June 6, 2019 • 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 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a 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, I'm not sure. He said, well,
you're wrong, and I'll tell you why. And then about
(00:22):
forty five minutes 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,
(00:48):
and welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers
and Marketing. This is a place where we're looking at
both sides of the marketing equation, math and magic, and
along the way we're gonna hear some good stories. And
today we're gonna hear some really good stories from Judy McGrath.
Judy is an old old Palamne. We started at MTV
(01:10):
in those early days when we were the twenties something crowd.
She has done an awful lot. 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 a little small towns in Pennsylvania. Also as a
(01:30):
board member at Amazon, which has to be a treat
into itself. Judy is well known as a magician and
probably not as well known and not appreciate as much
as being a pretty good mathematician too. You make some
really hard business decisions as well. So I want to
jump into all that, but first I want to do
you in sixty seconds. Are you ready read? Do you
(01:51):
prefer cats or dogs, beetles or stones both? Oh? No, okay,
Taylor or Kanye Kanye, East Coast or West Coast Coast,
MTV or v H one each 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,
(02:14):
New York, secret talent piano play. I didn't know that
would 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. A favorite TV show
(02:36):
The Americans Historical Idol, one of the Bronte Sisters, any
of them? 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 brain in it. By the way, what did you
(02:57):
want to be when you were growing up? A reporter?
What's one 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,
(03:18):
you know. I still primarily listen to music, and that's
my favorite things. 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.
(03:40):
Tell me about how they influenced you. My dad loved music,
and so growing up in a town like Scranton, let's
just say the musical tastes were probably what you might
expect for 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
(04:01):
he would hang over the you know, the little crappy
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
(04:22):
music home, my music Stones, you know, the Doors, the Beatles,
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 that Charlie Watts was a big band
drumm right, it was a way to have a relationship
(04:42):
with him. I remember thinking later he had a passion
that was 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
(05:03):
find them where I was, and if I could find them,
and 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
(05:23):
New York City, it's impossible. You can't do that. No
one does that. 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.
(05:44):
I mean, this is I don't have the nerve, and
she's like, go in there, do it. You know something
will happen 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 of a Double Wares product experience in
Conde Nest at all. I think I did a little
(06:05):
bit of research, and I was a big magazine fan
before I get to Rolling Stone my ultimate goal. I
wonder if 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
(06:27):
magazine called Mademoiselle that you can take. And I said,
would you mind telling me what the compensation is since
I just literally got off the bus and she said,
dere if 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
(06:51):
and where they were clubbing. And you could pick all
that up just from the lobby. So Mademoiselle, which is
no more. I 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 Relaying, and there were just tons
of people there. I made some of the best friends
in my life there who eventually led me to You
(07:14):
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 also observed was brand. I mean,
(07:37):
those magazines have very clearly defined brands, and they 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 of learning about what is
it that makes this thing important to somebody? What is
(08:00):
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. I get Mademoiselle.
I killed myself writing something and she called me in
(08:20):
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,
and I'm going to give you one chance to go
(08:40):
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, bla bla bla blah. So I
went back. I thought out her very clear, very architectural,
(09:03):
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 rewrites, 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 Business Review just had a story which
we sent around in the office about innovation and company
(09:27):
culture and how you innovate. I thought of the story
actually which I brought it up, and one of the
things that pointed out is said that actually candor works,
not niceness. She was very direct, and you know, it
was the best favor someone can do for you is
to tell you the truth. It felt like a real jolt.
In contrast, I worked at Glamor for a while, which
was a great magazine. I worked for an editor who
(09:50):
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 right it yourself, you know, like a Braddy twenty
something would. But you know, the candor, the directness. I
appreciate it. You've always been a great coach, and you've
(10:12):
been thought of as a great coach, especially for creative people.
Did it come from this and 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. They don't just
want to rubber stamp, even if they think they do.
(10:34):
I thought about a few things. I mean, the beauty
and the wonder of MTV was that it was really
filled with people that I thought could not find gainful
employment anywhere else. It would be somebody who had never
really shot anything and just wanted to get their hands
on a came and try it. And we were willing
(10:55):
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 the person on
(11:15):
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
(11:35):
to meet people who were far more creative than I was.
I began to see I was sort of a better
editor coach 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
(11:56):
do anything, you know, and just make you want to
join the party. And you know Ted Demi and Mark
Palings 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
(12:19):
want to hire anybody 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
(12:40):
forty five minutes later, 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 nas and
jump on this thing? Whatever it is? So how did
you get over? I had some friends who came to
(13:01):
work for you. They said, well, 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 kinde Nast 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 the circus
(13:24):
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
(13:45):
gonna do it. I mean, 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 the creative group. You had a plan,
(14:08):
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 not distributing in Manhattan. I have no
(14:29):
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 took those promises to heart. Twenty
(14:50):
four hours a day terrific in stereo, Not really, but
you know, hey, it's mart It sounded for those ten
people who did have there. I remember you saying to me,
we wanted 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
(15:11):
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,
(15:33):
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 twenty something crowd. You and
I are the same age, not twenty something anymore, unfortunately,
(15:54):
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 our twenties. It's hard to
answer that question without stepping outside yourself. You know, as
(16:15):
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
(16:39):
the world. I mean, there's so many more tools, there's
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.
(17:01):
I mean, you know, I can still 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 they start
(17:21):
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
is that to me? It's like, yes, but what is
(17:44):
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
of style. That it was really only about left brain,
(18:06):
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 and
MTV was research. But it wasn't focus groups. It was
what's going on in your life that influences you and
(18:27):
makes you who you are and determines what you like.
It was like qualitative research, right. It'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 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,
(18:49):
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 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
(19:09):
think that 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 think that is fantastic. I
wish I had had it. It's incredible. But I still
(19:31):
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 Spielbergie
in nineties kind of retro thing going on. They hit
pay dirt with Millie Bobby Brown, they brought one ow
a rider back. They mixed up the stew of things,
(19:54):
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,
and most of them don't. But that part of it
is I think essential in the mix too. Well. I
(20:15):
think that's sort of the hard 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, president tell us
what to do to excite them. Research is not policy making,
and I think we shared that way back when it's okay,
Now I got a picture for these I got a
great idea. Let's do the last weekend with Van Halen.
(20:38):
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.
If you hate your miserable life, sign up here, sign
up here, and we'll change it. Just hold on a second,
(20:58):
because we've got so much more to talk talk about.
We'll be back after a quick break. Welcome back to
Mathew Magic. We're here with Judy McGrath. We were talking
about creatives running companies. You're one of the few creatives
that ran a very big company. How do you think
(21:20):
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 Laybourne, who
you know. The Queen Mother thought us genius Bickelodeon and
she said, you know, Judy, you will never really be
(21:44):
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. The business people in
all of our companies are not typical business people either.
(22:05):
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, and I
started to learn to fall in love with Comedy Central
and Nickelodeon, and you know, I got the chance to
(22:29):
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
the ability to create and innovate and take chances on people.
The business has to be sound, you know, the business
(22:51):
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
makes it sound like I don't understand what they need
to do as well. So I really came to wake
(23:13):
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
Philadelphia and like sit down with Briant and say thank you.
And they were like, what, I'm not going to Philadelphia
(23:36):
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
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.
(23:59):
Obviously is going through some heavy hard times. What isn't
it's battered around, it's crazy as ever. Thus, but I
think everybody who works someplace feels good when the business
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
(24:20):
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
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
(24:42):
women and a cultural phenomenon. They love this. They flocked
to it. They it is the perfect commentary on the
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
(25:05):
we've got them, and we love south Park. We'll love
it for you, but I can convince you that this
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 I'm like, leave him alone, let him talk
(25:26):
to whomever he wants to talk to. He's curating this show.
We're on a journey with him. I don't need another
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
(25:49):
be near that door. You don't want to shut that door.
And how often did you have to go meet with client?
I did a lot of that. But you know the
problem with taking me on a client it was, you know,
there were a multitude of issues. Sometimes, I mean there
was I only to travel, which is ridiculous. I missed
so much. Just a great, great guy. And he invited
(26:11):
me to lunch with a client for taco bell and
during the lunch I said, you know, I'm 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,
(26:33):
I still believe I sell more tacos to people who
were watching like Comedy Central and MTV. But I'll tell
you what I'm thinking about Facebook, 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
(26:54):
be either a good date for the uh, you know,
the lunch for the nightmare date. They'd say, wow, you
did a great sale for Facebook. Thank you. We won't
need to see you yet, 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
(27:14):
of MTV, we're probably looking back at an extraordinary number
of women very important roles. Today would be crowing 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,
(27:38):
you know, one of the great fun things I got
to do would be hang 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
(28:00):
you've got women in roles that were not traditionally women's roles.
They were 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
(28:22):
an easy like, let's let Beth direct, come on, like,
she can do it. 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
(28:45):
young employees who are not typical. So how ridiculous would
it be to take 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
(29:06):
actually talked about it back then. We said, you know,
if somebody has done three or 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 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,
(29:29):
oh my god, I would hire this kid tomorrow. He's
been teaching a 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?
Of course? 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
(29:52):
about getting old? God, Well, 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
(30:16):
he was looking at a piece of piece of media
and he said, that's boring, that was it, And I
watched the kid who had showed it to him look 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,
(30:37):
Like if I were you, 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
(30:57):
I give up. Okay, so let's jump too. You've always
done good. Rock the vote jus er 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
(31:18):
were sort of congratulating each 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
(31:39):
when we decided to get into you know, and certainly
rock the Vote was not our idea politics Jeff air off.
So Jeff was very passionate about this, and it's sort
of grewn to rock the Vote. And I remember talking
to Tom Freston, with whom I had an extraordinarily great
creative relationship, and this was one of the rare our
(32:00):
instances where we had a blowout. Really we 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
(32:22):
be stepping anywhere near an election or voting or any 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 it's social commentary, and
it is about the times we live in, and it
is about everything, and it's about all the things that
(32:43):
affect you in a very deep way. And I thought,
I think there's a way 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
(33:04):
them on their turf, their way, and we'll invite you
to do that. That's your shot. 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 Tabitha store, and Tabitha went to New Hampshire
(33:26):
and she called me at like midnight she said, you know,
I got up here 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
(33:47):
Vote spots, I mean Madonna wrapped in a flag, and
then fast forward to 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's gonna play. We try. I had 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
(34:10):
you deserve to be heard and 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 great. 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
(34:32):
have it front row seat at two phenomena in your
lifetime is incredible, So I would start there. But UM
board 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
(34:53):
of the things I love about Amazon, 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
(35:14):
is day one. They want you to feel 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 regard I
(35:38):
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 that you
(36:00):
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. There's
(36:22):
an incredible guy in the world 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 Alexa than the rest
of the room. He said, you know, I really agree
(36:44):
with Judy and one thing value of talent scientists, technologists
adventures or talent, and 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 the idea.
So as much as talent attraction to me was everything
(37:05):
coming up through MTV 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
(37:28):
what they're doing. They 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,
(37:50):
give them 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
(38:13):
Smart Speakers audio podcast sort 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
(38:35):
it takes into account a lot 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
(38:57):
devices are really tapping some 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 countrarians,
(39:21):
we talked about outsiders, 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 Ted Talk or whatever. You can dial up
(39:45):
and teach yourself how 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 respon. That's ability
you can say, I'm not just gonna listen to slow Burn.
I'm going to try something completely different and see what
(40:06):
I take out of that, 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
(40:28):
still search for those voices 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
(40:48):
there that's unserved anybody looking for 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 every thing, you start to want something's curated for you.
There's a reason why rap caviare hit everybody like a lightning.
(41:09):
You know what I mean when 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 would someone to help
me find my way through all of this stuff. I
still believe there's a rule for somebody to curate for
(41:32):
me this massive sea of 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
(41:52):
I look for something on Netflix or Amazon, prim or
Hulu that there's gonna 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
(42:15):
it can be overwhelming. So I still look to the
curators and I still think 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 Corneal Tech Center.
(42:35):
Best magician, you know, not counting you, you know, I
still have to give it up to early MTV, you,
Tom Bob, and pretty much any musician as a magician.
Thanks Judy, Thank you Bob always. Here's a couple of
(42:56):
things I take away from this episode with Judy. It
might be you to just fix your 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,
(43:18):
if you want your business to up end the traditional,
don't hire typical people. Judy is looking at hiring knife throwers.
I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
(43:43):
Thanks so much 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 are Wonderful Talent, which is no small feat. Nikki
Eatre for pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for
their recording help. Are at to Ryan Murdoch and of
course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who
(44:05):
helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
m
You're listening to Math and Magic, a 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, I'm not sure. He said, well,
you're wrong, and I'll tell you why. And then about
(00:22):
forty five minutes 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,
(00:48):
and welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers
and Marketing. This is a place where we're looking at
both sides of the marketing equation, math and magic, and
along the way we're gonna hear some good stories. And
today we're gonna hear some really good stories from Judy McGrath.
Judy is an old old Palamne. We started at MTV
(01:10):
in those early days when we were the twenties something crowd.
She has done an awful lot. 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 a little small towns in Pennsylvania. Also as a
(01:30):
board member at Amazon, which has to be a treat
into itself. Judy is well known as a magician and
probably not as well known and not appreciate as much
as being a pretty good mathematician too. You make some
really hard business decisions as well. So I want to
jump into all that, but first I want to do
you in sixty seconds. Are you ready read? Do you
(01:51):
prefer cats or dogs, beetles or stones both? Oh? No, okay,
Taylor or Kanye Kanye, East Coast or West Coast Coast,
MTV or v H one each 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,
(02:14):
New York, secret talent piano play. I didn't know that
would 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. A favorite TV show
(02:36):
The Americans Historical Idol, one of the Bronte Sisters, any
of them? 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 brain in it. By the way, what did you
(02:57):
want to be when you were growing up? A reporter?
What's one 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,
(03:18):
you know. I still primarily listen to music, and that's
my favorite things. 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.
(03:40):
Tell me about how they influenced you. My dad loved music,
and so growing up in a town like Scranton, let's
just say the musical tastes were probably what you might
expect for 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
(04:01):
he would hang over the you know, the little crappy
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
(04:22):
music home, my music Stones, you know, the Doors, the Beatles,
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 that Charlie Watts was a big band
drumm right, it was a way to have a relationship
(04:42):
with him. I remember thinking later he had a passion
that was 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
(05:03):
find them where I was, and if I could find them,
and 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
(05:23):
New York City, it's impossible. You can't do that. No
one does that. 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.
(05:44):
I mean, this is I don't have the nerve, and
she's like, go in there, do it. You know something
will happen 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 of a Double Wares product experience in
Conde Nest at all. I think I did a little
(06:05):
bit of research, and I was a big magazine fan
before I get to Rolling Stone my ultimate goal. I
wonder if 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
(06:27):
magazine called Mademoiselle that you can take. And I said,
would you mind telling me what the compensation is since
I just literally got off the bus and she said,
dere if 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
(06:51):
and where they were clubbing. And you could pick all
that up just from the lobby. So Mademoiselle, which is
no more. I 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 Relaying, and there were just tons
of people there. I made some of the best friends
in my life there who eventually led me to You
(07:14):
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 also observed was brand. I mean,
(07:37):
those magazines have very clearly defined brands, and they 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 of learning about what is
it that makes this thing important to somebody? What is
(08:00):
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. I get Mademoiselle.
I killed myself writing something and she called me in
(08:20):
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,
and I'm going to give you one chance to go
(08:40):
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, bla bla bla blah. So I
went back. I thought out her very clear, very architectural,
(09:03):
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 rewrites, 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 Business Review just had a story which
we sent around in the office about innovation and company
(09:27):
culture and how you innovate. I thought of the story
actually which I brought it up, and one of the
things that pointed out is said that actually candor works,
not niceness. She was very direct, and you know, it
was the best favor someone can do for you is
to tell you the truth. It felt like a real jolt.
In contrast, I worked at Glamor for a while, which
was a great magazine. I worked for an editor who
(09:50):
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 right it yourself, you know, like a Braddy twenty
something would. But you know, the candor, the directness. I
appreciate it. You've always been a great coach, and you've
(10:12):
been thought of as a great coach, especially for creative people.
Did it come from this and 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. They don't just
want to rubber stamp, even if they think they do.
(10:34):
I thought about a few things. I mean, the beauty
and the wonder of MTV was that it was really
filled with people that I thought could not find gainful
employment anywhere else. It would be somebody who had never
really shot anything and just wanted to get their hands
on a came and try it. And we were willing
(10:55):
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 the person on
(11:15):
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
(11:35):
to meet people who were far more creative than I was.
I began to see I was sort of a better
editor coach 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
(11:56):
do anything, you know, and just make you want to
join the party. And you know Ted Demi and Mark
Palings 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
(12:19):
want to hire anybody 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
(12:40):
forty five minutes later, 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 nas and
jump on this thing? Whatever it is? So how did
you get over? I had some friends who came to
(13:01):
work for you. They said, well, 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 kinde Nast 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 the circus
(13:24):
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
(13:45):
gonna do it. I mean, 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 the creative group. You had a plan,
(14:08):
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 not distributing in Manhattan. I have no
(14:29):
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 took those promises to heart. Twenty
(14:50):
four hours a day terrific in stereo, Not really, but
you know, hey, it's mart It sounded for those ten
people who did have there. I remember you saying to me,
we wanted 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
(15:11):
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,
(15:33):
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 twenty something crowd. You and
I are the same age, not twenty something anymore, unfortunately,
(15:54):
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 our twenties. It's hard to
answer that question without stepping outside yourself. You know, as
(16:15):
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
(16:39):
the world. I mean, there's so many more tools, there's
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.
(17:01):
I mean, you know, I can still 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 they start
(17:21):
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
is that to me? It's like, yes, but what is
(17:44):
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
of style. That it was really only about left brain,
(18:06):
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 and
MTV was research. But it wasn't focus groups. It was
what's going on in your life that influences you and
(18:27):
makes you who you are and determines what you like.
It was like qualitative research, right. It'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 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,
(18:49):
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 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
(19:09):
think that 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 think that is fantastic. I
wish I had had it. It's incredible. But I still
(19:31):
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 Spielbergie
in nineties kind of retro thing going on. They hit
pay dirt with Millie Bobby Brown, they brought one ow
a rider back. They mixed up the stew of things,
(19:54):
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,
and most of them don't. But that part of it
is I think essential in the mix too. Well. I
(20:15):
think that's sort of the hard 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, president tell us
what to do to excite them. Research is not policy making,
and I think we shared that way back when it's okay,
Now I got a picture for these I got a
great idea. Let's do the last weekend with Van Halen.
(20:38):
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.
If you hate your miserable life, sign up here, sign
up here, and we'll change it. Just hold on a second,
(20:58):
because we've got so much more to talk talk about.
We'll be back after a quick break. Welcome back to
Mathew Magic. We're here with Judy McGrath. We were talking
about creatives running companies. You're one of the few creatives
that ran a very big company. How do you think
(21:20):
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 Laybourne, who
you know. The Queen Mother thought us genius Bickelodeon and
she said, you know, Judy, you will never really be
(21:44):
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. The business people in
all of our companies are not typical business people either.
(22:05):
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, and I
started to learn to fall in love with Comedy Central
and Nickelodeon, and you know, I got the chance to
(22:29):
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
the ability to create and innovate and take chances on people.
The business has to be sound, you know, the business
(22:51):
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
makes it sound like I don't understand what they need
to do as well. So I really came to wake
(23:13):
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
Philadelphia and like sit down with Briant and say thank you.
And they were like, what, I'm not going to Philadelphia
(23:36):
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
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.
(23:59):
Obviously is going through some heavy hard times. What isn't
it's battered around, it's crazy as ever. Thus, but I
think everybody who works someplace feels good when the business
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
(24:20):
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
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
(24:42):
women and a cultural phenomenon. They love this. They flocked
to it. They it is the perfect commentary on the
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
(25:05):
we've got them, and we love south Park. We'll love
it for you, but I can convince you that this
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 I'm like, leave him alone, let him talk
(25:26):
to whomever he wants to talk to. He's curating this show.
We're on a journey with him. I don't need another
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
(25:49):
be near that door. You don't want to shut that door.
And how often did you have to go meet with client?
I did a lot of that. But you know the
problem with taking me on a client it was, you know,
there were a multitude of issues. Sometimes, I mean there
was I only to travel, which is ridiculous. I missed
so much. Just a great, great guy. And he invited
(26:11):
me to lunch with a client for taco bell and
during the lunch I said, you know, I'm 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,
(26:33):
I still believe I sell more tacos to people who
were watching like Comedy Central and MTV. But I'll tell
you what I'm thinking about Facebook, 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
(26:54):
be either a good date for the uh, you know,
the lunch for the nightmare date. They'd say, wow, you
did a great sale for Facebook. Thank you. We won't
need to see you yet, 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
(27:14):
of MTV, we're probably looking back at an extraordinary number
of women very important roles. Today would be crowing 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,
(27:38):
you know, one of the great fun things I got
to do would be hang 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
(28:00):
you've got women in roles that were not traditionally women's roles.
They were 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
(28:22):
an easy like, let's let Beth direct, come on, like,
she can do it. 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
(28:45):
young employees who are not typical. So how ridiculous would
it be to take 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
(29:06):
actually talked about it back then. We said, you know,
if somebody has done three or 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 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,
(29:29):
oh my god, I would hire this kid tomorrow. He's
been teaching a 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?
Of course? 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
(29:52):
about getting old? God, Well, 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
(30:16):
he was looking at a piece of piece of media
and he said, that's boring, that was it, And I
watched the kid who had showed it to him look 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,
(30:37):
Like if I were you, 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
(30:57):
I give up. Okay, so let's jump too. You've always
done good. Rock the vote jus er 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
(31:18):
were sort of congratulating each 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
(31:39):
when we decided to get into you know, and certainly
rock the Vote was not our idea politics Jeff air off.
So Jeff was very passionate about this, and it's sort
of grewn to rock the Vote. And I remember talking
to Tom Freston, with whom I had an extraordinarily great
creative relationship, and this was one of the rare our
(32:00):
instances where we had a blowout. Really we 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
(32:22):
be stepping anywhere near an election or voting or any 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 it's social commentary, and
it is about the times we live in, and it
is about everything, and it's about all the things that
(32:43):
affect you in a very deep way. And I thought,
I think there's a way 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
(33:04):
them on their turf, their way, and we'll invite you
to do that. That's your shot. 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 Tabitha store, and Tabitha went to New Hampshire
(33:26):
and she called me at like midnight she said, you know,
I got up here 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
(33:47):
Vote spots, I mean Madonna wrapped in a flag, and
then fast forward to 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's gonna play. We try. I had 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
(34:10):
you deserve to be heard and 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 great. 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
(34:32):
have it front row seat at two phenomena in your
lifetime is incredible, So I would start there. But UM
board 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
(34:53):
of the things I love about Amazon, 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
(35:14):
is day one. They want you to feel 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 regard I
(35:38):
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 that you
(36:00):
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. There's
(36:22):
an incredible guy in the world 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 Alexa than the rest
of the room. He said, you know, I really agree
(36:44):
with Judy and one thing value of talent scientists, technologists
adventures or talent, and 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 the idea.
So as much as talent attraction to me was everything
(37:05):
coming up through MTV 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
(37:28):
what they're doing. They 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,
(37:50):
give them 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
(38:13):
Smart Speakers audio podcast sort 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
(38:35):
it takes into account a lot 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
(38:57):
devices are really tapping some 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 countrarians,
(39:21):
we talked about outsiders, 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 Ted Talk or whatever. You can dial up
(39:45):
and teach yourself how 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 respon. That's ability
you can say, I'm not just gonna listen to slow Burn.
I'm going to try something completely different and see what
(40:06):
I take out of that, 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
(40:28):
still search for those voices 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
(40:48):
there that's unserved anybody looking for 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 every thing, you start to want something's curated for you.
There's a reason why rap caviare hit everybody like a lightning.
(41:09):
You know what I mean when 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 would someone to help
me find my way through all of this stuff. I
still believe there's a rule for somebody to curate for
(41:32):
me this massive sea of 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
(41:52):
I look for something on Netflix or Amazon, prim or
Hulu that there's gonna 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
(42:15):
it can be overwhelming. So I still look to the
curators and I still think 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 Corneal Tech Center.
(42:35):
Best magician, you know, not counting you, you know, I
still have to give it up to early MTV, you,
Tom Bob, and pretty much any musician as a magician.
Thanks Judy, Thank you Bob always. Here's a couple of
(42:56):
things I take away from this episode with Judy. It
might be you to just fix your 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,
(43:18):
if you want your business to up end the traditional,
don't hire typical people. Judy is looking at hiring knife throwers.
I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
(43:43):
Thanks so much 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 are Wonderful Talent, which is no small feat. Nikki
Eatre for pulling research bill plaques, and Michael Asar for
their recording help. Are at to Ryan Murdoch and of
course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who
(44:05):
helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
m
Host
Bob Pittman
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