August 15, 2019 • 34 mins
Judy McGrath once said John Sykes had the gift of “making everyone want to be at the party.” Hear Bob and John relive the scrappy and ingenious marketing from MTV (including why you should look a little closer when you buy a shack with a cashier’s check, and why you might not want to trust Van Halen with a contest winner). Plus, John gives tips on how to get your next project funded, and how he helped pull the Concert for NYC together in just 4 and a half weeks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of I
Heart Radio. I worked at the local TV station, I
worked at the radio station, I worked in college paper.
I did everything to learn. I just jumped in the water.
I didn't know a thing until take the job, get
your sec license. You're on the earth. Guess what the
guy got sick? You're doing the organized okay, and you learn,
(00:22):
you jump in the water. That's my theory in life,
just jumping. I am Bob Pittman, and welcome to Math
and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of market. Today, we
have a real life magician of marketing, John Slide's. WelCom John,
so good to be here in our space. I've known
(00:52):
John since we started MTV. He was a part of
the team that created MTV in n He had already
been in the record business at CBS Record, working in
a real job and also as a college rep. You
left MTV to go be an agent at CIA with
the legendary Mike Ovits. Two years later you went to
be the head of Champion Entertainment, Tommy Mottola's management firm,
(01:13):
and you had Paul of Notates, John Mellencamp, Carly Simon Taylor,
Dane Ran Carry and others. Nineteen nine e president of
Chrystalis Records, Billy Idol, Pat Benatar, Set O'Connor n. Chrystalis
merges with em I. You become e v P of
em I Music Publishing under the legendary Marty ben Deer
(01:34):
returns to m TV Networks to head v H one,
picks up CMT Network two, moved over to the CEO
of Infinity Radio, which became CBS Radio. Came back to
him TV Networks to head network development, and left MTV.
Finally in two thousand and eight. We worked together for
a while in the private equity group and investments, and
finally we joined up again at iHeart Media. And you've
(01:56):
been running the entertainment Enterprises group. Is that right? Right?
So that's all the time we have left in It's
over now, it's over. Before we dig into all this
and some of your stories we want to do. John
Sykes in sixty seconds, give us your immediate answer. Beer
or wine? Wine prefer Syracuse or New York City, New
(02:17):
York City. Okay, let's see Schenectady or Syracuse. Oh, Syracuse
was the big town Okay behind the music or pop
up video. Uh, PUPA video was more clever vinyl or screening.
Oh that's a typhone. I'm a streamer now. Elvis Presley
or Elvis Durant. Oh, Elvis durand alt rock or yacht rock.
(02:38):
I'm still hanging out all rock east coast to west coast.
Oh boy, I'm starting to lean west. MTV or v
H one. Oh boy, you killed me on that one.
The two children. I gotta say, MTV will always be
the mark radio or TV I think now in the
next phase of my life. Radio. Most fun talent to
(03:01):
manage or work with. Bryan Seacrest. Ryan Seacrest is a
consummate professional. Anything you ask him to do, he makes
it better. Flthood Hero, I'll Mickey Mantle. First job deliving newspapers,
and I needed money so badly growing up. I had
two paper outs. I had the morning the afternoon that
my sister would say, nobody has two paper outs. I said, well,
(03:23):
I gotta buy a set of drums. If you want to.
You can talk about second or third job when you
talk about summers in Saratoga Springs. The really first job
was a summer intern at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. And
if you live in a hicktown like Schenectady, which I
loved growing up in the big town. Came to Schenectady
every summer. That's when all the rich people from the
(03:44):
racing people from Kentucky, Leanderbilt's, the Whitney's, Johnny Carson, Mick Jagger,
Frank Sinata all come to Saratoga for the races. And
so at that time Governor Rockefeller built an amphitheater with
state money and brought in the New York City Ballet,
the Philadelphia Orchestra. But to fill in the dates, they
bring rock bands. So who Eric Clapton, bands that I
(04:05):
grew up just staring at albums, were all of a
sudden coming into my town, and he needed someone to
be the intern to pick him up with the airport
run the contracts. When I would see that Eric Clapton
is making one hundred thousand dollars to play for forty
five minutes, I've got to get in this business. I
got to learn the business by driving them and asking
them questions from the airport. There were no private jets.
(04:28):
They were barely limousines. This was not a big business.
Back in the seventies. Rock and roll was just exploding.
So one day they said, you're gonna pick up Frank Sinatra,
and I went, I'm going to pick up Frank Sinatra.
Oh my god, I said, wash the car. So I
went in the Saratoga car of the same car I
picked up Eric Clapton, George Bound, She and everybody. I
went to a different airport. I didn't go to all
(04:49):
of the airport. I went to this landing strip, and
all of a sudden, this thing I've never seen called
a private plane landed, and off the plane comes some
comedian with gold jewelry around him, the giant security guard,
and then the most beautiful woman I've ever seen from
Las Vegas who had a denim jump suit on on
the zipped right down. And then Frank gets off the plane,
(05:12):
walks towards the car, and I said, Mr Sinatra, I'm
here to drive you to the Performing Arts Center. And
then this big dude next to him called Chili Rizzo,
who died mysteriously a few years later, says, nobody drives
Frank but him. And also this guy gets off the
plane with neck and fans popping out, and another car
(05:33):
just pulls up right next to us out of nowhere,
and They get in the car and he goes, you're
going with me? I go, okay, he's gonna kill me now.
They drive off and I follow the car and I
get there and walking down the hallway and Frank Sinatra
sees me, goes, hey, kid, sorry, we have security. We
have to do it this way. And I go, I'm okay.
He goes, what do you do? I go, I go
(05:53):
to college and goes to college. Hey. They all laugh
at me, and he goes, what do you want to do?
Is I wanna get in television? He says, I'm on television.
I do television. So he said, you look thin. They
pay you here like they pay me. Okay, goes, when
I leave, take my food. Sony boxed off the food
and they left, and that was my introduction to show business.
That's pretty good, a bunch of free food. Some things
(06:14):
never change. Here's young John Pikes in your life there,
small town, Your dad was an independent businessman. What happened
there that is so integral to who you are today?
We all know growing up, you know it's nature nurture.
I think there's a combination. I grew up in a
house of five kids, four sisters and myself or crazy type.
(06:35):
As sisters, we had a dinner table where we debated.
We debated everything. My mother was a left wing Democrat
college professor. My dad was a very kind of moderate
conservative businessman. But we did have a picture of the
Pope and John Kennedy on the TV sets. We were Democrats.
What I love so much about that was that we
debated every night at six o'clock. The Vietnam War was
(06:58):
on television. Politics were flying around a family, but no
one took it personally. When we debated, everybody could have
a wicked argument of wicked debate, and you better come prepared. Also,
I just always wanted to do something big. I have
so many ideas, but I don't want him to live
and die in this town. I want to be able
to amplify those And that's why I fell in love
(07:20):
in that small town with media, with radio and television
and music, because those were platforms springboards for an idea.
And I remember watching Johnny Carson. What I like the
most is when the camera went out wide, I saw
the guy holding the que cards, I saw the guy
at the desk with the glasses. I said, he must
be running this. He's doing this so he's taking this
(07:42):
thing in the studio and it's going everywhere. So for me,
that was a little bit of the nature. I was
just always born to somebody who wanted to think big.
Nothing against a small town. It was always like, if
it's a good idea in Schenectay, it could be a
good idea in l A, Dallas, Chicago, it could be anywhere.
But the great thing about a small town is it
gave you the opportunity to be bored. And when you're bored,
(08:04):
you dream. When you're sitting in Jackson, Mississippi, or Schenecting,
New York, you're a Jackson boy and you're looking up
at the sky and you see an airplane fly over,
and you go, who's in that plane? And how can
they afford to be in that plane? Are they on
to Paris? And can I get in that plane? And
I want to get in that plane? So you go
to Syracuse. Why is it so many leaders in media
(08:26):
came out of Syracuse. I mean, it's an abnormal number
of people came out of Syracuse. It is a magical place.
Thanks to sign new House, the older one who was
a newspaper magnet, the magazines, and of course broadcasting. He
put millions and millions of dollars into a creative lab
at Syracuse called the New House School. The first thing
(08:46):
they said to you when you went to that campus was,
this is not a technical school, and it can to
teach you how to run the dials. This is a
school about ideas. This is school about creativity. So guess what.
The next two years, you're going to go up the
hill to the arts and science schools, gonna take religion, philosophy, psychology,
and you're going to learn about something to write about
(09:06):
to put on radio and television. Right now, we don't
need anyone to operate the cameras. It's not why you're here.
You go to Columbia School of Broadcasting for that. And
if you want to get experience, go get a job somewhere.
Go write copy for a radio station, Go do layout
for newspaper. So that's what I did. I worked in
the local TV station, I worked at the radio station,
I worked in college paper. I did everything to learn.
(09:27):
I just jumped in the water. I didn't know a
thing until take the job. Get your FEC license. You're
on the earth. Guess what the guy got sick? You're
doing the organized, okay, and you learn, you jump in
the water. That's my theory in life, just jump in.
Other kids were partying on weekends whatever I was doing
the overnight shift at the radio station. I was downtown
laying on a newspaper. But that gave me the tools
(09:48):
to call you up when you were starting MTV and say,
I know how to do this. I've done it, alright,
I've done this since I was caused ambition. So let's
talk about MTV. It's night. The word gets out that
working on this do music channel. How do you hear
about it? What does it mean to you? And how
on earth did you really get connected to us to
get on that original team. I grew up with three
(10:11):
things in my life. Radio, television, music. That's all I
cared about. When I wasn't listen to the the radio station,
I was watching TV or listening to music. Those things,
to me shaped our culture. So I'm at school, Cable
TV is just starting up, and I saw the cable
channels are empty. The music was all over the radio,
was it on television? So we used to go and
shoot the concerts in circus and we pay them and
(10:34):
send them to new channels and we play the concerts
and people like, oh my god, I can see the band.
And all I wanted to do at that point was
put music on television. When I graduated, I wanted to
go for a network, and I went to CBS, said
let's put music on let's run concerts. These three Martini
lunch guys in New York looked at me and like
it was crazy, and they said, get a job in
the music division. Get a job with the record company
(10:55):
because CBS is now Sony. So I got a job
in the record business, promoting radio stations. I wanted to
run the radio station. I didn't want to promote them
on the rail, but that's the job I had. So
I would go into the record office there and in
the corner of the office there were these videos VHS.
Videos there came over from Europe of bands like The
(11:17):
Jackson's Cheap Trick, Boston, Bruce Springsteen, but they couldn't be
used in America, so these came over from the International division.
They would show them at the branch meeting. So I'm going, like,
why don't we put them in the record stores. Let's
put them in the windows. Put a TV and a
VCR in the window and I went to a guy
named Les Elias here ran the Loop, and I said,
once you do the Rock and Roll Picture Show on
weekends and put these videos in theaters. So then I
(11:38):
heard from my friends Steve Case it was a w
LS in Chicago that his great friend Bob Pittman was
in New York and he was going to start a
video channel. And I lost my mind. It just it's like,
it still gives me goose bumps. I was like, this
is what I was made to do, this is what
I wanted to do. To me, it was like music
along on television. It's a language that television was lacking.
(12:01):
That there was CN and it was HBO the way.
So I started calling you and I called you, and
I called you and I called you. And thanks to
your assistant and Plunkett, who I was annoying so much,
she said, all right, Bob, you please talk to this guy.
And uh we met that day with a borrowed support
jacket because I didn't know it. It's some bad hair.
But you and I connected that moment because we had
(12:22):
the same vision. Music and television were the two biggest
forces in pop culture and they were about to be
You know, you look back on any successful product, and
it seems easy. You were there when we didn't even
have approval from the board to do it. We just
had some money to develop it. So give us a
little color for people who think things are easy and
(12:42):
they always go exactly the way you plan. What that
early development was like. It is funny and people like go,
oh my god, you're in the team that started MTV.
That must have been a magical and great to go.
I don't know. I was working too hard. We were
so into trenches all the time. It only looks glamorous
that day looking back, but when you're in it, it's
a slugfest. There was this idea, but to make it happen,
(13:04):
we had no money and we all quit jobs. You
were at NBC, I was at CBS. I was the
promotion Man of the Year in Chicago, and I just said,
I'm quitting. What are you crazy? Career? And people like us,
we weren't going to fail. And you know, the funny
thing is, as hard as we worked, I never thought
we were going to fail. I got scared when you'd
come in and say, you know, they're gonna cut the budgets.
(13:24):
We've got a few more months we've got to make
our numbers. That just made me say, well, we're gonna
have to work hard to make our numbers. I do
still remember one conversation we have where I said, Okay,
we're going to the board and we're gonna pitch this
for approval, and you go, what, we don't have approval.
I quit my job. We don't have approval. But no, no, John,
this was development. All the blood ran out of your
face at that moment. I do remember I had to
(13:45):
look up because there was no Internet, I had to
go in the dictionary, look up the real definition of development.
I still were developing something. Development means it's not gonna
happen yet. But you know something, I got freaked. I
was like, who cares if it doesn't work unless my
my sister's couching another job. We were young, we launched MTV.
We get it underway. We're trying to get some evidence
(14:07):
that it's working. Because the record companies are hemorrhaging money
those years turned a lot of red ink. They were
thinking about cutting videos out of their budget, which of
course we've been a disaster for. So we said, we
gotta get some evidence ahead of the budget cycle. And
you and Tom Freston to go on the road to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Tell me what happened in Tulsa and tell me what
that impact was for you. We believe this was working,
(14:29):
we felt it, but we needed facts. We needed to
convince a record business. So it was like, we need
a story, Tom, John, go on their own, don't compact.
You have a story. And Tulsa didn't happen until we
went to Syracuse, Houston and we went to the cable markets.
So Tom and I driving through Tulsa in a rental
car literally with a map of record stores in a
(14:50):
dry city. This is showbiz. This is the clamor show
biz going into places. So you sold any police records
selling Duran Duran sold any t the tube? Nope, nope, nope.
So we kept driving driving. I still remember, I don't
remember the name of the store whatever, but it was
a record store in an old house. And Tom Alize
drudge in and we say, you sold me this only
(15:13):
that's only durand drand Ran I sold two boxes of
Duran Durant records last week. We're what you sold to Bock.
You sold fifty records records in a box. Can we
have your name and can we use your phone? We
called the Bob. I said, Bob, Bob, we have a story.
We have a story. We have a record store that's
(15:34):
selling music only played on MTV. And you said, great,
get a name, get the information. We need an article,
and so we hang up the phone. I turned to Tom, Tom,
we get to go home. And we took that and
we wrote it as a case study and we ran
it in Billboard and the Music magazine to influence the
record company. Keep going, I have, of course you do.
(15:55):
You have everything we ever did at MTV. You are
the pack rat. I have that one sheet MTV sales records.
Joey Smith and boy that Joey Smith. Wherever you are
and tell us Oklahoma, thank you, thank you. We're gonna
be right back. After a quick break. Welcome back to
(16:17):
Matthew Magic. We're here with John Sykes. So you were
the guy who did the promotions. You came up with
these great ideas and fortunately, unfortunately the one that also
executed them. He did the Paint the House Paint promotion
with John Mellencamp, he did the Lost Weekend with Van Halen.
What formula were you using? Goes back to that s
connected New York thing of being a dreamer because I
(16:39):
was the kid. I was the viewer who thought, oh
my god, if only I could dot dot dot. So
when you said we've got to put together some promotions,
we gotta go bigger than life. We go what are
we gonna do? I just said to myself, Okay, what
would anybody give their eye teeth to do? What would
be the fantasy of all fantasies. He created dreams for
(17:00):
people to connect with artists in ways the kid from
a small town every would. When you talk about marketing,
it's not the actual event to jo to fulfill. It's
the dreams you put in the heads of the consumers
that sells the product, whether you're selling cars or whatever
it is. It's the magic of how you're going to
feel the aspirational. So we created those dreams and it
was kine of the greatest times in my life. And
(17:21):
I remember just John had done a song called pink Houses.
So let's give away a house and you're gonna paint
the mother pink. Tell us about the first house you bought.
When you had to execute it, I means you had
to go find a house, go to go buy a house.
You had to go actually get a team to paint
it pink. You gotta go fly people in. So we went,
and you had no money, so we had to buy
the cheap you could find. So Bob goes, take a
(17:42):
cashier's check and just go buy a house. And I okay.
So I flew in Indiana and John Mellencamp, who loved
the idea, sends his ex wife to meet me to
show me around it. Buy some house. She's a realtor.
So we go and I go, okay. I got about
two hours before I getting the flight back to New York.
Show me fourhouses. First house we buy, the woman is there,
(18:03):
just cookies for me. The kids are out front, they've
cleaned it up. This was a shock. I felt so
bad for her. She was a single mom. Look at
this house and I said, we'll do It's like we
can paint this pink. So I wrote a check thirty
two dollars, bought the house. Her jaw dropped. No realtor
just handed the check and got in the car, drove back.
We opened up Rolling Stone. Three weeks later, MTV buys
(18:26):
house on toxic waste dump. So so I call you
go Bob, I had no idea. John Mellencamp writes me
letter I have today. Dear John, I'm sure you've read
Rolling Stone by now, and I'm sure you wouldn't want
to give a house on a toxic waste dump. And
I'm going, oh my god, we're stuck with the house.
So I had to I can get another house. But
(18:47):
that's not the good double the budget, the budget. The
good story was the Last Weekend with Van Halen. That
one really really defined MTV as a serious, dangerous rock
and roll ran to consumers. There was a movie called
The Last Weekend. Raymond Land was in there and guy
loses his mind whatever. And there was a guy who
(19:07):
worked for us, Less Garland, who would go out and
we said, say less Garland on the Last Weekend. He
would go out and have fun whatever. And so we
just said, let's do a laws weep with a band.
Who's the craziest band out there right now? Van Halen.
Van Halen wouldn't do any promotion because they were worried
about their image. We called them with the idea like
we're in. We're in, and by the way, will fulfill
the contest. You don't have to do anything, just drop
(19:29):
off the fans with us, and we'll deliver him back
on Sunday. So we did that. The kid arrives and
they take him at four o'clock in the afternoon right
into the backstage, and everything you can imagine would happened
with Van Halen happened. So by the time the band
goes on stage at nine o'clock at night, this guy
is fried. There's been things that were not a Warner
(19:49):
m X and condoled or MTV activity, but the band
took that. So he's standing on stage completely out of
his mind, and David Lee Roth goes, we have the
winner tonight of the MT the Lost Weekend, Joe Smith,
you know, Joe Congratulations. They bring out a giant sheet cake.
He's got his hands up from there and the bands
around him, and they take the sheet cake and they
(20:10):
push it into his face and the guy is stunned
and he starts trolling around swinging punches at the band.
The band freaks out. They take him off and they
bring him backstage and we say to his friend, what's
wrong with him? And he said, we forgot to tell you.
He has a metal plate in his head. He was
in an accident. He's not supposed to drink, so they
had to put him in a room with a security
(20:31):
guard all night. But that kind of made the legend
of MTV. I wish we could take credit for that,
but that was it. So the contest. Maybe we're lucky
we can't take credit for it. You know what those
contests did. They creates the fantasy and the aspiration that
makes someone want to be attracted to a product. So
we had a great time at MTV. Things actually turned around.
Instead of losing money, we are making money. And you
(20:53):
left the Why did you leave? I get antsy. I'm
a startup guy. I always love startups. I loved to
see if I can defy conventional wisdom. I'd like to
try things people say it won't work. I felt that
that phase had passed, and I kind of felt that
there was another challenge coming from me. I really had
the euphoria of launching something and building it. At that
(21:15):
point in my life, I was thinking, what's the next
way to merge platforms. We merged radio and television together
with MTV. I thought movies, paid content and music could
be merged on another platform. So you want to work
for Mike Covids. You didn't stay a long time. You
didn't ever turn into really an agent. But what did
you learn about the business from that perspective that perch?
(21:37):
It's a fascinating business. I knew it wasn't for me,
and I knew I would never be a good agent
because agents are amazing transactional individuals. They don't waste time.
They move it no matter what color, size, shape it is.
They're just moving the money. And I knew I wasn't
gonna be a good agent when they called them clients
and I call them artists. One of the guys that
(21:57):
sea said to me, why do you keep calling him?
Are their clients? Like? What's creative artists? Where they go
their clients? We get them jobs and we turned them.
And then the other day I knew I wasn't gonna last.
There was that when the script came in for a
movie I was working, and I looked and I said,
this strip these work. I think if this isn't so,
I called the producer and I said, you know, the
guy Sean Penn would be really great in this role,
(22:19):
and you've got to change just change that. And two
agents called me. One agent said, don't tell the writers
how to write this you're the agent, and then the
second Sean Penn's agent, because Sean Penn doesn't work for scale.
And I said, well, when the Rolling Stones play New
York City, they play a club to be cool. Al
Pacino does American Buffalo on Broadway. Was not doing The Godfather.
It's image, you gotta be cool, and they go, we
(22:40):
don't care about it. So I knew it was time
to leave. I had never had a problem jumping the fence.
I'd be on the broadcast side, I'd be on the
management side, the record company's side. To me, it was
all one business. So let's move it now. You do
get the call to be a label head. Chrystalis Records
was really hot at the time. You're now a label
head ten years earlier, it's been a promo rep and Chicago.
(23:01):
How does that feel and what you learn there? I
absolutely loved it. I love the fact that I was
no longer two steps off the side of the stage
watching someone else. I said, well, if I'm going to
run record company, I can choose what records come out.
I can actually choose which ones are promoted. And I
still love that. And we went from this cool company
two having three records in the top twenty five in
(23:25):
the first six months, because I got very lucky. We
signed right artists, but we marketed. We went out there
and I didn't care. I would call I would do
whatever it took to get those records exposed. I would
call radio programmers I knew from my days and MTV
before MTV in Chicago. I'd go anywhere, whatever it took.
And we had the best year in twenty years at
that company because we took this great music and we
(23:46):
marketed it so well that they the company with E
M I and I won't take you through that, but
you had a spectacular career there too, with Marty ben Deer.
And then you finally go home to MTV Networks. Tom
Freston calls you up, says, come home, need you to
fix a V one? What did you do? As you know, Bob,
because you taught me so much of the stuff. A
(24:07):
brand is only valuable if there's an underserved segment of
the audience that needs. Hip hop was starting to happen.
Alterniate music was exploding, and a lot of the traditional
rock bands and R and B bands were being pushed
out and they're going to kind off of a Cliff,
and I said, there's a market here because having run
a record company, a publishing company, we were seeing these
(24:28):
artists that used to be called middle of the road
back then, but now they were actually vibrant pop bands.
They didn't have a place. And then I saw who
are those powerful buyers? Young adults, young college graduates, first
time making money, starting families, having access to money for
the first time, not just chipping away at dollars and
cents in college. Here's a generation that's grown up on MTV.
(24:50):
They have money, they're affluent, and they have nowhere to go.
So I was as excited actually about v H one
as I was about MTV, and MTV is iconic and
it will be there forever. But the other thing about
VH one to me also was it was my own.
It was something that if now you were a network head,
you've been a label head, now you're a network I
always like to do that. I'd like to run it,
(25:11):
and I knew if I fell, it would be on me,
it would only be on my shoulders. It would be
like out at VH one fails they used to call
VH point one was the rating of it again, and
for those people who ratings. Ratings are from zero to
whatever and point one zero. So anyway, v H one
(25:32):
is the ugly step child at MTV Networks. We built
it as a fighting brand, as a flank or brand
to keep. I used to say it was nails off
the back seat of a car to put flats in
the tires of the cars behind us, because we didn't
want aybody compete with MTV. But I said, now it
quietly has thirty million homes. There's a market for this.
And I looked in the room and half the people
like or asleep bicycle that Quenton staying. They had a job,
(25:55):
but they didn't believe in the product, but they're reflecting
a paycheck. So I said, listen, if you don't leaving this,
it's okay. We won't make a big thing and we're
gonna fire you, but we'll work out a package and
you should leave because we need people whore going to
believe in this. There's a market for this, and I
believe that this is gonna be a three hundred million
dollar business in the next three years if we all
focus on that. So people came to me and said,
(26:18):
I don't want to do this. I didn't think they
I don't think it would come like, I don't think
you're right, Like, okay, well, thank you, good bye. They
all came back three years later looking for jobs. But
it was about believing in yourself, believing your idea of
hiring people around you are better than you at executing
what they did. And we put together a team at
VH one hooping on to run NBC, Nintendo, Bravo. We
(26:42):
put together an all star trip so may be proud
and working with some to Redstone, I mean some of
Redstone was on his game. You walked in and said
here's my plan, here's what I want to do, and
he'd just say, fine, go do it. If you don't
do it, I'll fire you. And say that's all I
want to know. Just give me the rope, and he did.
It was a great nine years. We shattered all the
(27:03):
records there, but like all good businesses, you've got to
reinvent them otherwise they paid it off. You've did a
couple more things, but let's jump to doing good. You've
really been involved with some legendary efforts that really made
a difference. We started with Live Aid, Bob Geldolf and
Harvey Goldsmith and you know, We have long stories about that,
but even happens in New York and you and a
(27:26):
couple of folks decide you're going to do a concert
for New York with the Robin Hood Foundation. Tell me
about it. Well. Being raised by a liberal mother and
a Democratic household, we were always wanting to give back.
My mom used to teach it to prison, like that's
what she did. She said, you know something, whatever you
do in your life, you gotta give back. You give
your time, you give your money. You got to do that.
And that stayed with me. So when we're at MTV,
(27:49):
we did be Each one saved the music. Nickelodeon did
the big help. Obviously MTV did rock the vote. Always
felt like, if you're lucky enough to run one of
these corporations, have you got to take care of the community,
whatever that might be. Nine eleven happens, and we were like,
we have to do something. This is our city, this
is where Viacom makes its money, every artist makes money
in New York. New York under attack. So I called
(28:11):
Jim Dolan and Square Garden dold owns Madison, Square Garden.
We had done some fundraisers before and we got talking
about it. We said, if we used the garden, the
big room, then we got to turn the volume up.
What we have to do then is throw an Irish wake.
Let's figure away we can raise a ton of money
these families that desperately needed, who lost their loved ones
(28:32):
in this thing. And let's use the power of music
and the power of these platforms. Let's create the biggest
fundraiser since Live aid, and let's message out why everyone
from around the world should come back to the city
where they all got their start. So called you at
a O L and we did what we knew how
to do. You know, we skipped over today the video
(28:52):
music awards that you and I started and reinvented award shows.
So he said, let's create the biggest fundraiser since I've Aid.
And within four and a half weeks we put on
I think the biggest show has ever happened. Much money
was raised, million dollars. What we saw was the ability
to use our power to create scale for the right things.
(29:14):
So you've been through all these things in your life.
You gave us a few stories today, but it's just
there one overriding lesson you would give to an entrepreneur,
someone listening today, I said, I have that ambition. I
want to make something really big. What's the advice. The
best advice I can give anyone starting out is it's
a step by step process. And you may have your
(29:37):
eye on the end of the rainbow, but arriving in
the rainbow involves many steps along the way. So take
an idea and master that idea, master what you do,
and people will be dying to hire you to do
the next thing, or fund you the next thing. It
really is about just taking an idea and then not
letting go of it. And by the way, everything is
(29:59):
a good ideas an opportunity until it's not. So if
you have something, then work it and vet it and
you'll find out if it isn't and then you have
to pivot. Let's talk about today, what's going on in
marketing music today. There's a changing of the guard across
all entertainment right now. Everything that you and I did
growing up in an analog world has now just been
turned upside down. So it's either a time to get
(30:22):
scared and run to the hills or to say, great,
we can reinvent ourselves. So now I think it becomes
much more sophisticated data plays a huge role next to gut,
which is still about the creativity is there, but there's
so many ways now to get information out to people,
so many ways to connect. What happened to music on
TV networks? I think music on television when we did
(30:42):
it was wow concerts and then the British came in
and made them great videos and they created an art
form out of it. But even that kind of aged
out and we had award shows where people would kind
of stand up and say good even then good after
doing good because we didn't have social media during the years,
so we needed that. Well, social media has turned it
upside down. So music is live and well. Radio was
really a personalized medium that actually lead the way for
(31:05):
television cable. What you and I did in change the world.
So I think for us now, there are so many
opportunities to market and it really comes down to understanding
the platforms you work for and this throwing out the tradition.
We get stuck in our ways and I think we failed.
They sometimes reinvent ourselves and that's the challenge we have. Okay,
the value a good idea for the platform. To me,
(31:28):
it's the idea I think ideas find the platforms people
talk about, Oh my god, broadcast will go away, it's
going to be over the top, and this will go away.
And nothing goes away. It evolves and it becomes a mix.
A great idea can end up on my Heart radio podcast,
be on Amazon, could be on Netflix, it will find
it could be This is Us on NBC. A great
(31:49):
hour long, amazing drama is on broadcast television, but The
Crown is on Amazon. And now you have Disgrace Land
on podcasts. So great ideas, I think will find the
platform of moment. Okay, so let's send it the way
we always do. It's math and magic. Who's the best mathematician?
You know that person who just sees the world from analytics? Easy?
(32:11):
My son Jack Sykes, He's a genius. Who's your best magician? Uh?
You know who makes magic happen every day? But he
doesn't come off. The magician is Lauren Michaels, Lauren Michael's
Saturday Night Live. He's type be very quiet, brilliant and
he makes it happen every week. And he actually has
been my television mentor. We've go on a vacation for
(32:33):
twenty years and we walk on the beach with our
kids all running around, and now they're all grown up.
And he tells me the history of television. And there's
no one out there who understands television like Lauren Michaels. John.
This has been great. Time is flown by Thank you, Bob.
Here are three things I picked up from my chat
with John. One jump in the water, whether it was
(32:55):
a college radio station, are running an award show. John's
philosophy has always and to just dive into the opportunities
in front of you and figure it out too. John
believes you should find one thing and pour all your
effort into it. As he puts it, master what you do,
and people will be dying to hire you to the
next thing or fund your next thing. Three b Persistent.
(33:16):
When John gets an idea, he's tenacious about it. When
he heard about MTV, he didn't stop calling my assistant
until he got a call back. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks
for listening. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much
(33:41):
for listening to 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.
Just no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill
Plax and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor
Ryan Murdock, and of course Gayl Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel
Mango and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
(34:04):
Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of I
Heart Radio. I worked at the local TV station, I
worked at the radio station, I worked in college paper.
I did everything to learn. I just jumped in the water.
I didn't know a thing until take the job, get
your sec license. You're on the earth. Guess what the
guy got sick? You're doing the organized okay, and you learn,
(00:22):
you jump in the water. That's my theory in life,
just jumping. I am Bob Pittman, and welcome to Math
and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of market. Today, we
have a real life magician of marketing, John Slide's. WelCom John,
so good to be here in our space. I've known
(00:52):
John since we started MTV. He was a part of
the team that created MTV in n He had already
been in the record business at CBS Record, working in
a real job and also as a college rep. You
left MTV to go be an agent at CIA with
the legendary Mike Ovits. Two years later you went to
be the head of Champion Entertainment, Tommy Mottola's management firm,
(01:13):
and you had Paul of Notates, John Mellencamp, Carly Simon Taylor,
Dane Ran Carry and others. Nineteen nine e president of
Chrystalis Records, Billy Idol, Pat Benatar, Set O'Connor n. Chrystalis
merges with em I. You become e v P of
em I Music Publishing under the legendary Marty ben Deer
(01:34):
returns to m TV Networks to head v H one,
picks up CMT Network two, moved over to the CEO
of Infinity Radio, which became CBS Radio. Came back to
him TV Networks to head network development, and left MTV.
Finally in two thousand and eight. We worked together for
a while in the private equity group and investments, and
finally we joined up again at iHeart Media. And you've
(01:56):
been running the entertainment Enterprises group. Is that right? Right?
So that's all the time we have left in It's
over now, it's over. Before we dig into all this
and some of your stories we want to do. John
Sykes in sixty seconds, give us your immediate answer. Beer
or wine? Wine prefer Syracuse or New York City, New
(02:17):
York City. Okay, let's see Schenectady or Syracuse. Oh, Syracuse
was the big town Okay behind the music or pop
up video. Uh, PUPA video was more clever vinyl or screening.
Oh that's a typhone. I'm a streamer now. Elvis Presley
or Elvis Durant. Oh, Elvis durand alt rock or yacht rock.
(02:38):
I'm still hanging out all rock east coast to west coast.
Oh boy, I'm starting to lean west. MTV or v
H one. Oh boy, you killed me on that one.
The two children. I gotta say, MTV will always be
the mark radio or TV I think now in the
next phase of my life. Radio. Most fun talent to
(03:01):
manage or work with. Bryan Seacrest. Ryan Seacrest is a
consummate professional. Anything you ask him to do, he makes
it better. Flthood Hero, I'll Mickey Mantle. First job deliving newspapers,
and I needed money so badly growing up. I had
two paper outs. I had the morning the afternoon that
my sister would say, nobody has two paper outs. I said, well,
(03:23):
I gotta buy a set of drums. If you want to.
You can talk about second or third job when you
talk about summers in Saratoga Springs. The really first job
was a summer intern at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. And
if you live in a hicktown like Schenectady, which I
loved growing up in the big town. Came to Schenectady
every summer. That's when all the rich people from the
(03:44):
racing people from Kentucky, Leanderbilt's, the Whitney's, Johnny Carson, Mick Jagger,
Frank Sinata all come to Saratoga for the races. And
so at that time Governor Rockefeller built an amphitheater with
state money and brought in the New York City Ballet,
the Philadelphia Orchestra. But to fill in the dates, they
bring rock bands. So who Eric Clapton, bands that I
(04:05):
grew up just staring at albums, were all of a
sudden coming into my town, and he needed someone to
be the intern to pick him up with the airport
run the contracts. When I would see that Eric Clapton
is making one hundred thousand dollars to play for forty
five minutes, I've got to get in this business. I
got to learn the business by driving them and asking
them questions from the airport. There were no private jets.
(04:28):
They were barely limousines. This was not a big business.
Back in the seventies. Rock and roll was just exploding.
So one day they said, you're gonna pick up Frank Sinatra,
and I went, I'm going to pick up Frank Sinatra.
Oh my god, I said, wash the car. So I
went in the Saratoga car of the same car I
picked up Eric Clapton, George Bound, She and everybody. I
went to a different airport. I didn't go to all
(04:49):
of the airport. I went to this landing strip, and
all of a sudden, this thing I've never seen called
a private plane landed, and off the plane comes some
comedian with gold jewelry around him, the giant security guard,
and then the most beautiful woman I've ever seen from
Las Vegas who had a denim jump suit on on
the zipped right down. And then Frank gets off the plane,
(05:12):
walks towards the car, and I said, Mr Sinatra, I'm
here to drive you to the Performing Arts Center. And
then this big dude next to him called Chili Rizzo,
who died mysteriously a few years later, says, nobody drives
Frank but him. And also this guy gets off the
plane with neck and fans popping out, and another car
(05:33):
just pulls up right next to us out of nowhere,
and They get in the car and he goes, you're
going with me? I go, okay, he's gonna kill me now.
They drive off and I follow the car and I
get there and walking down the hallway and Frank Sinatra
sees me, goes, hey, kid, sorry, we have security. We
have to do it this way. And I go, I'm okay.
He goes, what do you do? I go, I go
(05:53):
to college and goes to college. Hey. They all laugh
at me, and he goes, what do you want to do?
Is I wanna get in television? He says, I'm on television.
I do television. So he said, you look thin. They
pay you here like they pay me. Okay, goes, when
I leave, take my food. Sony boxed off the food
and they left, and that was my introduction to show business.
That's pretty good, a bunch of free food. Some things
(06:14):
never change. Here's young John Pikes in your life there,
small town, Your dad was an independent businessman. What happened
there that is so integral to who you are today?
We all know growing up, you know it's nature nurture.
I think there's a combination. I grew up in a
house of five kids, four sisters and myself or crazy type.
(06:35):
As sisters, we had a dinner table where we debated.
We debated everything. My mother was a left wing Democrat
college professor. My dad was a very kind of moderate
conservative businessman. But we did have a picture of the
Pope and John Kennedy on the TV sets. We were Democrats.
What I love so much about that was that we
debated every night at six o'clock. The Vietnam War was
(06:58):
on television. Politics were flying around a family, but no
one took it personally. When we debated, everybody could have
a wicked argument of wicked debate, and you better come prepared. Also,
I just always wanted to do something big. I have
so many ideas, but I don't want him to live
and die in this town. I want to be able
to amplify those And that's why I fell in love
(07:20):
in that small town with media, with radio and television
and music, because those were platforms springboards for an idea.
And I remember watching Johnny Carson. What I like the
most is when the camera went out wide, I saw
the guy holding the que cards, I saw the guy
at the desk with the glasses. I said, he must
be running this. He's doing this so he's taking this
(07:42):
thing in the studio and it's going everywhere. So for me,
that was a little bit of the nature. I was
just always born to somebody who wanted to think big.
Nothing against a small town. It was always like, if
it's a good idea in Schenectay, it could be a
good idea in l A, Dallas, Chicago, it could be anywhere.
But the great thing about a small town is it
gave you the opportunity to be bored. And when you're bored,
(08:04):
you dream. When you're sitting in Jackson, Mississippi, or Schenecting,
New York, you're a Jackson boy and you're looking up
at the sky and you see an airplane fly over,
and you go, who's in that plane? And how can
they afford to be in that plane? Are they on
to Paris? And can I get in that plane? And
I want to get in that plane? So you go
to Syracuse. Why is it so many leaders in media
(08:26):
came out of Syracuse. I mean, it's an abnormal number
of people came out of Syracuse. It is a magical place.
Thanks to sign new House, the older one who was
a newspaper magnet, the magazines, and of course broadcasting. He
put millions and millions of dollars into a creative lab
at Syracuse called the New House School. The first thing
(08:46):
they said to you when you went to that campus was,
this is not a technical school, and it can to
teach you how to run the dials. This is a
school about ideas. This is school about creativity. So guess what.
The next two years, you're going to go up the
hill to the arts and science schools, gonna take religion, philosophy, psychology,
and you're going to learn about something to write about
(09:06):
to put on radio and television. Right now, we don't
need anyone to operate the cameras. It's not why you're here.
You go to Columbia School of Broadcasting for that. And
if you want to get experience, go get a job somewhere.
Go write copy for a radio station, Go do layout
for newspaper. So that's what I did. I worked in
the local TV station, I worked at the radio station,
I worked in college paper. I did everything to learn.
(09:27):
I just jumped in the water. I didn't know a
thing until take the job. Get your FEC license. You're
on the earth. Guess what the guy got sick? You're
doing the organized, okay, and you learn, you jump in
the water. That's my theory in life, just jump in.
Other kids were partying on weekends whatever I was doing
the overnight shift at the radio station. I was downtown
laying on a newspaper. But that gave me the tools
(09:48):
to call you up when you were starting MTV and say,
I know how to do this. I've done it, alright,
I've done this since I was caused ambition. So let's
talk about MTV. It's night. The word gets out that
working on this do music channel. How do you hear
about it? What does it mean to you? And how
on earth did you really get connected to us to
get on that original team. I grew up with three
(10:11):
things in my life. Radio, television, music. That's all I
cared about. When I wasn't listen to the the radio station,
I was watching TV or listening to music. Those things,
to me shaped our culture. So I'm at school, Cable
TV is just starting up, and I saw the cable
channels are empty. The music was all over the radio,
was it on television? So we used to go and
shoot the concerts in circus and we pay them and
(10:34):
send them to new channels and we play the concerts
and people like, oh my god, I can see the band.
And all I wanted to do at that point was
put music on television. When I graduated, I wanted to
go for a network, and I went to CBS, said
let's put music on let's run concerts. These three Martini
lunch guys in New York looked at me and like
it was crazy, and they said, get a job in
the music division. Get a job with the record company
(10:55):
because CBS is now Sony. So I got a job
in the record business, promoting radio stations. I wanted to
run the radio station. I didn't want to promote them
on the rail, but that's the job I had. So
I would go into the record office there and in
the corner of the office there were these videos VHS.
Videos there came over from Europe of bands like The
(11:17):
Jackson's Cheap Trick, Boston, Bruce Springsteen, but they couldn't be
used in America, so these came over from the International division.
They would show them at the branch meeting. So I'm going, like,
why don't we put them in the record stores. Let's
put them in the windows. Put a TV and a
VCR in the window and I went to a guy
named Les Elias here ran the Loop, and I said,
once you do the Rock and Roll Picture Show on
weekends and put these videos in theaters. So then I
(11:38):
heard from my friends Steve Case it was a w
LS in Chicago that his great friend Bob Pittman was
in New York and he was going to start a
video channel. And I lost my mind. It just it's like,
it still gives me goose bumps. I was like, this
is what I was made to do, this is what
I wanted to do. To me, it was like music
along on television. It's a language that television was lacking.
(12:01):
That there was CN and it was HBO the way.
So I started calling you and I called you, and
I called you and I called you. And thanks to
your assistant and Plunkett, who I was annoying so much,
she said, all right, Bob, you please talk to this guy.
And uh we met that day with a borrowed support
jacket because I didn't know it. It's some bad hair.
But you and I connected that moment because we had
(12:22):
the same vision. Music and television were the two biggest
forces in pop culture and they were about to be
You know, you look back on any successful product, and
it seems easy. You were there when we didn't even
have approval from the board to do it. We just
had some money to develop it. So give us a
little color for people who think things are easy and
(12:42):
they always go exactly the way you plan. What that
early development was like. It is funny and people like go,
oh my god, you're in the team that started MTV.
That must have been a magical and great to go.
I don't know. I was working too hard. We were
so into trenches all the time. It only looks glamorous
that day looking back, but when you're in it, it's
a slugfest. There was this idea, but to make it happen,
(13:04):
we had no money and we all quit jobs. You
were at NBC, I was at CBS. I was the
promotion Man of the Year in Chicago, and I just said,
I'm quitting. What are you crazy? Career? And people like us,
we weren't going to fail. And you know, the funny
thing is, as hard as we worked, I never thought
we were going to fail. I got scared when you'd
come in and say, you know, they're gonna cut the budgets.
(13:24):
We've got a few more months we've got to make
our numbers. That just made me say, well, we're gonna
have to work hard to make our numbers. I do
still remember one conversation we have where I said, Okay,
we're going to the board and we're gonna pitch this
for approval, and you go, what, we don't have approval.
I quit my job. We don't have approval. But no, no, John,
this was development. All the blood ran out of your
face at that moment. I do remember I had to
(13:45):
look up because there was no Internet, I had to
go in the dictionary, look up the real definition of development.
I still were developing something. Development means it's not gonna
happen yet. But you know something, I got freaked. I
was like, who cares if it doesn't work unless my
my sister's couching another job. We were young, we launched MTV.
We get it underway. We're trying to get some evidence
(14:07):
that it's working. Because the record companies are hemorrhaging money
those years turned a lot of red ink. They were
thinking about cutting videos out of their budget, which of
course we've been a disaster for. So we said, we
gotta get some evidence ahead of the budget cycle. And
you and Tom Freston to go on the road to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Tell me what happened in Tulsa and tell me what
that impact was for you. We believe this was working,
(14:29):
we felt it, but we needed facts. We needed to
convince a record business. So it was like, we need
a story, Tom, John, go on their own, don't compact.
You have a story. And Tulsa didn't happen until we
went to Syracuse, Houston and we went to the cable markets.
So Tom and I driving through Tulsa in a rental
car literally with a map of record stores in a
(14:50):
dry city. This is showbiz. This is the clamor show
biz going into places. So you sold any police records
selling Duran Duran sold any t the tube? Nope, nope, nope.
So we kept driving driving. I still remember, I don't
remember the name of the store whatever, but it was
a record store in an old house. And Tom Alize
drudge in and we say, you sold me this only
(15:13):
that's only durand drand Ran I sold two boxes of
Duran Durant records last week. We're what you sold to Bock.
You sold fifty records records in a box. Can we
have your name and can we use your phone? We
called the Bob. I said, Bob, Bob, we have a story.
We have a story. We have a record store that's
(15:34):
selling music only played on MTV. And you said, great,
get a name, get the information. We need an article,
and so we hang up the phone. I turned to Tom, Tom,
we get to go home. And we took that and
we wrote it as a case study and we ran
it in Billboard and the Music magazine to influence the
record company. Keep going, I have, of course you do.
(15:55):
You have everything we ever did at MTV. You are
the pack rat. I have that one sheet MTV sales records.
Joey Smith and boy that Joey Smith. Wherever you are
and tell us Oklahoma, thank you, thank you. We're gonna
be right back. After a quick break. Welcome back to
(16:17):
Matthew Magic. We're here with John Sykes. So you were
the guy who did the promotions. You came up with
these great ideas and fortunately, unfortunately the one that also
executed them. He did the Paint the House Paint promotion
with John Mellencamp, he did the Lost Weekend with Van Halen.
What formula were you using? Goes back to that s
connected New York thing of being a dreamer because I
(16:39):
was the kid. I was the viewer who thought, oh
my god, if only I could dot dot dot. So
when you said we've got to put together some promotions,
we gotta go bigger than life. We go what are
we gonna do? I just said to myself, Okay, what
would anybody give their eye teeth to do? What would
be the fantasy of all fantasies. He created dreams for
(17:00):
people to connect with artists in ways the kid from
a small town every would. When you talk about marketing,
it's not the actual event to jo to fulfill. It's
the dreams you put in the heads of the consumers
that sells the product, whether you're selling cars or whatever
it is. It's the magic of how you're going to
feel the aspirational. So we created those dreams and it
was kine of the greatest times in my life. And
(17:21):
I remember just John had done a song called pink Houses.
So let's give away a house and you're gonna paint
the mother pink. Tell us about the first house you bought.
When you had to execute it, I means you had
to go find a house, go to go buy a house.
You had to go actually get a team to paint
it pink. You gotta go fly people in. So we went,
and you had no money, so we had to buy
the cheap you could find. So Bob goes, take a
(17:42):
cashier's check and just go buy a house. And I okay.
So I flew in Indiana and John Mellencamp, who loved
the idea, sends his ex wife to meet me to
show me around it. Buy some house. She's a realtor.
So we go and I go, okay. I got about
two hours before I getting the flight back to New York.
Show me fourhouses. First house we buy, the woman is there,
(18:03):
just cookies for me. The kids are out front, they've
cleaned it up. This was a shock. I felt so
bad for her. She was a single mom. Look at
this house and I said, we'll do It's like we
can paint this pink. So I wrote a check thirty
two dollars, bought the house. Her jaw dropped. No realtor
just handed the check and got in the car, drove back.
We opened up Rolling Stone. Three weeks later, MTV buys
(18:26):
house on toxic waste dump. So so I call you
go Bob, I had no idea. John Mellencamp writes me
letter I have today. Dear John, I'm sure you've read
Rolling Stone by now, and I'm sure you wouldn't want
to give a house on a toxic waste dump. And
I'm going, oh my god, we're stuck with the house.
So I had to I can get another house. But
(18:47):
that's not the good double the budget, the budget. The
good story was the Last Weekend with Van Halen. That
one really really defined MTV as a serious, dangerous rock
and roll ran to consumers. There was a movie called
The Last Weekend. Raymond Land was in there and guy
loses his mind whatever. And there was a guy who
(19:07):
worked for us, Less Garland, who would go out and
we said, say less Garland on the Last Weekend. He
would go out and have fun whatever. And so we
just said, let's do a laws weep with a band.
Who's the craziest band out there right now? Van Halen.
Van Halen wouldn't do any promotion because they were worried
about their image. We called them with the idea like
we're in. We're in, and by the way, will fulfill
the contest. You don't have to do anything, just drop
(19:29):
off the fans with us, and we'll deliver him back
on Sunday. So we did that. The kid arrives and
they take him at four o'clock in the afternoon right
into the backstage, and everything you can imagine would happened
with Van Halen happened. So by the time the band
goes on stage at nine o'clock at night, this guy
is fried. There's been things that were not a Warner
(19:49):
m X and condoled or MTV activity, but the band
took that. So he's standing on stage completely out of
his mind, and David Lee Roth goes, we have the
winner tonight of the MT the Lost Weekend, Joe Smith,
you know, Joe Congratulations. They bring out a giant sheet cake.
He's got his hands up from there and the bands
around him, and they take the sheet cake and they
(20:10):
push it into his face and the guy is stunned
and he starts trolling around swinging punches at the band.
The band freaks out. They take him off and they
bring him backstage and we say to his friend, what's
wrong with him? And he said, we forgot to tell you.
He has a metal plate in his head. He was
in an accident. He's not supposed to drink, so they
had to put him in a room with a security
(20:31):
guard all night. But that kind of made the legend
of MTV. I wish we could take credit for that,
but that was it. So the contest. Maybe we're lucky
we can't take credit for it. You know what those
contests did. They creates the fantasy and the aspiration that
makes someone want to be attracted to a product. So
we had a great time at MTV. Things actually turned around.
Instead of losing money, we are making money. And you
(20:53):
left the Why did you leave? I get antsy. I'm
a startup guy. I always love startups. I loved to
see if I can defy conventional wisdom. I'd like to
try things people say it won't work. I felt that
that phase had passed, and I kind of felt that
there was another challenge coming from me. I really had
the euphoria of launching something and building it. At that
(21:15):
point in my life, I was thinking, what's the next
way to merge platforms. We merged radio and television together
with MTV. I thought movies, paid content and music could
be merged on another platform. So you want to work
for Mike Covids. You didn't stay a long time. You
didn't ever turn into really an agent. But what did
you learn about the business from that perspective that perch?
(21:37):
It's a fascinating business. I knew it wasn't for me,
and I knew I would never be a good agent
because agents are amazing transactional individuals. They don't waste time.
They move it no matter what color, size, shape it is.
They're just moving the money. And I knew I wasn't
gonna be a good agent when they called them clients
and I call them artists. One of the guys that
(21:57):
sea said to me, why do you keep calling him?
Are their clients? Like? What's creative artists? Where they go
their clients? We get them jobs and we turned them.
And then the other day I knew I wasn't gonna last.
There was that when the script came in for a
movie I was working, and I looked and I said,
this strip these work. I think if this isn't so,
I called the producer and I said, you know, the
guy Sean Penn would be really great in this role,
(22:19):
and you've got to change just change that. And two
agents called me. One agent said, don't tell the writers
how to write this you're the agent, and then the
second Sean Penn's agent, because Sean Penn doesn't work for scale.
And I said, well, when the Rolling Stones play New
York City, they play a club to be cool. Al
Pacino does American Buffalo on Broadway. Was not doing The Godfather.
It's image, you gotta be cool, and they go, we
(22:40):
don't care about it. So I knew it was time
to leave. I had never had a problem jumping the fence.
I'd be on the broadcast side, I'd be on the
management side, the record company's side. To me, it was
all one business. So let's move it now. You do
get the call to be a label head. Chrystalis Records
was really hot at the time. You're now a label
head ten years earlier, it's been a promo rep and Chicago.
(23:01):
How does that feel and what you learn there? I
absolutely loved it. I love the fact that I was
no longer two steps off the side of the stage
watching someone else. I said, well, if I'm going to
run record company, I can choose what records come out.
I can actually choose which ones are promoted. And I
still love that. And we went from this cool company
two having three records in the top twenty five in
(23:25):
the first six months, because I got very lucky. We
signed right artists, but we marketed. We went out there
and I didn't care. I would call I would do
whatever it took to get those records exposed. I would
call radio programmers I knew from my days and MTV
before MTV in Chicago. I'd go anywhere, whatever it took.
And we had the best year in twenty years at
that company because we took this great music and we
(23:46):
marketed it so well that they the company with E
M I and I won't take you through that, but
you had a spectacular career there too, with Marty ben Deer.
And then you finally go home to MTV Networks. Tom
Freston calls you up, says, come home, need you to
fix a V one? What did you do? As you know, Bob,
because you taught me so much of the stuff. A
(24:07):
brand is only valuable if there's an underserved segment of
the audience that needs. Hip hop was starting to happen.
Alterniate music was exploding, and a lot of the traditional
rock bands and R and B bands were being pushed
out and they're going to kind off of a Cliff,
and I said, there's a market here because having run
a record company, a publishing company, we were seeing these
(24:28):
artists that used to be called middle of the road
back then, but now they were actually vibrant pop bands.
They didn't have a place. And then I saw who
are those powerful buyers? Young adults, young college graduates, first
time making money, starting families, having access to money for
the first time, not just chipping away at dollars and
cents in college. Here's a generation that's grown up on MTV.
(24:50):
They have money, they're affluent, and they have nowhere to go.
So I was as excited actually about v H one
as I was about MTV, and MTV is iconic and
it will be there forever. But the other thing about
VH one to me also was it was my own.
It was something that if now you were a network head,
you've been a label head, now you're a network I
always like to do that. I'd like to run it,
(25:11):
and I knew if I fell, it would be on me,
it would only be on my shoulders. It would be
like out at VH one fails they used to call
VH point one was the rating of it again, and
for those people who ratings. Ratings are from zero to
whatever and point one zero. So anyway, v H one
(25:32):
is the ugly step child at MTV Networks. We built
it as a fighting brand, as a flank or brand
to keep. I used to say it was nails off
the back seat of a car to put flats in
the tires of the cars behind us, because we didn't
want aybody compete with MTV. But I said, now it
quietly has thirty million homes. There's a market for this.
And I looked in the room and half the people
like or asleep bicycle that Quenton staying. They had a job,
(25:55):
but they didn't believe in the product, but they're reflecting
a paycheck. So I said, listen, if you don't leaving this,
it's okay. We won't make a big thing and we're
gonna fire you, but we'll work out a package and
you should leave because we need people whore going to
believe in this. There's a market for this, and I
believe that this is gonna be a three hundred million
dollar business in the next three years if we all
focus on that. So people came to me and said,
(26:18):
I don't want to do this. I didn't think they
I don't think it would come like, I don't think
you're right, Like, okay, well, thank you, good bye. They
all came back three years later looking for jobs. But
it was about believing in yourself, believing your idea of
hiring people around you are better than you at executing
what they did. And we put together a team at
VH one hooping on to run NBC, Nintendo, Bravo. We
(26:42):
put together an all star trip so may be proud
and working with some to Redstone, I mean some of
Redstone was on his game. You walked in and said
here's my plan, here's what I want to do, and
he'd just say, fine, go do it. If you don't
do it, I'll fire you. And say that's all I
want to know. Just give me the rope, and he did.
It was a great nine years. We shattered all the
(27:03):
records there, but like all good businesses, you've got to
reinvent them otherwise they paid it off. You've did a
couple more things, but let's jump to doing good. You've
really been involved with some legendary efforts that really made
a difference. We started with Live Aid, Bob Geldolf and
Harvey Goldsmith and you know, We have long stories about that,
but even happens in New York and you and a
(27:26):
couple of folks decide you're going to do a concert
for New York with the Robin Hood Foundation. Tell me
about it. Well. Being raised by a liberal mother and
a Democratic household, we were always wanting to give back.
My mom used to teach it to prison, like that's
what she did. She said, you know something, whatever you
do in your life, you gotta give back. You give
your time, you give your money. You got to do that.
And that stayed with me. So when we're at MTV,
(27:49):
we did be Each one saved the music. Nickelodeon did
the big help. Obviously MTV did rock the vote. Always
felt like, if you're lucky enough to run one of
these corporations, have you got to take care of the community,
whatever that might be. Nine eleven happens, and we were like,
we have to do something. This is our city, this
is where Viacom makes its money, every artist makes money
in New York. New York under attack. So I called
(28:11):
Jim Dolan and Square Garden dold owns Madison, Square Garden.
We had done some fundraisers before and we got talking
about it. We said, if we used the garden, the
big room, then we got to turn the volume up.
What we have to do then is throw an Irish wake.
Let's figure away we can raise a ton of money
these families that desperately needed, who lost their loved ones
(28:32):
in this thing. And let's use the power of music
and the power of these platforms. Let's create the biggest
fundraiser since Live aid, and let's message out why everyone
from around the world should come back to the city
where they all got their start. So called you at
a O L and we did what we knew how
to do. You know, we skipped over today the video
(28:52):
music awards that you and I started and reinvented award shows.
So he said, let's create the biggest fundraiser since I've Aid.
And within four and a half weeks we put on
I think the biggest show has ever happened. Much money
was raised, million dollars. What we saw was the ability
to use our power to create scale for the right things.
(29:14):
So you've been through all these things in your life.
You gave us a few stories today, but it's just
there one overriding lesson you would give to an entrepreneur,
someone listening today, I said, I have that ambition. I
want to make something really big. What's the advice. The
best advice I can give anyone starting out is it's
a step by step process. And you may have your
(29:37):
eye on the end of the rainbow, but arriving in
the rainbow involves many steps along the way. So take
an idea and master that idea, master what you do,
and people will be dying to hire you to do
the next thing, or fund you the next thing. It
really is about just taking an idea and then not
letting go of it. And by the way, everything is
(29:59):
a good ideas an opportunity until it's not. So if
you have something, then work it and vet it and
you'll find out if it isn't and then you have
to pivot. Let's talk about today, what's going on in
marketing music today. There's a changing of the guard across
all entertainment right now. Everything that you and I did
growing up in an analog world has now just been
turned upside down. So it's either a time to get
(30:22):
scared and run to the hills or to say, great,
we can reinvent ourselves. So now I think it becomes
much more sophisticated data plays a huge role next to gut,
which is still about the creativity is there, but there's
so many ways now to get information out to people,
so many ways to connect. What happened to music on
TV networks? I think music on television when we did
(30:42):
it was wow concerts and then the British came in
and made them great videos and they created an art
form out of it. But even that kind of aged
out and we had award shows where people would kind
of stand up and say good even then good after
doing good because we didn't have social media during the years,
so we needed that. Well, social media has turned it
upside down. So music is live and well. Radio was
really a personalized medium that actually lead the way for
(31:05):
television cable. What you and I did in change the world.
So I think for us now, there are so many
opportunities to market and it really comes down to understanding
the platforms you work for and this throwing out the tradition.
We get stuck in our ways and I think we failed.
They sometimes reinvent ourselves and that's the challenge we have. Okay,
the value a good idea for the platform. To me,
(31:28):
it's the idea I think ideas find the platforms people
talk about, Oh my god, broadcast will go away, it's
going to be over the top, and this will go away.
And nothing goes away. It evolves and it becomes a mix.
A great idea can end up on my Heart radio podcast,
be on Amazon, could be on Netflix, it will find
it could be This is Us on NBC. A great
(31:49):
hour long, amazing drama is on broadcast television, but The
Crown is on Amazon. And now you have Disgrace Land
on podcasts. So great ideas, I think will find the
platform of moment. Okay, so let's send it the way
we always do. It's math and magic. Who's the best mathematician?
You know that person who just sees the world from analytics? Easy?
(32:11):
My son Jack Sykes, He's a genius. Who's your best magician? Uh?
You know who makes magic happen every day? But he
doesn't come off. The magician is Lauren Michaels, Lauren Michael's
Saturday Night Live. He's type be very quiet, brilliant and
he makes it happen every week. And he actually has
been my television mentor. We've go on a vacation for
(32:33):
twenty years and we walk on the beach with our
kids all running around, and now they're all grown up.
And he tells me the history of television. And there's
no one out there who understands television like Lauren Michaels. John.
This has been great. Time is flown by Thank you, Bob.
Here are three things I picked up from my chat
with John. One jump in the water, whether it was
(32:55):
a college radio station, are running an award show. John's
philosophy has always and to just dive into the opportunities
in front of you and figure it out too. John
believes you should find one thing and pour all your
effort into it. As he puts it, master what you do,
and people will be dying to hire you to the
next thing or fund your next thing. Three b Persistent.
(33:16):
When John gets an idea, he's tenacious about it. When
he heard about MTV, he didn't stop calling my assistant
until he got a call back. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks
for listening. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much
(33:41):
for listening to 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.
Just no small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill
Plax and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor
Ryan Murdock, and of course Gayl Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel
Mango and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
(34:04):
Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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