.
(21:53):
Queen Mother got us genius Bickelodeon and she said, you know, Judy,
you will never really be terrific at this until you
learn to look at business as creatively as you look
at creative And I really thought about that, you know,
and I set out to learn how to love a piano.
(22:17):
The business people in all of our companies are not
typical business people either. You know, there's creative thinking and everything.
I really do believe that I'm not one of those
people that thinks of creativities for the precious few. But
as I grew up through the ranks and I left
just managing all those wonderful, incredible creative people that I loved,
(22:39):
and I started to learn to fall in love with
Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, and you know, got the chance
to help create a safe and wonderful place for Jon
Stewart and you know, Dave Chappelle and John Oliver and
Colbert and all those great people. I started to think like,
my job now is to sort of protect and defend
(23:02):
the ability to create and innovate and take chances on people.
The business has to be sound, you know, the business
has to work. And I also always believed in know
your audience. So if I'm speaking to someone who's going
to be making a business decision. I need to be
able to speak to them in their language and not
in any way that sort of undermines or undercuts or
(23:25):
makes it sound like I don't understand what they need
to do as well. So I really came to wake
up one day and realize I really enjoy being the
business leader this company. Now too, were seduced. Yeah, we
were seduced. We were seduced. Although I did have a
funny moment. I remember saying to somebody, you know, God,
we really should get on the train and go to
(23:46):
Philadelphia and like sit down with Briant and say thank you.
And they were like, what, I'm not going to Philadelphia
and getting on a train and doing a sort of
like no, you're missing the point though. I mean they're
in this with us, right, you know, and they're funding us.
They're part of the mix. I value his view. I've
(24:07):
been around him, I've seen it. So I started to
see the creativity and value in the joy and trying
to figure out a business and make a business work. Obviously,
media is going through some heavy hard times. What isn't
It's battered around. It's crazy because ever thus, but I
think everybody who works someplace feels good when the business
(24:28):
is working. So you're trying to get shows on the area,
you're trying to make programming changes. You know, the tension.
You've got a seller sales head that says we need
this kind of programming because that's what advertisers want. Or
somebody says I've got this great show and the sales
head goes, that's terrible. No one wants that. What do
(24:48):
you do? I ran into this frequently, like, you know,
we can't sell south Park like guys, guys, you're not
selling south Park. You're selling like young men and young
women and a cultural phenomenon. They love this. They flock
to it. They it is the perfect commentary on the
(25:08):
times we live and it's so genius. You would be
so lucky to be near this. It's not about what
you're going to be afraid of in south Park. It's
going to be like, you want to talk to the
people who love south Park. I know you do, and
we've got them, and we love south Park. We'll love
it for you, but I can convince you that this
(25:30):
is exactly where you want to be, you know. And
at the same time, when Jon Stewart was really rolling
and every now and then somebody would say, oh God,
does he have to talk to the Iranian physicists talking
about nuclear and like leave him alone. Let him talk
to whomever he wants to talk to. He's curating this show.
We're on a journey with him. I don't need another
(25:52):
person to talk to the celebrity of the day. You know,
there's lots of that defend the talent and help the
sales organization or the clients see that what you really
want is a relationship with the fan, and the fan
is coming in through this door, and you want to
be near that door. You don't want to shut that door.
And how often did you have to go meet with client?
(26:13):
I did a lot of that, But you know the
problem with taking me on a client trip was, you know,
there were a multitude of issues sometimes. I mean there
was al I only like to travel, which is ridiculous.
I missed so much. Just a great, great guy. And
he invited me to lunch with a client for Taco
bell and during the lunch I said, you know, I'm
(26:34):
really curious, like what's your Facebook strategy? And he kicked
me so hard under the table I thought I was
never gonna walk again. Because in his view, he didn't
want to acknowledge there was anything else. I mean, like,
oh my god, this is about selling empty And she said,
you know, I still believe I saw more tacos to
(26:55):
people who were watching like Comedy Central and MTV. But
I'll tell you what I'm thinking about face And I thought, well,
this is like, this is acknowledging. I know that. You know,
there's lots of other things in the world. We're all
in the same media business. What are you thinking? What
are you doing? So, depending on the client, I would
be either a good date for the uh, you know,
(27:17):
they'd say, well, you did a great sale for Facebook,
thank you, we won't need to see you again. So
let me jump a little bit. You're a role model
for a lot of people, especially creatives always, but you've
been a great role model for women. If you think
about it, in the days of MTV, we're probably looking
back at an extraordinary number of women and very important roles.
(27:38):
Today would be growing about it probably, you know, whether
you like it or not, you have been mentoring people,
You've been setting an example. How do you handle that responsibility?
What do you do consciously about that? You know, I
can remember some things that just felt like personal milestones
to me. I remember when year sitting, you know, one
of the great fun things I got to do would
(27:59):
be hanging out in the rehearsals for the Video Music Awards,
And I was sitting there and I was thinking, Wow,
you know, we've got a female director, we have a
female on stage managing the crew. We have a young
woman who's the head writer. We have a young woman
in charge of seating and events. But we've got women
in roles that were not traditionally women's roles. They were
(28:23):
just really good. And I do think it's incumbent on
somebody who gets an opportunity, like I got to look
out for underrepresented people in general. And so you know,
when Beth McCarthy Miller raised her hand, was an easy like,
let's let Beth direct, come on, like, she can do it.
(28:44):
We know she can do it. Everybody knows she can
do it. And I looked around and thought, wow, this
whole thing is kind of really looking very different than
most of the other sets that I've been on. And
you know, I always felt like I worked with men
who are not like typical and young employees who are
not typical. So how ridiculous would it be to take
(29:07):
a typical approach to anything else. We were up ending
tradition all the time, and not just for the sake
of doing it, but because you get give somebody a chance,
they'll knock themselves out to show you that they could
really do it. And we actually talked about it back then.
We said, you know, if somebody has done three or
(29:27):
four things and they're not great, we have empirical evidence
they won't be great. But if we give somebody a
shot who's never done it, they could be the next
Steven Spielberg exactly. And the only we're gonna find out
is to take a shot. And you continue to do
that through your career. I'm most drawn to it. It's
what happened to me and I still feel it. At
lunch with a kid yesterday, I thought, oh my god,
I would hire this kid tomorrow. He's been teaching a
(29:50):
knife throwing class, but we might be doing improv. But
it was it was like he wants to be an
agent or something. I'm like, why not worse? You know,
so now they were not twenty something and you've got
experience under your belt. What are the two things that
you wish someone had told you about getting old. Oh god, well,
(30:14):
let's see, in spite of how old you may be,
if your heart and soul are young and youthful, don't
shy away from it and at the same time own
your experience and find a way to share it when
asked or even when not. Sitting next to young guy
who's running a company and he was looking at a
(30:35):
piece of piece of media and he said, that's boring.
That was it. And I watched the kid who had
showed it to and looked deflated. So I said, you know,
that's not really actionable advice my first editor who said
this is what a headline is. You could say, you know,
it drags in the middle, Like if I were you,
(30:56):
I would move this piece to the back. You could
try that, or you take it and go back and
think about where do you think it's slow and then
come back and show me. But this quick kind of
like just dismissive is not going to get you really
where you want to go, and he's just going to
think you're a jerk, and I give up. Okay, So
(31:17):
let's jump to you've always done good, rock the vote
jus or lose AIDS awareness. How did you think about
that inside of a company, and how do you think
of it for you as a as a person, Well,
you know, inside MTV it was very interesting. I once
heard Tina Fey say something about it was a panel
where a bunch of women were sort of congratulating each
(31:38):
other for different things, and someone said they were lucky,
and a bunch of other women jumped on her and said,
oh my god. Women always say they're lucky. Men never
say they're lucky. You made your own luck. And Tina
was actually very thoughtful about it, and she said, I
think timing plays a role in something as well as
luck and talent. So when we decided to get into,
(31:59):
you know, certainly Rock the Vote was not our idea.
Politics Jeff are off. So Jeff was very passionate about this,
and it's sort of grewing to Rock the Vote. And
I remember talking to Tom Preston, with whom I had
an extraordinarily great creative relationship, and this was one of
the rare instances where we had a blowout. Really we
(32:21):
really didn't agree, but I listened to what he said.
He said, this is a terrible idea. It's not gonna work.
This is an entertainment brand. Nobody cares about this. We're
gonna get laughed out of town. We do not have
permission to do this. There's nothing about us that says
we should be stepping anywhere near an election or voting
(32:43):
or any of this. So I went back and I
thought about it a little bit, and I thought, Okay,
this is where I come into the picture. I think
I grew up in an era where I thought music.
One of the many things I loved about music was
its social commentary, and it is about the times we
live in, and it is about every ing, and it's
about all the things that affect you in a very
deep way. And I thought, I think there's a way
(33:06):
to do this where it will be engaging. This was
not about telling young people you need to vote. That's
not the way I looked at it at all. It
was saying to people who make big decisions in this country,
this is a generation that is disengaged from you, and
you need to address them on their turf, their way,
and we'll invite you to do that. That's your shot.
(33:28):
It wasn't about trying to be parental or any of
that kind of stuff to them, or give them boring
facts or anything like that, and so we got as
smart as we could get. And I think I didn't
tell anybody. That's another thing. I sent Tabatha store and
Tabitha went to New Hampshire and she called me at
like midnight she said, you know, I got up here
(33:48):
in like a bunch of candidates are like, what's MTV?
And she said, and then a couple of them like
got back off the bus, primarily Bill Clinton, and said
I'll talk to you. And then we were sort of
off and running. And you know that partnered with incredible
creative work on those rock the Vote spots, I mean
Madonna wrapped in a flag, and then fast forward to
(34:09):
you know, we're gonna throw an inaugural ball that's not official,
and see if anybody comes to the party, and our
em is gonna play and and Vogue is gonna play.
We tried to make it as spirited as MTV, but
add a little bit of gravitas, if you will, and
meaning you know, like you do matter. You are young,
but you matter, and you deserve to be heard and
(34:29):
listen to, and we're going to help you. Well, it's
still held up is the example of the best way
to do it. So he did did a great job
with it, Judy, and it was fun. It was well
it shows too. So let me jump to CEO MTV
Networks board member Amazon. How do you contrast and compare
those two roles. To have it front row seat at
(34:53):
two phenomena in your lifetime is incredible, So I would
start there. But m WORD members are not operators, and
that's a hard thing to learn, you know. The tendency
to want to lean in and get it in is
very real. You're supposed to take the long view all
the time. And one of the things I love about Amazon,
(35:13):
which is very much like we were, is that they are,
as we all know, relentlessly customer focused, and they have
a list of tenants and principles and they live by
them and it is customer, customer, customer. And another one
I like is day one. They want you to feel
(35:34):
like this is the first day. This is a new idea.
What can we do today? It's different than what we
did yesterday, hence ALEXA, you know. So I find their
spirit of what can we invent is a major part
of their DNA and it moves fast, So in that
(35:55):
regard I relate very much to it. I think I'm
the sort of media person among the my colleagues. It's
a very small board. It's run in some unique ways.
Sometimes it's read this book and we're all going to
discuss it and see how this doesn't happen here. Two.
You know, everything they do they write as a paper
(36:18):
that you have to think about, and when you get
there to no power point, it's like, Okay, any questions,
let's get into it. So it's a culture that is
familiar to me from the media business, which is like,
let's get into it already, let's talk about it. Let's
like figure out what it is and at the same
time take the long view, you know, think about the customer.
(36:40):
There's an incredible guy in the board who I love
really very much, who runs the Cornell Tech Center. So
he's immersed, steeped, you knows everything about this kind of thing,
and he's trying to put humanities in tech together and
talk about ethics in one meeting. So I sometimes feel
like I'm speaking from a different elexa than the rest
through he said, you know, I really agree with Judy
(37:02):
and one thing value of talent scientists, technologists, adventures are talent.
They want to know that you are hearing their idea,
and you like their idea, and you're going to help
them nurture and foster their idea. So as much as
talent attraction to me was everything coming up through MTV
(37:24):
and Comedy Central Nickelodeon, talent is everything there as well.
You know, it's like, you want the best people, and
those people need to think that you understand them as talent.
They're really no different at the end of the day
than the original VJs. You know, our talent or the
musicians who absolutely incredibly, crazily love what they're doing. They
(37:47):
need to know that you understand that you value it.
And I think that's very much a part of why,
in spite of whatever you want to think or debate
about it, Amazon continues to just flourish, constant invention, reinvention,
focus on the best talent, focus on the best ideas,
make it easy for them to do it, give them
(38:09):
what they need to do it. I'm not afraid to
make mistakes, No, absolutely not. In fact, essential I think
we weren't either. There were so many. I mean, they
even make lists of stuff that didn't work and they say, hey,
you know it's okay, we'll move that team over here
and try something else. The worst thing is to not try.
So jumping off point Alexa smart speakers, audio podcast, sort
(38:34):
of the new audio renaissance. What do you think about it?
It was another one of those things. Dare I say,
like MTV when you think like, oh my god, Yeah,
that's what I was waiting for. You know, someone who
can play music for me and give me the weather
and the news, and is a voice and can talk
to me. I think it takes into account a lot
(38:55):
of the things we've been talking about. What makes somebody's
life easier, what makes it more fun, what helps connect
you to the stuff you want. Goes back to the
most basic thing radio, the sound of a voice in
the wilderness. That is the most human connection. So I
think all those smart devices are really tapping into some
(39:18):
basic human needs. We'll take our appreciation back to Amazon.
Everyone in the audio thinks Amazon has been a game
changer for us. It's the new clock radio of households.
Used to have a clock radio. Now it's but who cares?
Now there's Amazon, Now there's Alexa. We've got to the
clock radio back. We talked about contrarians, we talked about outsiders,
(39:40):
and we were early outsiders. I think the whole MTV
crew was, But today it seems like with all the startups,
everybody's an outsider, so hard to find the insiders. If
you want to be an insider, how the hell do
you get those skills? Where do you go? The beauty
of media today, whether it's a podcast or head talk
or whatever. You can dial up and teach yourself how
(40:04):
to do photoshop, or listen to Warren Buffett, or go
international and find someone who might have some wisdom that
comes from something completely different that can inform your thinking.
It's almost your responsibility. You can say, I'm not just
gonna listen to slow Burn. I'm going to try something
completely different and see what I take out of that,
(40:26):
and it can help inform your idea and make it
more likely to succeed, I would say. And yet I
still find that I loved the era of magazine writers
who I thought really knew something I didn't know and
could tell me a story in a way that I
couldn't tell it. And I still search for those voices
(40:48):
and those people, and I think there are lots of
them out there. So I think you have to search
out your own contrarians. So let me jump one more place.
We're in a world of this incredibly fragmented information, entertainment
everything for everybody. We ever build another cable network, is
there any audience out there that's unserved? Anybody looking for
(41:08):
a linear TV channel? You know? That is really one
of the That is one of the questions, seems to me.
When you can have everything, you start to want something's
curated for you. There's a reason why rap caviare hit
everybody like a lightning. You know what I mean when
(41:28):
you think about radio has been around forever. When you
first said I heart radio, I was thinking, like I
heart radio, and then I started to think about like
I do love radio. I do heart radio. You know,
I want someone to help me find my way through
all of this stuff. I still believe there's a rule
for somebody to curate for me this massive sea of
(41:53):
choice and help me navigate, while I also have the
freedom to discover on my own. So that's why you
begin to trust brands, you know, Like I trust an
event on iHeart Radio. I trust it's gonna have the
zeitgeist in mind. I trust when I look for something
on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu that there's gonna
(42:15):
be something in there. They know that I like Handmaid's Tale,
and they do. They're gonna find something for me. So
is there going to be another single point of entry?
I mean, look, we grew up in an era where
everybody was arguing about Vietnam. Now it's like there's so
many different things to debate it can be overwhelming. So
I still look to the curators and I still think
(42:38):
there's probably room for an idea that none of us
have thought of yet, and we're all gonna go like,
oh my god, why didn't we think of that? Okay,
so we're gonna end it back on Mathew Magic. Best mathematician,
you know, I would say my friend Dan who started
the croneal Tech Center. Best magician, you know, not counting you,
you know, I still have to give it up to
(42:58):
early MTV, you, Tom Bob, and pretty much any musician
it's a magician. Thanks Judy, Thank you always fun. Here's
a couple of things I take away from this episode
with Judy. It might be easier to just fix your
(43:18):
employees work yourself, but if you want them to grow,
take the time to teach them. It will benefit you
down the line. When advertisers are skittish of being associated
with certain content. Show them the relationship they want is
not with the content, but with the fan who likes
the content. And finally, if you want your business to
up end the traditional don't hire typical people. Judy is
(43:41):
looking at hiring Knife Thrones. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
That's it today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to
(44:02):
Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. The
show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue
Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
no small feat Nikkiatore for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Azar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
(44:22):
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic production. I heart radio.
When I joined, I didn't know anything about television. I
didn't even like it. My interview was with Fred who said, so,
what kind of music do you like? And I think
I said Bruce Springsteen. He said, well, you're wrong, and
I'll tell you why. And then about forty five minutes
(00:23):
later I left, not having said anything else. And the
next thing I know, they were like, look, this is
just a few of us. We're trying to get this
thing going. If you'd like to join, And it was
kind of like, how fast can I get out the
door of Conde Nas and jump on this thing? Whatever
it is? These people are crazy. I'm Bob Pittman and
(00:48):
welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing.
Hard to believe, but my last three guests have all
canceled at the last minute because of the flu. But
this week we're gonna give you another best of, and
the best of about creativity and managing for innovation. It's
from one of the original crew at MTV who later
became the chair and CEO of MTV Networks and Well,
(01:11):
by the way, she's also on the Amazon Board of Directors.
Judy McGrath Enjoy. Judy is an old old Palamine. We
started at MTV in those early days when we were
the twenties something crowd. She has done an awful lot.
(01:32):
She started in MTV and worked her way all the
way up to CEO of MTV Networks, which included Nickelodeon
a bunch of other networks. She is a role model
for creatives, women and people from little small towns in Pennsylvania.
Also as a board member at Amazon, which has to
be a treat into itself. Judy is well known as
(01:53):
a magician and probably not as well known and not
appreciate as much as being a pretty good mathematician too.
You made some really hard business decisions as well. So
I want to jump into all that, But first I
want to do you in sixties seconds. Are you ready? Ready?
Do you prefer catch or dogs? Dogs, beetles or stones both? Oh? No, Okay,
(02:14):
Taylor or Kanye Kanye, East Coast or West Coast Coast,
MTV or v H one one early nineties. Ah, that's
pretty good. Okay, beavas or butt head Daria. Oh, that's
why you're creative. You're the off beat. Okay, favorite city,
New York Secret Talent piano plate. I didn't know that.
(02:37):
Would you eat for breakfast? Coffee? Coffee, coffee, and more coffee.
What would you eat for your last meal? Don't say coffee.
I would have a peanut butter sandwich with my daughter
and my husband's childhood hero, Believe it or not, Leonard Bernstein.
I wanted to conduct an orchestra. Favorite TV show, The
Americans historical idol, one of the Bronte sisters, any of them?
(02:59):
I read, Jane, are twenty five times worst fat or
fashion trend you've participated in or that you saw an
MTV super big power shouldered jackets. You looked a great
at it. By the way, what did you want to
be when you were growing up? A reporter? What's one
(03:19):
food you'd never eat? Hua gras. What are you most
proud of early days of MTV? What are you listening to?
Our watching right now? Listening? Oh, listening? I love listening.
Oh you know slow Burn, a lot of the news ones,
the Daily Vox, Bob Pittman's podcast. Yeah, you know. I
still primarily listen to music, and that's my favorite thing.
(03:41):
That's cool. Let's jump into you. Scranton, Pennsylvania, Scranton, Pennsylvania,
small town. I went to college and still in Pennsylvania, Allentown, Pennsylvania,
so you couldn't get out of the state. What influence
did that have on you? You and I've talked about
parents before in the past, and you had some fabulous parents.
Tell me about how they influence you. My dad loved music,
(04:03):
and so growing up in a town like Scranton, let's
just say, the musical tastes were probably what you might
expect from that old time ethnicity. But my dad loved jazz,
and he played Duke Ellington and Earl Hines and Sara
Vaughan and all this great stuff all the time. And
he would hang over the you know, the little crappy
(04:23):
turntable and dropped the needle and have a cigarette. And
he grabbed me by my school uniform and say, listen
to this. Take the a train. And I would think
this is incomprehensible, speaks no sense to me, and I
have no idea what this is, but he's madly in
love with it. And so when I finally started bringing
music home, my music stones, you know the doors, the Beatles,
(04:44):
he wanted to listen with me, which I did not
want at all. But when I think about some of
the things he said, he thought, dare I say the
Beatles were pop crap? And that the Stones were blues,
you know, and the Charlie Watts was a big band
drum right. It was a way to have relationship with him.
I remember thinking later he had a passion that was
(05:04):
separate from family and work, and I really wanted that
for myself. What really motivated me, though, was I had
a sense from reading like Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone and
listening to music that there was a tribe of people
somewhere that were my tribe and I couldn't find them
where I was. And if I could find them, and
(05:24):
if I could have a part of anything they were doing,
I would be all in. And to me, that was
like the dream was in New York City, which my parents,
friends and neighbors felt like I was moving to Moscow
or Brussels or someplace. It seemed like New York City.
It's impossible. You can't do that. No one does that.
(05:46):
So it sounds like you didn't have family connections, So
how on earth did you get the Conde nast. My
mother was like definitely a feminist before her time, and
it was like, go, go go, you can do what
you can do it. When I came to New York,
I thought I cannot walk into Conde Nast. I look
like I just fell off the cold truck. I mean,
this is I don't have the nerve. And she's like,
go in there, do it. You know something will happen
(06:07):
if it doesn't. Try again. She was one of these
people who always said perseverance is an underrated virtue, and
I think she was right about that. Interestingly, I did
not have a Double Wares product experience in Conde Nest
at all. I think I did a little bit of
research and I was a big magazine fan. Before I
get to Rolling Stone, my ultimate goal. I wonder if
(06:28):
I could possibly get in the door of one of
these magazines. Is there anyway? So I made this dummy magazine.
I went in and I went into personnel as they
called it in those days, and this very nice older
woman really did not want to deal with me, and
she said, well, there's a copy test for a magazine
called Mademoiselle that you can take. And I said, would
(06:49):
you mind telling me what the compensation is? Since I
just literally got off the bus and she said, dere
you need to ask that question. You can't afford to
work here. I went home, I took the copy test,
I passed, and I walked through the doors and thought, wow,
you could literally tell who worked at which magazine by
what they were wearing, eating, saying, drinking and where they
(07:10):
were clubbing. And you could pick all that up just
from the lobby. So Mademoiselle, which is no more, it
was kind of the smart girl magazine at the time.
You know, fran Leebowitz was a columnist, and some of
the early sort of the pre Martha Steward people, Mary
and were laying and there were just tons of people there.
I made some of the best friends in my life there,
(07:30):
who eventually led me to you and MTV. And I
got in there and I just would stay up till
four in the morning writing and rewriting these ridiculous things
like women who love men who hate women and why
and models, party tips and whatever it was. I just
gave it my all. I was so thrilled to be there,
and I think I sucked up everything. And what I
(07:52):
also observed was brand. I mean, those magazines have very
clearly defined brands and do not veer off that path.
Alexander Lieberman would come in and look at a display
and say, that's not bog, that's not Glamour, that's not Mademoiselle,
and he would be right. And it was that thing
(08:13):
of learning about what is it that makes this thing
important to somebody? What is it that defines this versus
everything else. You have a story about one of the
editors that you said you wrote something and basically she said, yes,
that won't do. That's one of my favorite stories that
you've ever told. Well, I had a wonderful editor, Karen Andrew.
(08:33):
I get Mademoiselle. I killed myself writing something and she
called me in and she said this is really not good.
And I was devastated. I mean, I thought, oh my god,
I've spent my whole life trying to get a foot
in this door. And then she said, you know, I
think you can do this, but this is really it.
So I'm going to show you how to construct something good,
(08:56):
and I'm going to give you one chance to go
back and do that, and then we'll take a look
and if it's not good, we're going to have a
very different conversation. So here's what a headline is. Here's
what a grabby is. Here's what you know. The middle
of the story is supposed to be tell him what
you're gonna tell him? Well, ballot, So I went back.
(09:17):
I thought about her very clear, very architectural, if you will, feedback,
and also the fact that she said, I think you
can do this, but I'm not sure. And um, when
I turned it in the rewritch, I didn't hear from her.
And then she came out and said, it's it's really good.
It's very good. You got it. Wow. You know, Harvard
(09:39):
Business Review just had a story which we sent around
in the office about innovation and company culture and how
you innovate. I thought of the story actually which I
brought it up, and one of the things that pointed
out he said that actually candor works, not niceness. She
was very direct, and you know it was candor. The
best favor someone can do for you is just tell
you that. It felt like a real jolt. In contrast,
(10:03):
I worked at Glamor for a while, which was a
great magazine. I worked for an editor who would you
turn something in, she would rewrite it all over it
and send it out to you via assistant, demoralizing learned nothing,
start to think like, why don't you just write it yourself,
you know, like a Braddy twenty something would, But you know,
(10:24):
the candor the directness. I appreciate it. You've always been
a great coach, and you've been thought of as a
great coach, especially for creative people. Did it come from this?
Did you take that lesson with you? I think I
definitely took that lesson with me. I don't think I'm
quite as candid as Karen was, But a creative person
does need guardrails and does like some sort of directional feedback.
(10:49):
They don't just want to rubber stamp, even if they
think they do. I thought about a few things. I
mean that the beauty and the wonder of MTV was
that it was really filled with people that I thought
it could not find gainful employment anywhere else. It would
be somebody who had never really shot anything and just
(11:09):
wanted to get their hands on of came and try it.
And we were willing to do that, but we were
willing to do it against a set of promises we
were making to the fans, to the audience, to the viewers,
to the consumers, to the users. So I would say absolutely,
but remember, don't fall in love with your own idea.
This is about someone else, not you. This is about
(11:32):
the person on the other side. Who are they, Who
are you trying to communicate with? What's different about them
today than yesterday? They're like you. But you can't make
this just for you. And there are really no other
rules aside from you know, no full frontal nudity. Go
out there and do it. And it was so much
fun to have the freedom to meet people who were
(11:55):
far more creative than I was. I began to see
I was sort of a better editor code than I
was a player. So many great people got opportunity through
that company, Quirky people like Marcy Braffman, who was there
when I got there, People like John Sykes who could
step out there and ask anybody to do anything, you know,
(12:15):
and just make you want to join the party. And
you know, Ted Demi and Mark Palin's and all these
great people coming in. Fred Cybert here sorry, he was
the person who invented the graphic look of MTV. He
came from radio. He was the promotion director to a
radio station and he was in charge of the visual
well exactly. And I think we were so snotty that
I remember thinking like, I don't want to hire anybody
(12:38):
who worked at an advertising agency or a television network
or magazine. I mean, when I joined, I didn't know
anything about television. I didn't even like it. My interview
was with Fred, who said, so, what kind of music
do you like? And I think I said Bruce Springsteen,
I'm not sure. He said, well, you're wrong, and I'll
tell you why. And then about forty five minutes later,
(12:59):
I left, not having said anything else. And the next
thing I know, they were like, well, you know, look,
this is just a few of us were trying to
get this thing going if you'd like to join, And
it was kind of like, how fast can I get
out the door of Conde Nass and jump on this thing,
whatever it is? How did you get over? I had
some friends who came to work for you. They said, well,
(13:21):
they're starting this thing. It's going to be music on
television and it's I don't even know what it is.
It's three minute clips. And when I think about it now,
I I had another Conde Nass moment that was also instructive.
So many people at Conde Nast were opposed to it.
It was like I was telling them I was joining
(13:41):
the circus or something. If I had said I was.
If I said, well, I'm gonna be Diane Sawyer's p
A or something like that, I think they would have
felt they were like cable television music video clips. If
you stayed here for twenty five years, you could be
managing editor. I think I'm not even thinking about that.
So I thought, well, if this many people think it's
a bad idea, I'm definitely gonna do it. I mean,
(14:04):
it has to be a good idea. You know. I've
just found the camaraderie and the purpose and the sheer
invention of something that didn't exist, so irresistible. And again
on the math side of it, I was saying, I
mean this with all sincerity. You had a map in
(14:24):
the creative group. You had a plan, and the plan
were promises, and I loved that. I am making a
promise to you. If you sit here, I'm going to
deliver something that you've been waiting for. It is the
first music television network. It is exactly for you. And
I thought, wow, I want my m t V. It's
(14:45):
not distributed in Manhattan. I have no idea what it is,
but those are powerful words. My in it in an
era before social media and social engagement. Something for me
that felt like mine and want what a powerful word, right,
I want my MTV. I took that very seriously. I
(15:06):
took those promises to heart. Twenty four hours a day
terrific in stereo? Not really, but you know, hey, it's
Mark sounded it sounded good for those ten people who
did have stereot I remember you saying to me, we
want people to think it sounds better than regular television,
and they did. It just felt to me like if
I could marry all the things I'm interested in with
(15:29):
these set of principles and join this crazy band of
people who have no right and a lot of audacity
in a firm belief that this can work, I mean,
what a gift. I never looked back, not one second.
You know, we used to say back then that all
of us were doing jobs we had never done before. Yes,
(15:51):
so we didn't really know what we weren't supposed to do.
I saw some interview a year or so ago with
Mark Zuckerberg, and the essence of it was he didn't
value experience at all. He valued vision, smarts, etcetera. And
and I thought about it, actually said, you know, in
those days, we were the twenties something crowd. You and
I are the same age with not twenty something anymore, unfortunately,
(16:12):
but we didn't value experience. A matter of fact, people
had experience, we thought that was some excuse for them
trying to be relevant, and it was a negative. Well,
now we're at this age where we are full of
experience and maybe not the share creativity who once had.
Do you think experience has a role that we didn't
appreciate when we were in your twenties. It's hard to
answer that question without stepping outside yourself. You know, as
(16:33):
I said, like you, I never wanted to be away
from young adult culture, and even if I felt like
a vampire at times, I thought, you know, I need
to be near this. And as I've spent time around
subsequent generations from hours, I thought, oh my god, they
are so much more equipped than we were two change
(16:57):
the world. I mean, there's so many more tools, so
much data that we never had. There's so many wonderful
things about who they are. And at the same time,
there's some things about our unconventional experience. I mean, let's
face it, we're experienced, but we're not exactly you know,
we didn't work at IBM. We didn't work at IBM.
(17:19):
I mean, you know, I can still. I have nieces
and nephews who look at me and they're like, you
know who post malone is? They assume I do, and
I do, but do my friends? Now? You know, we
had such a great period of being able to be
young and inexperienced and devoted and into it before I
feel like I'm looking at some of these smaller companies
(17:39):
they start building corporate over structures. And I was just
talking to a group. I said, so, what's your like mission,
what's your vision? And they said mobile first, and I thought, okay,
I mean yes, but what isn't really that doesn't make
me want to get up in the morning and everything
(17:59):
is that to me? It's like, yes, but what is
it about you? What do you know about that person
who's going to share what you do today or listen
or care or what is it about you? I started
to think that my style was out of style or
your style, you know that creatively, lad anything was out
(18:20):
of style, that it was really only about left brain,
it was only about math for a minute. But the
truth is now you can have an incredible marriage of
both even more than we were able to. And let's
face it, one of the things that I admired and
valued in MTV was research. But it wasn't focus groups.
(18:40):
It was what's going on in your life that influences
you and makes you who you are and determines what
you like. It was like qualitative research. Right, there's as
much data as we could get about who loves MTV,
who might like it, who could love it some more.
So that was important. That was very important, but it's
(19:00):
not the only thing, and it can't be the dominant thing,
you know. We did do a concept test of MTV,
if you remember, the board of directors did not want
to do this idea. So I had this idea that
we would get a polster to do a concept test,
and it came back really great, like I like that,
I'd listen to that or watch that channel, And we
used that in the board presentation and finally the board
(19:21):
didn't say yes. Steve were also around Warners and Jim
Robinson run American Express had to getting room and say yes.
But I do think that a little bit of research
made them feel better than a bunch of twenty year
old saying, hey, we got a great idea here, let
us at it. Someone was talking to me about the
incredible data Netflix and the fact that they used data
for casting and everything else, and I said, yes, I
(19:44):
think that is fantastic. I wish I had had it.
It's incredible. But I still believe there's somebody at Netflix
who read a script from the Duffer Brothers for Stranger Things.
They stuck their finger up and read the Zeitgeist and said,
there's some Spieldbergie in nineties kind of retro thing going on.
(20:05):
They hit pay dirt with Millie Bobby Brown, they brought
one own a rider back. They mixed up the stew
of things, and the data alone will not lead you
to that. So you need some people in the mix
who can also just read tea leaves and take a chance.
We're all looking for things that connect and work and hit,
(20:26):
and most of them don't. But that part of it
is I think essential in the mix too well. I
think that's sort of the heart of you know me,
I've used math and magic since I was in my twenties.
That the research tells us what the people are like,
where they're living, what their attitudes are present, tell us
what to do to excite them. Research is not policy making,
(20:47):
and I think we shared that way back when it's okay,
Now I got a picture for these parts. I got
a great idea. Let's do the last weekend with Van Halen.
Let's paint that house paint and get John Mellencamp to
to you know, give it away. Um. And I remember
listening to one of the writers sitting there one day saying,
I hate my miserable life. And we made it a contest.
(21:08):
If you hate your miserable life, sign up here, sign
up here, and we'll change it. Just hold on a second,
because we've got so much more to talk about. We'll
be back after a quick break. Welcome back to Matthew Magic.
We're here with Judy mcgram. We were talking about creatives
(21:31):
running companies. You're one of the few creatives that ran
a very big company. How do you think a company
differs when a creative runs the company than one of
the business people run the company, or the lawyer or
the accountant or the salesperson. You know, I was stuck
in a flight once with Jerry Labourne, who you know.
(21:53):
Queen Mother got us genius Bickelodeon and she said, you know, Judy,
you will never really be terrific at this until you
learn to look at business as creatively as you look
at creative And I really thought about that, you know,
and I set out to learn how to love a piano.
(22:17):
The business people in all of our companies are not
typical business people either. You know, there's creative thinking and everything.
I really do believe that I'm not one of those
people that thinks of creativities for the precious few. But
as I grew up through the ranks and I left
just managing all those wonderful, incredible creative people that I loved,
(22:39):
and I started to learn to fall in love with
Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, and you know, got the chance
to help create a safe and wonderful place for Jon
Stewart and you know, Dave Chappelle and John Oliver and
Colbert and all those great people. I started to think like,
my job now is to sort of protect and defend
(23:02):
the ability to create and innovate and take chances on people.
The business has to be sound, you know, the business
has to work. And I also always believed in know
your audience. So if I'm speaking to someone who's going
to be making a business decision. I need to be
able to speak to them in their language and not
in any way that sort of undermines or undercuts or
(23:25):
makes it sound like I don't understand what they need
to do as well. So I really came to wake
up one day and realize I really enjoy being the
business leader this company. Now too, were seduced. Yeah, we
were seduced. We were seduced. Although I did have a
funny moment. I remember saying to somebody, you know, God,
we really should get on the train and go to
(23:46):
Philadelphia and like sit down with Briant and say thank you.
And they were like, what, I'm not going to Philadelphia
and getting on a train and doing a sort of
like no, you're missing the point though. I mean they're
in this with us, right, you know, and they're funding us.
They're part of the mix. I value his view. I've
(24:07):
been around him, I've seen it. So I started to
see the creativity and value in the joy and trying
to figure out a business and make a business work. Obviously,
media is going through some heavy hard times. What isn't
It's battered around. It's crazy because ever thus, but I
think everybody who works someplace feels good when the business
(24:28):
is working. So you're trying to get shows on the area,
you're trying to make programming changes. You know, the tension.
You've got a seller sales head that says we need
this kind of programming because that's what advertisers want. Or
somebody says I've got this great show and the sales
head goes, that's terrible. No one wants that. What do
(24:48):
you do? I ran into this frequently, like, you know,
we can't sell south Park like guys, guys, you're not
selling south Park. You're selling like young men and young
women and a cultural phenomenon. They love this. They flock
to it. They it is the perfect commentary on the
(25:08):
times we live and it's so genius. You would be
so lucky to be near this. It's not about what
you're going to be afraid of in south Park. It's
going to be like, you want to talk to the
people who love south Park. I know you do, and
we've got them, and we love south Park. We'll love
it for you, but I can convince you that this
(25:30):
is exactly where you want to be, you know. And
at the same time, when Jon Stewart was really rolling
and every now and then somebody would say, oh God,
does he have to talk to the Iranian physicists talking
about nuclear and like leave him alone. Let him talk
to whomever he wants to talk to. He's curating this show.
We're on a journey with him. I don't need another
(25:52):
person to talk to the celebrity of the day. You know,
there's lots of that defend the talent and help the
sales organization or the clients see that what you really
want is a relationship with the fan, and the fan
is coming in through this door, and you want to
be near that door. You don't want to shut that door.
And how often did you have to go meet with client?
(26:13):
I did a lot of that, But you know the
problem with taking me on a client trip was, you know,
there were a multitude of issues sometimes. I mean there
was al I only like to travel, which is ridiculous.
I missed so much. Just a great, great guy. And
he invited me to lunch with a client for Taco
bell and during the lunch I said, you know, I'm
(26:34):
really curious, like what's your Facebook strategy? And he kicked
me so hard under the table I thought I was
never gonna walk again. Because in his view, he didn't
want to acknowledge there was anything else. I mean, like,
oh my god, this is about selling empty And she said,
you know, I still believe I saw more tacos to
(26:55):
people who were watching like Comedy Central and MTV. But
I'll tell you what I'm thinking about face And I thought, well,
this is like, this is acknowledging. I know that. You know,
there's lots of other things in the world. We're all
in the same media business. What are you thinking? What
are you doing? So, depending on the client, I would
be either a good date for the uh, you know,
(27:17):
they'd say, well, you did a great sale for Facebook,
thank you, we won't need to see you again. So
let me jump a little bit. You're a role model
for a lot of people, especially creatives always, but you've
been a great role model for women. If you think
about it, in the days of MTV, we're probably looking
back at an extraordinary number of women and very important roles.
(27:38):
Today would be growing about it probably, you know, whether
you like it or not, you have been mentoring people,
You've been setting an example. How do you handle that responsibility?
What do you do consciously about that? You know, I
can remember some things that just felt like personal milestones
to me. I remember when year sitting, you know, one
of the great fun things I got to do would
(27:59):
be hanging out in the rehearsals for the Video Music Awards,
And I was sitting there and I was thinking, Wow,
you know, we've got a female director, we have a
female on stage managing the crew. We have a young
woman who's the head writer. We have a young woman
in charge of seating and events. But we've got women
in roles that were not traditionally women's roles. They were
(28:23):
just really good. And I do think it's incumbent on
somebody who gets an opportunity, like I got to look
out for underrepresented people in general. And so you know,
when Beth McCarthy Miller raised her hand, was an easy like,
let's let Beth direct, come on, like, she can do it.
(28:44):
We know she can do it. Everybody knows she can
do it. And I looked around and thought, wow, this
whole thing is kind of really looking very different than
most of the other sets that I've been on. And
you know, I always felt like I worked with men
who are not like typical and young employees who are
not typical. So how ridiculous would it be to take
(29:07):
a typical approach to anything else. We were up ending
tradition all the time, and not just for the sake
of doing it, but because you get give somebody a chance,
they'll knock themselves out to show you that they could
really do it. And we actually talked about it back then.
We said, you know, if somebody has done three or
(29:27):
four things and they're not great, we have empirical evidence
they won't be great. But if we give somebody a
shot who's never done it, they could be the next
Steven Spielberg exactly. And the only we're gonna find out
is to take a shot. And you continue to do
that through your career. I'm most drawn to it. It's
what happened to me and I still feel it. At
lunch with a kid yesterday, I thought, oh my god,
I would hire this kid tomorrow. He's been teaching a
(29:50):
knife throwing class, but we might be doing improv. But
it was it was like he wants to be an
agent or something. I'm like, why not worse? You know,
so now they were not twenty something and you've got
experience under your belt. What are the two things that
you wish someone had told you about getting old. Oh god, well,
(30:14):
let's see, in spite of how old you may be,
if your heart and soul are young and youthful, don't
shy away from it and at the same time own
your experience and find a way to share it when
asked or even when not. Sitting next to young guy
who's running a company and he was looking at a
(30:35):
piece of piece of media and he said, that's boring.
That was it. And I watched the kid who had
showed it to and looked deflated. So I said, you know,
that's not really actionable advice my first editor who said
this is what a headline is. You could say, you know,
it drags in the middle, Like if I were you,
(30:56):
I would move this piece to the back. You could
try that, or you take it and go back and
think about where do you think it's slow and then
come back and show me. But this quick kind of
like just dismissive is not going to get you really
where you want to go, and he's just going to
think you're a jerk, and I give up. Okay, So
(31:17):
let's jump to you've always done good, rock the vote
jus or lose AIDS awareness. How did you think about
that inside of a company, and how do you think
of it for you as a as a person, Well,
you know, inside MTV it was very interesting. I once
heard Tina Fey say something about it was a panel
where a bunch of women were sort of congratulating each
(31:38):
other for different things, and someone said they were lucky,
and a bunch of other women jumped on her and said,
oh my god. Women always say they're lucky. Men never
say they're lucky. You made your own luck. And Tina
was actually very thoughtful about it, and she said, I
think timing plays a role in something as well as
luck and talent. So when we decided to get into,
(31:59):
you know, certainly Rock the Vote was not our idea.
Politics Jeff are off. So Jeff was very passionate about this,
and it's sort of grewing to Rock the Vote. And
I remember talking to Tom Preston, with whom I had
an extraordinarily great creative relationship, and this was one of
the rare instances where we had a blowout. Really we
(32:21):
really didn't agree, but I listened to what he said.
He said, this is a terrible idea. It's not gonna work.
This is an entertainment brand. Nobody cares about this. We're
gonna get laughed out of town. We do not have
permission to do this. There's nothing about us that says
we should be stepping anywhere near an election or voting
(32:43):
or any of this. So I went back and I
thought about it a little bit, and I thought, Okay,
this is where I come into the picture. I think
I grew up in an era where I thought music.
One of the many things I loved about music was
its social commentary, and it is about the times we
live in, and it is about every ing, and it's
about all the things that affect you in a very
deep way. And I thought, I think there's a way
(33:06):
to do this where it will be engaging. This was
not about telling young people you need to vote. That's
not the way I looked at it at all. It
was saying to people who make big decisions in this country,
this is a generation that is disengaged from you, and
you need to address them on their turf, their way,
and we'll invite you to do that. That's your shot.
(33:28):
It wasn't about trying to be parental or any of
that kind of stuff to them, or give them boring
facts or anything like that, and so we got as
smart as we could get. And I think I didn't
tell anybody. That's another thing. I sent Tabatha store and
Tabitha went to New Hampshire and she called me at
like midnight she said, you know, I got up here
(33:48):
in like a bunch of candidates are like, what's MTV?
And she said, and then a couple of them like
got back off the bus, primarily Bill Clinton, and said
I'll talk to you. And then we were sort of
off and running. And you know that partnered with incredible
creative work on those rock the Vote spots, I mean
Madonna wrapped in a flag, and then fast forward to
(34:09):
you know, we're gonna throw an inaugural ball that's not official,
and see if anybody comes to the party, and our
em is gonna play and and Vogue is gonna play.
We tried to make it as spirited as MTV, but
add a little bit of gravitas, if you will, and
meaning you know, like you do matter. You are young,
but you matter, and you deserve to be heard and
(34:29):
listen to, and we're going to help you. Well, it's
still held up is the example of the best way
to do it. So he did did a great job
with it, Judy, and it was fun. It was well
it shows too. So let me jump to CEO MTV
Networks board member Amazon. How do you contrast and compare
those two roles. To have it front row seat at
(34:53):
two phenomena in your lifetime is incredible, So I would
start there. But m WORD members are not operators, and
that's a hard thing to learn, you know. The tendency
to want to lean in and get it in is
very real. You're supposed to take the long view all
the time. And one of the things I love about Amazon,
(35:13):
which is very much like we were, is that they are,
as we all know, relentlessly customer focused, and they have
a list of tenants and principles and they live by
them and it is customer, customer, customer. And another one
I like is day one. They want you to feel
(35:34):
like this is the first day. This is a new idea.
What can we do today? It's different than what we
did yesterday, hence ALEXA, you know. So I find their
spirit of what can we invent is a major part
of their DNA and it moves fast, So in that
(35:55):
regard I relate very much to it. I think I'm
the sort of media person among the my colleagues. It's
a very small board. It's run in some unique ways.
Sometimes it's read this book and we're all going to
discuss it and see how this doesn't happen here. Two.
You know, everything they do they write as a paper
(36:18):
that you have to think about, and when you get
there to no power point, it's like, Okay, any questions,
let's get into it. So it's a culture that is
familiar to me from the media business, which is like,
let's get into it already, let's talk about it. Let's
like figure out what it is and at the same
time take the long view, you know, think about the customer.
(36:40):
There's an incredible guy in the board who I love
really very much, who runs the Cornell Tech Center. So
he's immersed, steeped, you knows everything about this kind of thing,
and he's trying to put humanities in tech together and
talk about ethics in one meeting. So I sometimes feel
like I'm speaking from a different elexa than the rest
through he said, you know, I really agree with Judy
(37:02):
and one thing value of talent scientists, technologists, adventures are talent.
They want to know that you are hearing their idea,
and you like their idea, and you're going to help
them nurture and foster their idea. So as much as
talent attraction to me was everything coming up through MTV
(37:24):
and Comedy Central Nickelodeon, talent is everything there as well.
You know, it's like, you want the best people, and
those people need to think that you understand them as talent.
They're really no different at the end of the day
than the original VJs. You know, our talent or the
musicians who absolutely incredibly, crazily love what they're doing. They
(37:47):
need to know that you understand that you value it.
And I think that's very much a part of why,
in spite of whatever you want to think or debate
about it, Amazon continues to just flourish, constant invention, reinvention,
focus on the best talent, focus on the best ideas,
make it easy for them to do it, give them
(38:09):
what they need to do it. I'm not afraid to
make mistakes, No, absolutely not. In fact, essential I think
we weren't either. There were so many. I mean, they
even make lists of stuff that didn't work and they say, hey,
you know it's okay, we'll move that team over here
and try something else. The worst thing is to not try.
So jumping off point Alexa smart speakers, audio podcast, sort
(38:34):
of the new audio renaissance. What do you think about it?
It was another one of those things. Dare I say,
like MTV when you think like, oh my god, Yeah,
that's what I was waiting for. You know, someone who
can play music for me and give me the weather
and the news, and is a voice and can talk
to me. I think it takes into account a lot
(38:55):
of the things we've been talking about. What makes somebody's
life easier, what makes it more fun, what helps connect
you to the stuff you want. Goes back to the
most basic thing radio, the sound of a voice in
the wilderness. That is the most human connection. So I
think all those smart devices are really tapping into some
(39:18):
basic human needs. We'll take our appreciation back to Amazon.
Everyone in the audio thinks Amazon has been a game
changer for us. It's the new clock radio of households.
Used to have a clock radio. Now it's but who cares?
Now there's Amazon, Now there's Alexa. We've got to the
clock radio back. We talked about contrarians, we talked about outsiders,
(39:40):
and we were early outsiders. I think the whole MTV
crew was, But today it seems like with all the startups,
everybody's an outsider, so hard to find the insiders. If
you want to be an insider, how the hell do
you get those skills? Where do you go? The beauty
of media today, whether it's a podcast or head talk
or whatever. You can dial up and teach yourself how
(40:04):
to do photoshop, or listen to Warren Buffett, or go
international and find someone who might have some wisdom that
comes from something completely different that can inform your thinking.
It's almost your responsibility. You can say, I'm not just
gonna listen to slow Burn. I'm going to try something
completely different and see what I take out of that,
(40:26):
and it can help inform your idea and make it
more likely to succeed, I would say. And yet I
still find that I loved the era of magazine writers
who I thought really knew something I didn't know and
could tell me a story in a way that I
couldn't tell it. And I still search for those voices
(40:48):
and those people, and I think there are lots of
them out there. So I think you have to search
out your own contrarians. So let me jump one more place.
We're in a world of this incredibly fragmented information, entertainment
everything for everybody. We ever build another cable network, is
there any audience out there that's unserved? Anybody looking for
(41:08):
a linear TV channel? You know? That is really one
of the That is one of the questions, seems to me.
When you can have everything, you start to want something's
curated for you. There's a reason why rap caviare hit
everybody like a lightning. You know what I mean when
(41:28):
you think about radio has been around forever. When you
first said I heart radio, I was thinking, like I
heart radio, and then I started to think about like
I do love radio. I do heart radio. You know,
I want someone to help me find my way through
all of this stuff. I still believe there's a rule
for somebody to curate for me this massive sea of
(41:53):
choice and help me navigate, while I also have the
freedom to discover on my own. So that's why you
begin to trust brands, you know, Like I trust an
event on iHeart Radio. I trust it's gonna have the
zeitgeist in mind. I trust when I look for something
on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu that there's gonna
(42:15):
be something in there. They know that I like Handmaid's Tale,
and they do. They're gonna find something for me. So
is there going to be another single point of entry?
I mean, look, we grew up in an era where
everybody was arguing about Vietnam. Now it's like there's so
many different things to debate it can be overwhelming. So
I still look to the curators and I still think
(42:38):
there's probably room for an idea that none of us
have thought of yet, and we're all gonna go like,
oh my god, why didn't we think of that? Okay,
so we're gonna end it back on Mathew Magic. Best mathematician,
you know, I would say my friend Dan who started
the croneal Tech Center. Best magician, you know, not counting you,
you know, I still have to give it up to
(42:58):
early MTV, you, Tom Bob, and pretty much any musician
it's a magician. Thanks Judy, Thank you always fun. Here's
a couple of things I take away from this episode
with Judy. It might be easier to just fix your
(43:18):
employees work yourself, but if you want them to grow,
take the time to teach them. It will benefit you
down the line. When advertisers are skittish of being associated
with certain content. Show them the relationship they want is
not with the content, but with the fan who likes
the content. And finally, if you want your business to
up end the traditional don't hire typical people. Judy is
(43:41):
looking at hiring Knife Thrones. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
That's it today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to
(44:02):
Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. The
show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue
Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
no small feat Nikkiatore for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Azar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
(44:22):
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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