July 26, 2021 • 52 mins
Today MTV is a cultural institution, and this summer MTV is celebrating its 40th anniversary! But people forget what a long shot it was to get the channel off the ground. Bob Pittman led the team that created MTV. In this special episode, he reminisces with co-founders and friends John Sykes, Judy McGrath, Fred Seibert, Tom Freston and Jarl Mohn about what it was like to create the '80s version of a start-up, and lead a TV revolution by dreaming up the rules as they went along. From why the first MTV logo was designed on crinkled paper (it spent a little time in a trash bin), to how a tiny record store in Tulsa helped save the business, to why you should really think twice about going on a Lost Weekend with Van Halen... all the way to how a terrible cereal inspired one of the greatest ad slogans of all time: “I want my MTV,” we’ve packed this episode full of stories that marketers, fans and entrepreneurs will all want to hear.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
You actually were the guy who inspired us to do
animated logos. Do you remember this? I said, well, what
are we going to do in between the videos and
the VJs that are we gonna do jingles? And he went, oh, no,
we can't do jingles? And I said, what do we do?
(00:24):
He said, how about this? Imagine It's a picture of
a cow. I said, yeah, he said, and all of
a sudden, an X comes down and cuts the cow's
head off and it falls to the ground and you
see the veins coming out and the blood spurting out,
and the cow vomits, and in the vomit is the logo.
I went, Oh, my god, I can do anything I want. Hi.
(00:47):
I'm Bob Tipman, and welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
from the Frontiers and Marketing, and we're doing something special
on today's episode. One of the pivotal moments of my
life was leading the team that created MTV. I've had
the good chate of having all the co founders of
MTV on this podcast with me and in each of
the interviews, whether it was chatting with Judie Grath or
Fred Seibert, John Sykes or Yarramon and of course Tom Freston.
(01:11):
We've always spent a little time talking about MTV, so
what we wanted to do for you today was pulled
together those stories for the first time ever. Tell the
story of the beginning of MTV through the eyes of
people who were actually in the room when it happened,
because all of us who are really in the room
often laugh about how far off other people's accounts can be.
(01:31):
So let me set the stage. It's the beginning of
the eighties. Cable TV was still a crazy idea. Most
business executives and most of America didn't understand it or
believe in how TV was about to change. And here
comes this pack of twenty year olds with an attitude.
(01:53):
None of us had ever done the jobs before. All
we knew is we had grown up with rock and
roll and we've grown up with TV, and the two
had never successfully come together. We thought it had always
failed because TV people always wanted to try and make
music at the TV form. A story of we intended
to make TV at the music form mood and emotion.
(02:14):
MTV was going to be about attitude and something people
wanted to join. We run a mission. So when Iheart's
own John Sykes at the time, a twenty four year
old record executive at CBS Records in Chicago, heard what
we were up to. Well, he wanted in, So let's
talk about MTV. It's nineteen eighty the word gets out
(02:36):
that we're working on this d 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 things in my life. Radio, television, music. That's
all I cared about. When I wasn't listen to the
radio station, I was watching TV or listening to music.
(02:56):
Those things, to me shaped our culture. So I'm at
schoolb TV's just starting up, and I saw the cable
channels were empty and music was all over the radio.
Was it on television? So we used to go and
shoot the concerts at Argus and we'd pape them and
send them to new channels. We played the concerts and
people like, oh my god, I can see the band,
And all I wanted to do at that point was
(03:18):
put music on television. When I graduated, I went to
CBS that 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. 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 then
I heard from my friend's deep case he was at
WLS in Chicago, that his great friend Bob Pittman was
(03:41):
in New York and he was going to start a
video channel, and I lost my mind. It still gives
me goosebumps. I was like, this is what I was
made to do, this is what I wanted to do.
Them to me, it was like music belonged on television.
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,
(04:02):
he said, all right, Bob, you please talk to this guy.
And we met that day with a borrowed support jacket.
Because I didn't known it, but you and I connected
that moment because we had 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
(04:24):
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 they always go exactly the way
you plan. What that early development was like. It is
funny and people are like, 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.
(04:47):
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, 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. People like us,
we weren't going to fail. I never thought we were
going to fail. I got scared when you'd come in
(05:08):
and say, you know they're gonna cut the budgets. 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 going to pitch this or approval,
and you go, what, we don't have approval. I quit
my job. We don't have approval. No, no, John, this
was development. All the blood ran out of your face
(05:30):
at that moment. I do remember I had to look
up because there was no Internet, I had to go
into Dictionary look up the real definition of development. I
just thought, we're developing something. Development means it's not going
to happen yet. But you know something. I was like,
who cares if it doesn't work, I'll go to sleep
on my sister's couching another job. We were young. John
Sykes was so hungry he pounded on our door to
(05:51):
let him in. He believed in music television from the start.
But my good pal Fred Cybert, the one who came
out of radio and helped create the graphic of MTV,
his reason for getting into TV was very different. One
of your great supporters, who I'd worked with and who
I loved early, Dale Pond, recommended you to me pre MTV.
It was in the early days to pay TV you
(06:13):
came over to join us in the cable revolution. Yeah,
why did you make that jump? Well, you know this
is gonna sound flattering. I did it completely because of you.
Dale had left the country music radio station and left
me alone, and the guy I was working for at
that time in radio I had no respect for whatsoever.
So you called me one day, you said you want
(06:33):
to be in televised and oh, you said, okay, come
have coffee with me. I went to Dale's files and
he had files on everyone in the business, and there
was one article about you, and I thought to myself,
you know, this guy is younger than me, and I've
heard of him. So that's one check. So we go,
we have the coffee, and I walk out and I
called my best friend and I said, this guy that
(06:56):
I just talked to is so much smarter than my
boss in radio. He goes, well, what do you think
about that? I said, Well, here's what Dale taught me.
Doesn't matter what the job is, worked for the smartest
person you can find, and at the time, you were
the smartest person I could find. That's what got me
into truth be told. When you first told me about it,
I thought it was the dumbest idea in the world.
(07:16):
Because I was a music guy and I had seen,
you know, a few crummy music videos. I hadn't really
thought about it too much, and then luckily somebody played
me a music video that made, you know, the little
light go off. I don't know whether it was blind
faith or I was too naive to know that you
had to have faith, like you told me it was
going to happen, so I believed you was it youth totally.
(07:40):
I was just talking with Alan Goodman, my soon to
be partner at that point, and he said, you know,
we didn't really know what was going to happen, but
you looked at all the other people that were around
you and it just had to happen. I think that's
really true. I don't know if you remember, but we
went to the head of Warner Communications in American Express,
and we got a meeting with Steve Ross, who the
CEO of Warner, along with his deputies David Horowitz, etc.
(08:04):
And we got Jim Robinson and his deputy Luke Gershner
from American Express. We were worried that when we showed
these videos too, from American Express got so he said,
let's find the tamest one of mine. I think we
found Olivia Newton John if you remember. But in the
meeting they said you have to play that kind of stuff,
implying Olivia Newton John was too hard. But to their credit,
(08:26):
Jim Robinson's the first one to say, Okay, I'm in
for my half. How about you, Steve so awesome we
locked out. The MTV crew we assembled was a bunch
of lovable misfits and future Viacom MTV CEO Tom Freston
was no different. It spent several years living in Afghanistan,
reporting clothes and having adventures across Asia, but when things
got two political overseas, he made his way back and
(08:49):
so so you don't think Tom went soft sitting to
top Viacom. After he left the company, he returned Afghanistan
and even has a wonderful story about lying on the
floor and a bar in football with a firefight going
on all around, the bullets whizzing overhead. I was always
trying to figure out where would I fit in in
the business world. I wasn't an artist, per se. I
(09:10):
wasn't a writer or a musician, but I wanted to
always be around creative people. My first grown up jobs. Essentially,
we're working in an ad agency. My first account there
I worked on was Gi Joe now Mine. This was
sort of at the height of the Vietnam War and
I was in an alienated state to begin with. When
they were going to sign me to a charm in
(09:30):
toilet paper, that was sort of my last straw. I
called an ex girlfriend who lived in Paris. I said,
they want me to work on a toilet paper account
where they had segmented the population and too rollers, folders
and crumplers. And she says, well, you can't do that.
You should quit that job. Dupia Moron, come with me.
I'm going to go across the Sahara Desert. I'm in Paris.
So I was on a plane like ten days later.
(09:51):
That was it for me. So Tom set up his
clothing company, Hindu Kush, and ran that successfully for a
long while. When I was riven out of Asia, I thought,
whatever I do next, I wanted to be something that
I also loved deeply, and that was music. So I'm
methodically looked around getting a job in the music business.
Through connections. I ended up in John Lack's office and
(10:11):
I told him I thought this is a fantastic idea.
He says, we're looking for people who have no experience
in television. I said, I'm your man. They didn't even
have television where I've been living in the last eight years.
We were both originally brought to the company for other jobs,
by the way, before the MTV development even began, by
the incredibly charismatic John Lack, who had this wonderful affliction.
He liked to hire people for roles they had never
(10:33):
had before, and you and I benefited from that. But
you got in here the cable revolution wasn't even recognized
as being a revolution. Yet, what did you think you
were getting into? I mean, this was still sort of
Mickey Mouse compared to the TV business. I thought I
was getting into one of the greatest ideas that had
ever come around. I had spent parts of the summers
in Europe, and I was familiar with the music video
(10:53):
which were largely unknown to American audiences, and they were infectious,
and I thought MTV, like all of us on the team,
was really one of the great ideas. And all of
us were essentially on a crusade. We got paid nothing.
It was the early eighties version of a startup very
much so, and if you looked at the media environment
then nothing had really changed in years. The only thing
(11:15):
that had come around knew had been FM radio. There
was still three TV networks. Pong was only a few
years old. Remember we used to say we're going to
do to FM what FM did to AM. That was
our big plane, twenty five channels in the home, can
you imagine. Judy McGrath was another key employee in the
early days. She eventually rose to be CEO of MTV Networks.
(11:38):
Here she is reminiscing about what it meant to make
the rules up as we went along. 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. We couldn't. No, it would be somebody who
had never really shot anything and just wanted to get
(11:59):
their hands on a camera try it, and we were
willing to do that, 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 the other side. They're like you, but you can't
make this just for you. And there are really no
other rules aside from no full frontal nudity, go out
(12:21):
there and do it. And it was so much fun
to have the freedom to meet people who were far
more creative than I was. 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
(12:41):
Bruce Springsteen. I'm not sure. He said, well, you're wrong,
and I'll tell you why. And then about forty five
minutes later 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. 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?
(13:02):
Whatever it is? These people are crazy. What's funny is
that when I asked Fred about it, he remembered the
story exactly the same way. She said Bruce Springsteen and
I said wrong because I don't have a good thing
about Bruce. The fact that she cared, you know, the
Bruce haters are coming after you right now. Believe me,
They've been coming after me my whole life. The fact
(13:24):
that she cared meant all the difference to me in
the world. Not that I agreed, 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
(13:46):
creative group, you had a plan, and the plan were promises,
and I loved that. I am making a promise to you.
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 MTV and I have no idea what it is,
(14:08):
but those are powerful words my in an era of
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 four hours a day
(14:31):
terrific in stereo, Not really, but you know, hey, it's
that sounded good for those ten people who did have stereo.
I remember you saying that we want people to think
it sounds better than regular television. And they did. It
just felt to me like if I could marry all
the things I'm interested in with these set of principles
(14:52):
and join this crazy band of people who have no
right and a lot of audacity and a firm belief
that this can work. What a gift. I never looked back,
not one second. Let's go back to Fred and chat
about that iconic MTV logo. Talk about the logo. You
(15:14):
set out, you've got the mission. You and I had
these discussions. I naively say, we'll do our own Star
Wars logo because everybody has a Star Wars logo, and
you go, the bob Ours will look cheap. You said, look,
if we do something no one's ever seen before, they
won't know it's cheap. So tell me about the logo. Well,
the logo itself actually came about because I was too
(15:34):
scared to go to someone famous. I wanted to go
to Milton Glazer, who's one of the most famous graphic
designers of the last fifty years. And I was like, oh,
well he's gonna be really expensive, and oh he'll get
all the credit. And I wanted a little credit, you know,
at least, so my childhood friend who I've known since
I'm four years old. A guy named Frank Olinsky had
(15:55):
just started a little design firm behind a tie Chief
studio above Bigelow Chemists on Sixth Avenue. And Frank had
been the guy, because he's a year older than me,
who would always introduced me to every new rock band.
He introduced me to the Monkeys, he introduced me to
the Mothers of Invention, to the Who, to Jeff Beck.
So I go down to his little TIChE studio place
and I go, will you guys design a logo for
(16:16):
this rock channel we're starting? And they were like yes,
And they didn't ask me anything. They didn't ask me
how much they were going to get paid or anything
like that. And this was right after you sent out
the first memo in June of nineteen eighty, and boy
do I wish I had that memo. So for a
year they designed logos and I just rejected everything, probably
(16:39):
five hundred designs. Finally they come in the office one day.
We're actually going to go on the air soon, right,
and we still don't have anything, and they bring a
pile and I'm like, no, no, I'm going through the
whole pile. And at the bottom of the pile is
a piece of tracing paper. Remember that, you know the
paper you could see through and it was all wrinkled
(17:00):
and they had flattened it out. It was just like
a sketched TV and went, Okay, that's the one I
can see. Frank like rowling. He and I now disagree.
But what I had heard is that there's three partners
and one of them wasn't really a designer. She was
a production manager and she had done it, and Frank
saw it and hated him, threw it in the garbage.
(17:22):
She fished it out and put it at the bottom
of the pile. He says, that's not true, but you know,
raised for a good story. The only reason I said
yes is that Dale had taught me one lesson about design.
You need to dominate the space, and that big block
em was the only thing they showed that when you
put it on a TV screen, filled the whole screen.
(17:43):
I'm okay, we dominate the space. And in a world
of thirty channels and a day when the screen was
square exactly right. So then I go, oh, you know,
we need official colors. So they come to my office
with about ten different boards and then a little board
where Frank had illustrated ten or twelve of them on
(18:04):
acrylic overlays and said, this one will be for the
heavy metal show and this one will be for the
new Wave show. And I'm like, Frank, we're not going
to have shows, you know. I put it aside. So
I put all of the boards up on my pegboard
and couldn't decide, and this one on literally for like
weeks and weeks and weeks. And then I start looking
at his little acrylic thing with all the illustration, and
(18:28):
I said, why don't we just use them all at
once all the time? Or television we move, shouldn't the
logo move? And to be honest with you, that was
my first real revelation that I was in television, that
we had come up with an idea that only worked
in television. You actually were the guy who inspired us
(18:49):
to do animated logos. I said, well, what are we
going to do in between the videos and the VJs?
That are We're going to do jingles? And he went, oh, no,
we can't do jingles. And I said, what do we do?
He said, how about this? Imagine it's like a picture
of a cow. I said, yeah, he said, and all
of a sudden, an X comes down and cuts the
cow's head off and it falls to the ground and
(19:12):
you see the veins coming out and the blood spurting out,
and the cow vomits, and in the vomit is the logo.
I went, Oh my god, I can do anything I want.
This is the most exciting moment of my life. And
we started hiring animators to do all that stuff. The
other thing you did when you did those promos, you
laid the music bed down first and cut to the music.
(19:35):
People forget this. They don't realize that was an innovation.
So I got that all from Dale and when we
started making our first radio spots, we would film country
music stars and then he said, well, go to the
audio studio and cut the audio track. And I went, well,
the video guy tells me, no, you have to first
do the picture. And then he goes, Fred, we own
(19:57):
the audio studio. It's free. If you get it right
in the audio studio, then the three hundred dollars an
hour video studio will go much faster. By the time
we got to MTV, I realized that he was absolutely right.
Now fast forward twenty years, I go to MTV one
day and I go, who's the promo department? Now on
the one you're the one? Well, what are you talking about?
(20:20):
And they said, they make us do the audio first.
We're filmed. People like why. So twenty years later they
were still doing it. But boy, what it did is
it brought rhythm. So we had a logo and we
were a band of believers. But part of getting MTV
to stick was proving the channel's worth to the record companies.
(20:41):
Artists loved the idea being on TV, but the labels
needed to be convinced. At the time, Daven said music
should be heard and not seen. We needed a case study,
a story to prove we sold records. I talked to
John Sykes about it. We launch MTV, we get it underway.
We're trying to get some evidence that it's working because
(21:03):
the record companies are hemorrhaging money those years. They were
thinking about cutting videos out of their budget, which of
course we've been disaster for. So we said we got
to get some evidence ahead of the budget cycle. And
you and Tom Freston go on the road to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Just told on a second, because we've got so much
more to talk about. We'll be back after a quick
(21:24):
break some of what happened in Tulsa. We believe this
was working, 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 come back. You have a story. And Tulsa didn't
happen until we went to Syracuse, Houston and we went
(21:44):
to the cable markets. So Tom and I driving through
Tulsa in a rental car literally with a map of
record stores and going into places. So you sold any
please records selling Duran Duran, you seliny Tulips to Nope, Nope,
So we kept driving driving. I still remember it was
a record store in an old house and Tom alize
(22:06):
Trudgin and we say solely this so only that, solely
durand drand Ran I sold two boxes of Durandrean records
last week. What is you sold, Toback? You sold fifty records,
twenty five records in a box. Can we have your
name and can we use your phone? We called the
box said Bob, Bob, we have a story. We have
(22:28):
a story. We have a record store that's selling music's
only played on MTV. And he 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 bill Board and the music magazines to influence the
record company. I'll keep going, I have, of course you do.
(22:50):
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. If you're wondering why
we picked those places, Syracuse, Houston, Tulsa, it's because those
were the few markets where we had enough cable density
(23:12):
that we could make a point. These cities ended up
being little laboratories where we could peek in and take
measurements and show the world just how effective MTV was
going to be. So it proved our worth to the
record companies. But you have to remember we still had
to convince cable operators to carry MTV. They wanted to
be paid to carry our channel, and frankly, we didn't
(23:33):
have the money. So we had to come up with
a breakthrough idea and genius campaign that could do all
the heavy lifting here, Tom Preston and Fred Seibert telling
that story. Let's start the talk. When we launched MTV,
you were the head of marketing. The cable operator wouldn't
put MTV on. They wanted us to pay them. One,
(23:54):
we didn't have the money, and two that was probably
a slippery slope, and so we decided we would use
a whole strategy to get distribution. I want my MTV.
Well it was sort of a hail Mary pass because
you know, we're about to go under. No one in
the organization knew we were about to go under, So
how are we going to get these cable operators to
add us? When we knew in fact that the people
(24:15):
who actually had it in the few towns where it existed,
they loved it. They were fanatical about it. So we
actually had to go over their heads. And the idea
was that campaign I want my MAPO, which I remembered
as a baby boomer in the fifties. I'm obnoxious, I
want my MAPO, but I want my MTV. The actual
spot said they grew up with rock and roll, they
grew up with television. Now they want their MTV. George Lois,
(24:40):
who never saw something that he couldn't copy. Had already
copied a famous TV commercial from the fifties called I
Want my mapo for a really horrendous tasting exactly, and
he redid it with Mick Jagger and David Bowie. And
(25:00):
on the beginning of the spot he had Pete Townsend
doing it America, demand your MTV, and people go, I
want my MTV, I want my MTV. And then Pete
Townsend again with a telephone going pull your cable operator
and say I want And they showed us this spot.
If we could get major rock stars in a commercial
(25:21):
to kind of hold our logo, validate and hold it
and command people to call their cable company and demand
their MTV, make it look cool, put some animation around it,
and then put it in these markets at very high frequency.
We go into a market and it could be like
a Blockbuster movie was opening. Most people in the market
had never heard of MTV. So we went and we
(25:43):
pitched it to you. I think you saw the feeling
of it right away. Well, there's a lesson in this
too that you've always done very very well, which is
harnessing the power of partners. And in the case of
I want my MTV music stars who were willing to
be in the commercial for free to help us accomplish goals.
But you also have music companies and others. Dale was
this brilliant hybrid of a strategist and a creative guy.
(26:09):
And as a strategist, what he understood is that we
had no money to spend on this ad. I remember
going into our boss's office and saying, but HBO spending
ten million dollars a year in advertising, goes, you're lucky
you have two somehow or other. The people in the
media business didn't actually believe in advertising as the weirdest thing,
and so I went to Dale. I said, look, we
(26:30):
only have two million dollars, and he did an incredible
data dump of where could MTV be put on against
how much media cost in that particular market, and he
did three or four or five cross tabs to figure
out the most likely places that if we put on
(26:52):
these spots, that we would get people calling and making
the cable operators insane. And god knows, I think we
made customer representatives from all over America crazy within four weeks.
Next thing, you know, every cable operator if there were
eleven of them, in a market, which would not be
unusual time they'd all call up and surrender. So we
(27:14):
would move a market by market for a couple of
years across the country, going from like what was seven
million subscribers ended up being eighty or ninety a million.
I had a guy stopped me at a cable operator
and said, I hate you, and I go, why do
you hate me? And he goes, because my phone rings
all day with those people saying I want my mule,
I can't get any work done. In my chats with
(27:37):
the co founders, there's a lot of fondness for this
deviant culture we had. MTV was fine. It was definitely
anti establishment, and the truth is even the promotions dripped
with the brand sensibility. In some ways they defined the
brand sensibility. There's some of the crazy stories too. It
was fun reminiscing with John Sykes about them. You were
(27:57):
the guy who did the promotions. You came up with
these ideas and fortunately unfortunately with the one that also
executed them. Did to Paint the House paint promotion with
John Mellencamp, you did the Last Weekend with Van Halen.
What formula were you using? Goes back to that s
connected New York thing of being a dreamer, because I
was the kid. I was the viewer who thought, oh
(28:18):
my god, if only I could dot dot dot. So
when you said we've got to put together some promotions,
we got to 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? And I remember
just John had done a song called pink Houses. So
let's give away a house and you we're gonna paint
(28:40):
the mother pink. Tell us about the first house you bought.
When you had to execute it, I means you got
to go find a house, got 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 chiefest house you could find. So Bob goes, take
a cashier's check and just go buy a house. And
I okay. So I flew in Indiana and John Mellencamp,
(29:03):
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 get the flight back
to New York. Show me four houses. First house we buy,
the woman is there, 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.
(29:24):
Look at this house, and I said, we'll do It's
a we can paint this pink. So I wrote a
check thirty two thousand dollars, bought the house. Her jaw dropped.
No realator, just handed the check and got in the car.
Drove back when you opened up Rolling Stone. Three weeks later,
MTV buys house on toxic waste dump. So so I
call you go Bob. I had no idea. John Mellencamp
(29:46):
writes me letters 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 a house.
So I had to back can get an other house.
But 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
(30:13):
rock and roll brand to consumers. There was a movie
called The Last Weekend. Gray Mullan was in there and
guy loses his mind whatever, and so we just said,
let's do a Last week with the 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 ideas like we're in, We're in,
and by the way, will fulfill the contest. You don't
(30:34):
have to do anything. Just drop off the fans with
us and we'll deliver them 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 what 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 MX and condoled or
(30:57):
MTV nuous activity. So he's standing on stage completely out
of his mind and David Lee Roth goes, we have
the winner tonight of the MTV 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
push it into his face and the guy is stunned
(31:19):
and he starts twirling 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 middle 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
guard all night. But that kind of made the legend
of MTV. I wish we could take credit for that,
(31:41):
but that was it, so the contest. But 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.
MTV could have been a flash in the pan, but
the marketing spirit capturing an attitude that young America responded to.
People tuned in just to see what was going on
(32:02):
in MTV. It was a place to hang out, and
as the word spread, the channel made money. Although MTV
was the most radical of the cable channels, it was
also the first cable network to actually make a profit,
and we had the highest AD revenue of any of
the cable networks. I remember this was a time when
people didn't believe cable networks could even be profitable. Boy
did that feel good. But part of keeping the channel
(32:24):
successful was continuing to think outside the mainstream and continue
to come up with new ideas. Here's bread again. We
had these creative promo departments. Once people came in and
started saying, well, I worked on promos over here, I
didn't want to hire them. One of the earliest people
I hired had just come out of film school and
his first job was cutting film negatives at a pornout play.
(32:46):
So I'm like, okay, fine, you won't remember this. But
one day you called me into your office and you said, hey,
I need you to be the head of production. I said, Bob,
you know, I've never seen even the red light on
top of a camera go on. And you went, oh,
don't worry, you'll figure it out. And that was that,
and all of a sudden I was in television and
you did a really great job. Thank you. But it
(33:09):
wasn't just people like Fred who got an opportunity to MTV.
You're Judy and Tom talking about how he kept an
eye out from new talent and groomed them upward, and
the culture that the two of them kept going and
kept building at the company even after I left. If
you think about it, in the days of MTV, we're
probably looking back at an extraordinary number of women and
(33:30):
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?
I began to see I was sort of a better
editor coach than I was a player. I can remember
some things that just felt like personal milestones to me.
(33:53):
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 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 in events, but
(34:14):
we'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
(34:35):
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. I once heard Tina Fey say something
about it's a panel where a bunch of women were
(34:57):
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. And you know,
(35:17):
I always felt like I worked with men who are
not typical and 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 give somebody a chance, they'll knock themselves out
(35:39):
to show you that they could really do it. And
we actually talked about it back then. We said, you know,
if somebody's done three or four things and they're not great,
we have empirical evidence they won't be great. Yeah, but
if we give somebody a shot who's never done it,
they could be the next Steven Spielberg, exactly right. And
the only way we're going to find out is to
take a shot. And you continue to do that through
your career. A lot of focus was on eating a
(36:00):
culture that would attract creative people. They would want to
come and live there. I mean, we'd have at one
point Chud Apatow or Ben Stiller or John Stewart, Stephen Cober,
you know, Adam Sandler would like be sleeping in the offices. Sometime.
It was a hothouse atmosphere. You were probably the first
talent incubator. I don't think they called them that back then.
How did you pull that together because it is really
(36:20):
remarkable to people you had, well, a lot of it
is sort of what's the vibe of the place. We
always wanted to make the room for deviancy. I would
always say, who's the odd ball person, Who's the intern
who's going to come running in with an idea like
Yo MTV raps. That was like a twenty one year
old intern who came up with a demo in his basement.
Because we had these networks, there was a lot of
room for experimentation. Everything you made didn't have to be
(36:43):
really tightly organized. There was a lot of room for
improvisation and innovation. Well, if you have a hallmark for that,
people would want to step up and follow. What's he
Just try and have good standards, provide guard rails for people,
celebrate risk, you know, we give creative people a lot
of freedom. One of the people who was crucial tim
Ted's early success it was former MPR CEO y'arre Moon.
(37:04):
Y'arll and I went way back. We even had a
show called Album Tracks that aired after Saturday Night Live.
But y'arall had an incredible eye for programming and when
MTV had to think beyond music, videos. He played a
crucial role for me. It was a great transition from
the radio world to the television world because there were
(37:25):
so many similarities. If you had picked me up and
tried to drop me into a broadcast network to do
scripted filmed entertainment, I would have I think, flailed and
failed miserably. But ultimately we all learned a lot of
lessons about the fragility of this brand new thing, music videos,
and that was something that we all kind of had
(37:47):
to learn in real time. It was humbling, it was embarrassing,
and it didn't even think it stopped working. There was
so much heat around music videos at the time, and
there were so many people watching and being really enthralled by.
But I think ultimately it became less interesting. It was
television and we were using a lot I was at
least using a lot of radio rules for a different medium,
(38:10):
and people were making four minute decisions of what they
were going to watch, a not thirty minute and sixty
minute or ninety minute decisions, and ultimately had to switch
strategy to go to content that people would watch for
longer periods of time, long form, and that was very
controversial at the time, but you know, it worked. What
(38:32):
were your first shows? And we started with the Weekend
Rock and hiring Kurtloader from Rolling Stone magazine and taking
the MTV news segments and making it a half hour show,
and that worked, and then rockumentaries as specials as the second.
The third was Club MTV, Let's do an American bandstand
for today, Let's play music videos and hire Downtown Julie Brown.
(38:54):
That was a hit. Every show that went on did well.
Then we're going to really cocky and think, man, we
really know how to make hits. But I think it
was more a reflection of the fact that music videos
at the time had run their course. The most controversial
one remote Control of the game show, and all the
research came back said you can't do a game show.
(39:16):
And I remember saying to our good friend Marshall Cohen.
We worked with an MTV research guru. Yes, I said,
I think we're asking the wrong question. The question should
be if we were to do a game show, what
would it look like? And the answer came back, well,
it should be irreverence to be crazy. We used all
(39:36):
the information and hired Ken Ober and Colin Quinn and
Adam Sandler was a regular on the show and it
was a monster, but the additional research the way we
asked it indicated that not have been a disaster. It
worked out great for were you a yep, oh yeah, yeah.
(39:58):
So MTV started to with new formats, but as Preston
remembers it, the limited budgets were actually an engine for creativity.
We couldn't just innovate it by shuffling the music mix
or changing things. That was clear. We tried everything. We
just couldn't play the top ten videos all day long.
There was always new shows coming around. We would add
shows on package music and like on hip hop music
(40:20):
with the OMTV raps and so forth, and it kind
of came down to the real world day That was
in nineteen ninety three, and that was like, well, we've
tried everything else, we should probably do a soap opera
because young people are interested in what other young people
are doing. So they came in with a presentation to
me and we had to hire writers, and I said, well,
you know, we don't have any money to hire writers,
(40:41):
so we can't do this. So then Doug Herzog came
back and said, you know, we're really good at post production.
That's our major skill. What if we just rented aloft
in Soho and stuck some cameras in there and bring
these kids in and then let them live and then
we'll post it afterwards and make it into a show.
And that was sort of the birth of reality. It
was an idea that was not born of brilliance but
(41:03):
born of cheapskateness. MTV was a success story finally, but
it wasn't long before the competition started circling. Here's Tom
with the story of what motivated us to start VH one.
Ted Turner one to come in and basically p in
our parade. He said he was going to launch a
music channel that played none of the Devil's music. Let
(41:24):
me say first that the cable music channel lasted one
hundred and one days on the air and he had
the fold up and go home. But we decided we
can't let this happen, and if there's going to be
a second music channel, we should have a second music channel.
And we made the case to cable operations, we have
a second music channel. You don't want to add the
Ted Turner channel because that's just going to go head
to head against the one you already have. Add VH one,
(41:44):
which was called the Very Hot one at the time
because it would be more compatible and it would play
artists for another demo and we would sell a tu
on a combo basis. Basically it was free if you
already had MTV. So we strangled him in terms of
not being able to get distribution. Therefore no advertising, no revenue,
no light on the end of the tunnel, and he
went out of business and we went forward. Of course,
(42:08):
launching VH one was one thing. It was a savvy move,
a classic fighting brand. It was essential and fighting off
ted Turner's channel. But once that was over, the team
had to figure out what to do with it. The
network struggled for years. Ratings were abysmal, so John Sykes,
who left HIMTV by then it was called back to
lead the charge. Tom Freston calls Jop says, come home,
(42:33):
needs you to fix a BH one. What did you do?
As you know, Bob, because you taught me so much
of the stuff. A brand is only valuable if there
is an underserved segment of the audience that needs it.
Hip hop was starting to happen. Alternate music was exploding
and a lot of the traditional rock bands in R
and B bands were being pushed out and they're going
(42:53):
like an off of the cliff. And I said, there's
a market here, because having run a record company, a
publishing company, we were seeing these artists that used to
be called middle of the road back then, but now
they were actually vibrant popands. They didn't have a place.
And then I saw who were thoset, powerful buyers, young adults,
young college graduates. Here's a generation. It's grown up on MTV.
(43:15):
They have money, they're affluent, and they have nowhere to go.
So I was as excited actually about VH 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 and
I knew if I fell, it would be on me.
It would be likes out at VH one fails. They
(43:36):
used to call VH point one. It was the rating
of it again. And for those people who ratings, ratings
are from zero to whatever, and point one, zero two hundred,
VH one is the ugly step child at MTV Networks.
I used to say it was nails out the back
seat of a car to put flats in the tires
of the cars behind us, because we didn't want anybody
(43:56):
compet with MTV. But I said, now it quietly has
their million homes. There's a market for this. And I
looked in the room and half the people like or
a sleep bicycle that Quenton staying. They had a job,
but they didn't believe in the product, but they were
coflecting a paycheck. So I said, listen, if you don't
believe in this, it's okay. We won't make a big
thing and we're going to fire you, but we'll work
(44:17):
out a package and you should leave because we need
people who are 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, I don't want to do this.
I didn't think they I don't thieve it would come like,
I don't think you're right. I like, okay, well, thank you, bye,
(44:39):
God 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 who 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 put together an all star trip. So maybe proud
and working with some of the red Stone I mean
(45:00):
Sun at Redstone nineteen ninety four 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.
I say, that's all I want to know, excuse me
the rope, and he did. It was a great nine years.
We shattered all the records there, but all good businesses
you got to reinvent them otherwise they paid it off.
(45:22):
MTV was the starting point of a cable revolution. The
channel and the creative engine we built gave birth to
so much more. Here's Tom I'm talking about just that topic.
I was ambitious and I was highly motivated for this
to succeed. I thought that we were in this TV revolution,
We had the wind at our back. It was all
going to come true. It was too good of an
(45:43):
idea to fail. You know, a lot of life is
about timing and luck, and I had somehow ended up
once again in the right place. At the right time,
and this was sort of my destiny. I was going
to meet my opportunity. What you did, you know, I
would say my time there, we really proved it was
a business. Were the first cable network to make a profit.
But it was really you and your team, including Shooting Grath,
(46:05):
who built MTV and the other networks into this incredible
media giant. What drove that in? Where did that vision
come from? And how did you get there? There's a
compliment to you, Bob, I mean you are the guy
always keep your eye on the consumer, find out what
the consumer want. We would always see this resource the
consumer wanted what we were selling, and we could tune
it up a bit. And we also had this sort
(46:26):
of slightly subversive, underground feel and you know, there was
nothing really around like that. And we would continue to
launch new networks Comedy Central or tv Land, and the
whole international world of television began to deregulate in the
late eighties. All these countries really only had state TV
pretty much as you know. So the confidence I had
built from my years living in Afghanistan and India was
(46:49):
actually very transfernable because I really knew we could go
anywhere and do anything. And if we could go to Europe,
we could go to Asia, we go to Latin America.
So we built really the first worldwide television networking company,
and we rolled out not just MTV, but also Nickelodeon
and Comedy Central, a lot of others right down through Africa.
So the business gradually evolved from one where we would
(47:09):
package other people's product like a music video, to where
we would increasingly own what we did. But at the
heart of it always a creative machine, which again was
something that you put in at the inception of the company.
When we first started MTV, it wasn't just entertainment. We
built a channel to be the voice of young America
and that included doing good and my time there. MTV
(47:30):
made its mark with massive events with important missions, Am
the Sky, International, band Aid, Farm Aid and of course
Live Aid. But it was Rock the Vote that truly
took the channel into politics, and some say even got
a president elected. Here's Judy talking about it. You've always
done good, Rock the Vote chooser lose AIDS awareness. How
(47:53):
did you think about that inside of a company and
how do you think of it for you as a person, Well,
you know, inside MTV. It was very interesting when we
decided to get into you know, and certainly Rock the
Vote was not our idea politics Jeff ear Off. So
Jeff was very passionate about this, and it sort of
(48:13):
grew in 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 instances
where we had a blowout. Really we really didn't agree,
but I listened to what he said, and he said,
this is a terrible idea. It's not going to work.
(48:34):
This is an entertainment brand. Nobody cares about this. We're
gonna get laughed out of town. We do not have
permission to do this. There's nothing about us that says
we should be stepping anywhere near an election or voting
or any of this. So I went back and I
thought about it a little bit, and I thought, Okay,
this is where I come into the picture. I think
(48:54):
I grew up in an era where one of the
many things I loved about music was its social commentary,
and it is about the times we live in, and
it's about all the things that 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.
(49:15):
It was saying, to people who make big decisions in
this country, this is a generation that is disengaged from you,
and you need to address them on their turf, their way,
and we'll invite you to do that. That's your shot.
It wasn't about trying to be parental or any of
that kind of stuff to them, or give them boring
(49:36):
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 Stor. Tabitha
went to New Hampshire 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 got back off the bus,
(49:57):
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
to the Vote spots. I mean Madonna wrapped in a
flag whatever, their disagreement, Tom Preston quickly embraced the idea.
We knew it was important to our audience. I also
knew it was extremely important to the employee base. Employees
(50:20):
would feel better about working there if they knew we
had some kind of social purpose associated with what we
would do, and we had one hundred and sixty eight
hours a week, we could certainly squeeze it in. It
also turned out it legitimized us in the eyes of
advertisers who formally wouldn't come near us, like American Express.
But most importantly, the audience liked it. And then fast
forward to you know, we're going to throw an inaugural
ball that's not official and see if anybody comes to
(50:41):
the party, and our EM's gonna play and Vogue's gonna play,
And we tried to make it as spirited as MTV,
but add a little bit of gravitas if you will,
and meaning you know, like you do matter. You are young,
but you matter, and you deserve to be heard and
listen to, and we're going to help you. MTV was
(51:04):
a wonderful ride. From the very beginning. My co founders
and I knew we were doing something that was important
to culture, but we had no idea we were going
to change culture. MTV changed TV, it changed music, it
changed graphic design, and it certainly changed my life. No
matter how old I get or whatever else I've done,
(51:25):
MTV is still an important chapter of my life, and
all of us as co founders are still very much
a very type family. But the truth is, looking back,
I think we all feel the same way Tom Freston
felt when he joined the team. I was happy to
have a job. I couldn't believe anyone was gonna hire me,
(51:45):
and lucky for all of us, we all kept getting
hired again and again. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. This show
is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger
for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
(52:07):
small feat. Nikki Etour for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Azar for their recording help, our editor, Ryan Murdock,
and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
You actually were the guy who inspired us to do
animated logos. Do you remember this? I said, well, what
are we going to do in between the videos and
the VJs that are we gonna do jingles? And he went, oh, no,
we can't do jingles? And I said, what do we do?
(00:24):
He said, how about this? Imagine It's a picture of
a cow. I said, yeah, he said, and all of
a sudden, an X comes down and cuts the cow's
head off and it falls to the ground and you
see the veins coming out and the blood spurting out,
and the cow vomits, and in the vomit is the logo.
I went, Oh, my god, I can do anything I want. Hi.
(00:47):
I'm Bob Tipman, and welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
from the Frontiers and Marketing, and we're doing something special
on today's episode. One of the pivotal moments of my
life was leading the team that created MTV. I've had
the good chate of having all the co founders of
MTV on this podcast with me and in each of
the interviews, whether it was chatting with Judie Grath or
Fred Seibert, John Sykes or Yarramon and of course Tom Freston.
(01:11):
We've always spent a little time talking about MTV, so
what we wanted to do for you today was pulled
together those stories for the first time ever. Tell the
story of the beginning of MTV through the eyes of
people who were actually in the room when it happened,
because all of us who are really in the room
often laugh about how far off other people's accounts can be.
(01:31):
So let me set the stage. It's the beginning of
the eighties. Cable TV was still a crazy idea. Most
business executives and most of America didn't understand it or
believe in how TV was about to change. And here
comes this pack of twenty year olds with an attitude.
(01:53):
None of us had ever done the jobs before. All
we knew is we had grown up with rock and
roll and we've grown up with TV, and the two
had never successfully come together. We thought it had always
failed because TV people always wanted to try and make
music at the TV form. A story of we intended
to make TV at the music form mood and emotion.
(02:14):
MTV was going to be about attitude and something people
wanted to join. We run a mission. So when Iheart's
own John Sykes at the time, a twenty four year
old record executive at CBS Records in Chicago, heard what
we were up to. Well, he wanted in, So let's
talk about MTV. It's nineteen eighty the word gets out
(02:36):
that we're working on this d 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 things in my life. Radio, television, music. That's
all I cared about. When I wasn't listen to the
radio station, I was watching TV or listening to music.
(02:56):
Those things, to me shaped our culture. So I'm at
schoolb TV's just starting up, and I saw the cable
channels were empty and music was all over the radio.
Was it on television? So we used to go and
shoot the concerts at Argus and we'd pape them and
send them to new channels. We played the concerts and
people like, oh my god, I can see the band,
And all I wanted to do at that point was
(03:18):
put music on television. When I graduated, I went to
CBS that 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. 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 then
I heard from my friend's deep case he was at
WLS in Chicago, that his great friend Bob Pittman was
(03:41):
in New York and he was going to start a
video channel, and I lost my mind. It still gives
me goosebumps. I was like, this is what I was
made to do, this is what I wanted to do.
Them to me, it was like music belonged on television.
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,
(04:02):
he said, all right, Bob, you please talk to this guy.
And we met that day with a borrowed support jacket.
Because I didn't known it, but you and I connected
that moment because we had 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
(04:24):
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 they always go exactly the way
you plan. What that early development was like. It is
funny and people are like, 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.
(04:47):
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, 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. People like us,
we weren't going to fail. I never thought we were
going to fail. I got scared when you'd come in
(05:08):
and say, you know they're gonna cut the budgets. 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 going to pitch this or approval,
and you go, what, we don't have approval. I quit
my job. We don't have approval. No, no, John, this
was development. All the blood ran out of your face
(05:30):
at that moment. I do remember I had to look
up because there was no Internet, I had to go
into Dictionary look up the real definition of development. I
just thought, we're developing something. Development means it's not going
to happen yet. But you know something. I was like,
who cares if it doesn't work, I'll go to sleep
on my sister's couching another job. We were young. John
Sykes was so hungry he pounded on our door to
(05:51):
let him in. He believed in music television from the start.
But my good pal Fred Cybert, the one who came
out of radio and helped create the graphic of MTV,
his reason for getting into TV was very different. One
of your great supporters, who I'd worked with and who
I loved early, Dale Pond, recommended you to me pre MTV.
It was in the early days to pay TV you
(06:13):
came over to join us in the cable revolution. Yeah,
why did you make that jump? Well, you know this
is gonna sound flattering. I did it completely because of you.
Dale had left the country music radio station and left
me alone, and the guy I was working for at
that time in radio I had no respect for whatsoever.
So you called me one day, you said you want
(06:33):
to be in televised and oh, you said, okay, come
have coffee with me. I went to Dale's files and
he had files on everyone in the business, and there
was one article about you, and I thought to myself,
you know, this guy is younger than me, and I've
heard of him. So that's one check. So we go,
we have the coffee, and I walk out and I
called my best friend and I said, this guy that
(06:56):
I just talked to is so much smarter than my
boss in radio. He goes, well, what do you think
about that? I said, Well, here's what Dale taught me.
Doesn't matter what the job is, worked for the smartest
person you can find, and at the time, you were
the smartest person I could find. That's what got me
into truth be told. When you first told me about it,
I thought it was the dumbest idea in the world.
(07:16):
Because I was a music guy and I had seen,
you know, a few crummy music videos. I hadn't really
thought about it too much, and then luckily somebody played
me a music video that made, you know, the little
light go off. I don't know whether it was blind
faith or I was too naive to know that you
had to have faith, like you told me it was
going to happen, so I believed you was it youth totally.
(07:40):
I was just talking with Alan Goodman, my soon to
be partner at that point, and he said, you know,
we didn't really know what was going to happen, but
you looked at all the other people that were around
you and it just had to happen. I think that's
really true. I don't know if you remember, but we
went to the head of Warner Communications in American Express,
and we got a meeting with Steve Ross, who the
CEO of Warner, along with his deputies David Horowitz, etc.
(08:04):
And we got Jim Robinson and his deputy Luke Gershner
from American Express. We were worried that when we showed
these videos too, from American Express got so he said,
let's find the tamest one of mine. I think we
found Olivia Newton John if you remember. But in the
meeting they said you have to play that kind of stuff,
implying Olivia Newton John was too hard. But to their credit,
(08:26):
Jim Robinson's the first one to say, Okay, I'm in
for my half. How about you, Steve so awesome we
locked out. The MTV crew we assembled was a bunch
of lovable misfits and future Viacom MTV CEO Tom Freston
was no different. It spent several years living in Afghanistan,
reporting clothes and having adventures across Asia, but when things
got two political overseas, he made his way back and
(08:49):
so so you don't think Tom went soft sitting to
top Viacom. After he left the company, he returned Afghanistan
and even has a wonderful story about lying on the
floor and a bar in football with a firefight going
on all around, the bullets whizzing overhead. I was always
trying to figure out where would I fit in in
the business world. I wasn't an artist, per se. I
(09:10):
wasn't a writer or a musician, but I wanted to
always be around creative people. My first grown up jobs. Essentially,
we're working in an ad agency. My first account there
I worked on was Gi Joe now Mine. This was
sort of at the height of the Vietnam War and
I was in an alienated state to begin with. When
they were going to sign me to a charm in
(09:30):
toilet paper, that was sort of my last straw. I
called an ex girlfriend who lived in Paris. I said,
they want me to work on a toilet paper account
where they had segmented the population and too rollers, folders
and crumplers. And she says, well, you can't do that.
You should quit that job. Dupia Moron, come with me.
I'm going to go across the Sahara Desert. I'm in Paris.
So I was on a plane like ten days later.
(09:51):
That was it for me. So Tom set up his
clothing company, Hindu Kush, and ran that successfully for a
long while. When I was riven out of Asia, I thought,
whatever I do next, I wanted to be something that
I also loved deeply, and that was music. So I'm
methodically looked around getting a job in the music business.
Through connections. I ended up in John Lack's office and
(10:11):
I told him I thought this is a fantastic idea.
He says, we're looking for people who have no experience
in television. I said, I'm your man. They didn't even
have television where I've been living in the last eight years.
We were both originally brought to the company for other jobs,
by the way, before the MTV development even began, by
the incredibly charismatic John Lack, who had this wonderful affliction.
He liked to hire people for roles they had never
(10:33):
had before, and you and I benefited from that. But
you got in here the cable revolution wasn't even recognized
as being a revolution. Yet, what did you think you
were getting into? I mean, this was still sort of
Mickey Mouse compared to the TV business. I thought I
was getting into one of the greatest ideas that had
ever come around. I had spent parts of the summers
in Europe, and I was familiar with the music video
(10:53):
which were largely unknown to American audiences, and they were infectious,
and I thought MTV, like all of us on the team,
was really one of the great ideas. And all of
us were essentially on a crusade. We got paid nothing.
It was the early eighties version of a startup very
much so, and if you looked at the media environment
then nothing had really changed in years. The only thing
(11:15):
that had come around knew had been FM radio. There
was still three TV networks. Pong was only a few
years old. Remember we used to say we're going to
do to FM what FM did to AM. That was
our big plane, twenty five channels in the home, can
you imagine. Judy McGrath was another key employee in the
early days. She eventually rose to be CEO of MTV Networks.
(11:38):
Here she is reminiscing about what it meant to make
the rules up as we went along. 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. We couldn't. No, it would be somebody who
had never really shot anything and just wanted to get
(11:59):
their hands on a camera try it, and we were
willing to do that, 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 the other side. They're like you, but you can't
make this just for you. And there are really no
other rules aside from no full frontal nudity, go out
(12:21):
there and do it. And it was so much fun
to have the freedom to meet people who were far
more creative than I was. 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
(12:41):
Bruce Springsteen. I'm not sure. He said, well, you're wrong,
and I'll tell you why. And then about forty five
minutes later 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. 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?
(13:02):
Whatever it is? These people are crazy. What's funny is
that when I asked Fred about it, he remembered the
story exactly the same way. She said Bruce Springsteen and
I said wrong because I don't have a good thing
about Bruce. The fact that she cared, you know, the
Bruce haters are coming after you right now. Believe me,
They've been coming after me my whole life. The fact
(13:24):
that she cared meant all the difference to me in
the world. Not that I agreed, 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
(13:46):
creative group, you had a plan, and the plan were promises,
and I loved that. I am making a promise to you.
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 MTV and I have no idea what it is,
(14:08):
but those are powerful words my in an era of
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 four hours a day
(14:31):
terrific in stereo, Not really, but you know, hey, it's
that sounded good for those ten people who did have stereo.
I remember you saying that we want people to think
it sounds better than regular television. And they did. It
just felt to me like if I could marry all
the things I'm interested in with these set of principles
(14:52):
and join this crazy band of people who have no
right and a lot of audacity and a firm belief
that this can work. What a gift. I never looked back,
not one second. Let's go back to Fred and chat
about that iconic MTV logo. Talk about the logo. You
(15:14):
set out, you've got the mission. You and I had
these discussions. I naively say, we'll do our own Star
Wars logo because everybody has a Star Wars logo, and
you go, the bob Ours will look cheap. You said, look,
if we do something no one's ever seen before, they
won't know it's cheap. So tell me about the logo. Well,
the logo itself actually came about because I was too
(15:34):
scared to go to someone famous. I wanted to go
to Milton Glazer, who's one of the most famous graphic
designers of the last fifty years. And I was like, oh,
well he's gonna be really expensive, and oh he'll get
all the credit. And I wanted a little credit, you know,
at least, so my childhood friend who I've known since
I'm four years old. A guy named Frank Olinsky had
(15:55):
just started a little design firm behind a tie Chief
studio above Bigelow Chemists on Sixth Avenue. And Frank had
been the guy, because he's a year older than me,
who would always introduced me to every new rock band.
He introduced me to the Monkeys, he introduced me to
the Mothers of Invention, to the Who, to Jeff Beck.
So I go down to his little TIChE studio place
and I go, will you guys design a logo for
(16:16):
this rock channel we're starting? And they were like yes,
And they didn't ask me anything. They didn't ask me
how much they were going to get paid or anything
like that. And this was right after you sent out
the first memo in June of nineteen eighty, and boy
do I wish I had that memo. So for a
year they designed logos and I just rejected everything, probably
(16:39):
five hundred designs. Finally they come in the office one day.
We're actually going to go on the air soon, right,
and we still don't have anything, and they bring a
pile and I'm like, no, no, I'm going through the
whole pile. And at the bottom of the pile is
a piece of tracing paper. Remember that, you know the
paper you could see through and it was all wrinkled
(17:00):
and they had flattened it out. It was just like
a sketched TV and went, Okay, that's the one I
can see. Frank like rowling. He and I now disagree.
But what I had heard is that there's three partners
and one of them wasn't really a designer. She was
a production manager and she had done it, and Frank
saw it and hated him, threw it in the garbage.
(17:22):
She fished it out and put it at the bottom
of the pile. He says, that's not true, but you know,
raised for a good story. The only reason I said
yes is that Dale had taught me one lesson about design.
You need to dominate the space, and that big block
em was the only thing they showed that when you
put it on a TV screen, filled the whole screen.
(17:43):
I'm okay, we dominate the space. And in a world
of thirty channels and a day when the screen was
square exactly right. So then I go, oh, you know,
we need official colors. So they come to my office
with about ten different boards and then a little board
where Frank had illustrated ten or twelve of them on
(18:04):
acrylic overlays and said, this one will be for the
heavy metal show and this one will be for the
new Wave show. And I'm like, Frank, we're not going
to have shows, you know. I put it aside. So
I put all of the boards up on my pegboard
and couldn't decide, and this one on literally for like
weeks and weeks and weeks. And then I start looking
at his little acrylic thing with all the illustration, and
(18:28):
I said, why don't we just use them all at
once all the time? Or television we move, shouldn't the
logo move? And to be honest with you, that was
my first real revelation that I was in television, that
we had come up with an idea that only worked
in television. You actually were the guy who inspired us
(18:49):
to do animated logos. I said, well, what are we
going to do in between the videos and the VJs?
That are We're going to do jingles? And he went, oh, no,
we can't do jingles. And I said, what do we do?
He said, how about this? Imagine it's like a picture
of a cow. I said, yeah, he said, and all
of a sudden, an X comes down and cuts the
cow's head off and it falls to the ground and
(19:12):
you see the veins coming out and the blood spurting out,
and the cow vomits, and in the vomit is the logo.
I went, Oh my god, I can do anything I want.
This is the most exciting moment of my life. And
we started hiring animators to do all that stuff. The
other thing you did when you did those promos, you
laid the music bed down first and cut to the music.
(19:35):
People forget this. They don't realize that was an innovation.
So I got that all from Dale and when we
started making our first radio spots, we would film country
music stars and then he said, well, go to the
audio studio and cut the audio track. And I went, well,
the video guy tells me, no, you have to first
do the picture. And then he goes, Fred, we own
(19:57):
the audio studio. It's free. If you get it right
in the audio studio, then the three hundred dollars an
hour video studio will go much faster. By the time
we got to MTV, I realized that he was absolutely right.
Now fast forward twenty years, I go to MTV one
day and I go, who's the promo department? Now on
the one you're the one? Well, what are you talking about?
(20:20):
And they said, they make us do the audio first.
We're filmed. People like why. So twenty years later they
were still doing it. But boy, what it did is
it brought rhythm. So we had a logo and we
were a band of believers. But part of getting MTV
to stick was proving the channel's worth to the record companies.
(20:41):
Artists loved the idea being on TV, but the labels
needed to be convinced. At the time, Daven said music
should be heard and not seen. We needed a case study,
a story to prove we sold records. I talked to
John Sykes about it. We launch MTV, we get it underway.
We're trying to get some evidence that it's working because
(21:03):
the record companies are hemorrhaging money those years. They were
thinking about cutting videos out of their budget, which of
course we've been disaster for. So we said we got
to get some evidence ahead of the budget cycle. And
you and Tom Freston go on the road to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Just told on a second, because we've got so much
more to talk about. We'll be back after a quick
(21:24):
break some of what happened in Tulsa. We believe this
was working, 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 come back. You have a story. And Tulsa didn't
happen until we went to Syracuse, Houston and we went
(21:44):
to the cable markets. So Tom and I driving through
Tulsa in a rental car literally with a map of
record stores and going into places. So you sold any
please records selling Duran Duran, you seliny Tulips to Nope, Nope,
So we kept driving driving. I still remember it was
a record store in an old house and Tom alize
(22:06):
Trudgin and we say solely this so only that, solely
durand drand Ran I sold two boxes of Durandrean records
last week. What is you sold, Toback? You sold fifty records,
twenty five records in a box. Can we have your
name and can we use your phone? We called the
box said Bob, Bob, we have a story. We have
(22:28):
a story. We have a record store that's selling music's
only played on MTV. And he 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 bill Board and the music magazines to influence the
record company. I'll keep going, I have, of course you do.
(22:50):
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. If you're wondering why
we picked those places, Syracuse, Houston, Tulsa, it's because those
were the few markets where we had enough cable density
(23:12):
that we could make a point. These cities ended up
being little laboratories where we could peek in and take
measurements and show the world just how effective MTV was
going to be. So it proved our worth to the
record companies. But you have to remember we still had
to convince cable operators to carry MTV. They wanted to
be paid to carry our channel, and frankly, we didn't
(23:33):
have the money. So we had to come up with
a breakthrough idea and genius campaign that could do all
the heavy lifting here, Tom Preston and Fred Seibert telling
that story. Let's start the talk. When we launched MTV,
you were the head of marketing. The cable operator wouldn't
put MTV on. They wanted us to pay them. One,
(23:54):
we didn't have the money, and two that was probably
a slippery slope, and so we decided we would use
a whole strategy to get distribution. I want my MTV.
Well it was sort of a hail Mary pass because
you know, we're about to go under. No one in
the organization knew we were about to go under, So
how are we going to get these cable operators to
add us? When we knew in fact that the people
(24:15):
who actually had it in the few towns where it existed,
they loved it. They were fanatical about it. So we
actually had to go over their heads. And the idea
was that campaign I want my MAPO, which I remembered
as a baby boomer in the fifties. I'm obnoxious, I
want my MAPO, but I want my MTV. The actual
spot said they grew up with rock and roll, they
grew up with television. Now they want their MTV. George Lois,
(24:40):
who never saw something that he couldn't copy. Had already
copied a famous TV commercial from the fifties called I
Want my mapo for a really horrendous tasting exactly, and
he redid it with Mick Jagger and David Bowie. And
(25:00):
on the beginning of the spot he had Pete Townsend
doing it America, demand your MTV, and people go, I
want my MTV, I want my MTV. And then Pete
Townsend again with a telephone going pull your cable operator
and say I want And they showed us this spot.
If we could get major rock stars in a commercial
(25:21):
to kind of hold our logo, validate and hold it
and command people to call their cable company and demand
their MTV, make it look cool, put some animation around it,
and then put it in these markets at very high frequency.
We go into a market and it could be like
a Blockbuster movie was opening. Most people in the market
had never heard of MTV. So we went and we
(25:43):
pitched it to you. I think you saw the feeling
of it right away. Well, there's a lesson in this
too that you've always done very very well, which is
harnessing the power of partners. And in the case of
I want my MTV music stars who were willing to
be in the commercial for free to help us accomplish goals.
But you also have music companies and others. Dale was
this brilliant hybrid of a strategist and a creative guy.
(26:09):
And as a strategist, what he understood is that we
had no money to spend on this ad. I remember
going into our boss's office and saying, but HBO spending
ten million dollars a year in advertising, goes, you're lucky
you have two somehow or other. The people in the
media business didn't actually believe in advertising as the weirdest thing,
and so I went to Dale. I said, look, we
(26:30):
only have two million dollars, and he did an incredible
data dump of where could MTV be put on against
how much media cost in that particular market, and he
did three or four or five cross tabs to figure
out the most likely places that if we put on
(26:52):
these spots, that we would get people calling and making
the cable operators insane. And god knows, I think we
made customer representatives from all over America crazy within four weeks.
Next thing, you know, every cable operator if there were
eleven of them, in a market, which would not be
unusual time they'd all call up and surrender. So we
(27:14):
would move a market by market for a couple of
years across the country, going from like what was seven
million subscribers ended up being eighty or ninety a million.
I had a guy stopped me at a cable operator
and said, I hate you, and I go, why do
you hate me? And he goes, because my phone rings
all day with those people saying I want my mule,
I can't get any work done. In my chats with
(27:37):
the co founders, there's a lot of fondness for this
deviant culture we had. MTV was fine. It was definitely
anti establishment, and the truth is even the promotions dripped
with the brand sensibility. In some ways they defined the
brand sensibility. There's some of the crazy stories too. It
was fun reminiscing with John Sykes about them. You were
(27:57):
the guy who did the promotions. You came up with
these ideas and fortunately unfortunately with the one that also
executed them. Did to Paint the House paint promotion with
John Mellencamp, you did the Last Weekend with Van Halen.
What formula were you using? Goes back to that s
connected New York thing of being a dreamer, because I
was the kid. I was the viewer who thought, oh
(28:18):
my god, if only I could dot dot dot. So
when you said we've got to put together some promotions,
we got to 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? And I remember
just John had done a song called pink Houses. So
let's give away a house and you we're gonna paint
(28:40):
the mother pink. Tell us about the first house you bought.
When you had to execute it, I means you got
to go find a house, got 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 chiefest house you could find. So Bob goes, take
a cashier's check and just go buy a house. And
I okay. So I flew in Indiana and John Mellencamp,
(29:03):
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 get the flight back
to New York. Show me four houses. First house we buy,
the woman is there, 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.
(29:24):
Look at this house, and I said, we'll do It's
a we can paint this pink. So I wrote a
check thirty two thousand dollars, bought the house. Her jaw dropped.
No realator, just handed the check and got in the car.
Drove back when you opened up Rolling Stone. Three weeks later,
MTV buys house on toxic waste dump. So so I
call you go Bob. I had no idea. John Mellencamp
(29:46):
writes me letters 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 a house.
So I had to back can get an other house.
But 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
(30:13):
rock and roll brand to consumers. There was a movie
called The Last Weekend. Gray Mullan was in there and
guy loses his mind whatever, and so we just said,
let's do a Last week with the 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 ideas like we're in, We're in,
and by the way, will fulfill the contest. You don't
(30:34):
have to do anything. Just drop off the fans with
us and we'll deliver them 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 what 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 MX and condoled or
(30:57):
MTV nuous activity. So he's standing on stage completely out
of his mind and David Lee Roth goes, we have
the winner tonight of the MTV 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
push it into his face and the guy is stunned
(31:19):
and he starts twirling 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 middle 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
guard all night. But that kind of made the legend
of MTV. I wish we could take credit for that,
(31:41):
but that was it, so the contest. But 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.
MTV could have been a flash in the pan, but
the marketing spirit capturing an attitude that young America responded to.
People tuned in just to see what was going on
(32:02):
in MTV. It was a place to hang out, and
as the word spread, the channel made money. Although MTV
was the most radical of the cable channels, it was
also the first cable network to actually make a profit,
and we had the highest AD revenue of any of
the cable networks. I remember this was a time when
people didn't believe cable networks could even be profitable. Boy
did that feel good. But part of keeping the channel
(32:24):
successful was continuing to think outside the mainstream and continue
to come up with new ideas. Here's bread again. We
had these creative promo departments. Once people came in and
started saying, well, I worked on promos over here, I
didn't want to hire them. One of the earliest people
I hired had just come out of film school and
his first job was cutting film negatives at a pornout play.
(32:46):
So I'm like, okay, fine, you won't remember this. But
one day you called me into your office and you said, hey,
I need you to be the head of production. I said, Bob,
you know, I've never seen even the red light on
top of a camera go on. And you went, oh,
don't worry, you'll figure it out. And that was that,
and all of a sudden I was in television and
you did a really great job. Thank you. But it
(33:09):
wasn't just people like Fred who got an opportunity to MTV.
You're Judy and Tom talking about how he kept an
eye out from new talent and groomed them upward, and
the culture that the two of them kept going and
kept building at the company even after I left. If
you think about it, in the days of MTV, we're
probably looking back at an extraordinary number of women and
(33:30):
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?
I began to see I was sort of a better
editor coach than I was a player. I can remember
some things that just felt like personal milestones to me.
(33:53):
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 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 in events, but
(34:14):
we'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
(34:35):
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. I once heard Tina Fey say something
about it's a panel where a bunch of women were
(34:57):
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. And you know,
(35:17):
I always felt like I worked with men who are
not typical and 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 give somebody a chance, they'll knock themselves out
(35:39):
to show you that they could really do it. And
we actually talked about it back then. We said, you know,
if somebody's done three or four things and they're not great,
we have empirical evidence they won't be great. Yeah, but
if we give somebody a shot who's never done it,
they could be the next Steven Spielberg, exactly right. And
the only way we're going to find out is to
take a shot. And you continue to do that through
your career. A lot of focus was on eating a
(36:00):
culture that would attract creative people. They would want to
come and live there. I mean, we'd have at one
point Chud Apatow or Ben Stiller or John Stewart, Stephen Cober,
you know, Adam Sandler would like be sleeping in the offices. Sometime.
It was a hothouse atmosphere. You were probably the first
talent incubator. I don't think they called them that back then.
How did you pull that together because it is really
(36:20):
remarkable to people you had, well, a lot of it
is sort of what's the vibe of the place. We
always wanted to make the room for deviancy. I would
always say, who's the odd ball person, Who's the intern
who's going to come running in with an idea like
Yo MTV raps. That was like a twenty one year
old intern who came up with a demo in his basement.
Because we had these networks, there was a lot of
room for experimentation. Everything you made didn't have to be
(36:43):
really tightly organized. There was a lot of room for
improvisation and innovation. Well, if you have a hallmark for that,
people would want to step up and follow. What's he
Just try and have good standards, provide guard rails for people,
celebrate risk, you know, we give creative people a lot
of freedom. One of the people who was crucial tim
Ted's early success it was former MPR CEO y'arre Moon.
(37:04):
Y'arll and I went way back. We even had a
show called Album Tracks that aired after Saturday Night Live.
But y'arall had an incredible eye for programming and when
MTV had to think beyond music, videos. He played a
crucial role for me. It was a great transition from
the radio world to the television world because there were
(37:25):
so many similarities. If you had picked me up and
tried to drop me into a broadcast network to do
scripted filmed entertainment, I would have I think, flailed and
failed miserably. But ultimately we all learned a lot of
lessons about the fragility of this brand new thing, music videos,
and that was something that we all kind of had
(37:47):
to learn in real time. It was humbling, it was embarrassing,
and it didn't even think it stopped working. There was
so much heat around music videos at the time, and
there were so many people watching and being really enthralled by.
But I think ultimately it became less interesting. It was
television and we were using a lot I was at
least using a lot of radio rules for a different medium,
(38:10):
and people were making four minute decisions of what they
were going to watch, a not thirty minute and sixty
minute or ninety minute decisions, and ultimately had to switch
strategy to go to content that people would watch for
longer periods of time, long form, and that was very
controversial at the time, but you know, it worked. What
(38:32):
were your first shows? And we started with the Weekend
Rock and hiring Kurtloader from Rolling Stone magazine and taking
the MTV news segments and making it a half hour show,
and that worked, and then rockumentaries as specials as the second.
The third was Club MTV, Let's do an American bandstand
for today, Let's play music videos and hire Downtown Julie Brown.
(38:54):
That was a hit. Every show that went on did well.
Then we're going to really cocky and think, man, we
really know how to make hits. But I think it
was more a reflection of the fact that music videos
at the time had run their course. The most controversial
one remote Control of the game show, and all the
research came back said you can't do a game show.
(39:16):
And I remember saying to our good friend Marshall Cohen.
We worked with an MTV research guru. Yes, I said,
I think we're asking the wrong question. The question should
be if we were to do a game show, what
would it look like? And the answer came back, well,
it should be irreverence to be crazy. We used all
(39:36):
the information and hired Ken Ober and Colin Quinn and
Adam Sandler was a regular on the show and it
was a monster, but the additional research the way we
asked it indicated that not have been a disaster. It
worked out great for were you a yep, oh yeah, yeah.
(39:58):
So MTV started to with new formats, but as Preston
remembers it, the limited budgets were actually an engine for creativity.
We couldn't just innovate it by shuffling the music mix
or changing things. That was clear. We tried everything. We
just couldn't play the top ten videos all day long.
There was always new shows coming around. We would add
shows on package music and like on hip hop music
(40:20):
with the OMTV raps and so forth, and it kind
of came down to the real world day That was
in nineteen ninety three, and that was like, well, we've
tried everything else, we should probably do a soap opera
because young people are interested in what other young people
are doing. So they came in with a presentation to
me and we had to hire writers, and I said, well,
you know, we don't have any money to hire writers,
(40:41):
so we can't do this. So then Doug Herzog came
back and said, you know, we're really good at post production.
That's our major skill. What if we just rented aloft
in Soho and stuck some cameras in there and bring
these kids in and then let them live and then
we'll post it afterwards and make it into a show.
And that was sort of the birth of reality. It
was an idea that was not born of brilliance but
(41:03):
born of cheapskateness. MTV was a success story finally, but
it wasn't long before the competition started circling. Here's Tom
with the story of what motivated us to start VH one.
Ted Turner one to come in and basically p in
our parade. He said he was going to launch a
music channel that played none of the Devil's music. Let
(41:24):
me say first that the cable music channel lasted one
hundred and one days on the air and he had
the fold up and go home. But we decided we
can't let this happen, and if there's going to be
a second music channel, we should have a second music channel.
And we made the case to cable operations, we have
a second music channel. You don't want to add the
Ted Turner channel because that's just going to go head
to head against the one you already have. Add VH one,
(41:44):
which was called the Very Hot one at the time
because it would be more compatible and it would play
artists for another demo and we would sell a tu
on a combo basis. Basically it was free if you
already had MTV. So we strangled him in terms of
not being able to get distribution. Therefore no advertising, no revenue,
no light on the end of the tunnel, and he
went out of business and we went forward. Of course,
(42:08):
launching VH one was one thing. It was a savvy move,
a classic fighting brand. It was essential and fighting off
ted Turner's channel. But once that was over, the team
had to figure out what to do with it. The
network struggled for years. Ratings were abysmal, so John Sykes,
who left HIMTV by then it was called back to
lead the charge. Tom Freston calls Jop says, come home,
(42:33):
needs you to fix a BH one. What did you do?
As you know, Bob, because you taught me so much
of the stuff. A brand is only valuable if there
is an underserved segment of the audience that needs it.
Hip hop was starting to happen. Alternate music was exploding
and a lot of the traditional rock bands in R
and B bands were being pushed out and they're going
(42:53):
like an off of the cliff. And I said, there's
a market here, because having run a record company, a
publishing company, we were seeing these artists that used to
be called middle of the road back then, but now
they were actually vibrant popands. They didn't have a place.
And then I saw who were thoset, powerful buyers, young adults,
young college graduates. Here's a generation. It's grown up on MTV.
(43:15):
They have money, they're affluent, and they have nowhere to go.
So I was as excited actually about VH 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 and
I knew if I fell, it would be on me.
It would be likes out at VH one fails. They
(43:36):
used to call VH point one. It was the rating
of it again. And for those people who ratings, ratings
are from zero to whatever, and point one, zero two hundred,
VH one is the ugly step child at MTV Networks.
I used to say it was nails out the back
seat of a car to put flats in the tires
of the cars behind us, because we didn't want anybody
(43:56):
compet with MTV. But I said, now it quietly has
their million homes. There's a market for this. And I
looked in the room and half the people like or
a sleep bicycle that Quenton staying. They had a job,
but they didn't believe in the product, but they were
coflecting a paycheck. So I said, listen, if you don't
believe in this, it's okay. We won't make a big
thing and we're going to fire you, but we'll work
(44:17):
out a package and you should leave because we need
people who are 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, I don't want to do this.
I didn't think they I don't thieve it would come like,
I don't think you're right. I like, okay, well, thank you, bye,
(44:39):
God 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 who 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 put together an all star trip. So maybe proud
and working with some of the red Stone I mean
(45:00):
Sun at Redstone nineteen ninety four 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.
I say, that's all I want to know, excuse me
the rope, and he did. It was a great nine years.
We shattered all the records there, but all good businesses
you got to reinvent them otherwise they paid it off.
(45:22):
MTV was the starting point of a cable revolution. The
channel and the creative engine we built gave birth to
so much more. Here's Tom I'm talking about just that topic.
I was ambitious and I was highly motivated for this
to succeed. I thought that we were in this TV revolution,
We had the wind at our back. It was all
going to come true. It was too good of an
(45:43):
idea to fail. You know, a lot of life is
about timing and luck, and I had somehow ended up
once again in the right place. At the right time,
and this was sort of my destiny. I was going
to meet my opportunity. What you did, you know, I
would say my time there, we really proved it was
a business. Were the first cable network to make a profit.
But it was really you and your team, including Shooting Grath,
(46:05):
who built MTV and the other networks into this incredible
media giant. What drove that in? Where did that vision
come from? And how did you get there? There's a
compliment to you, Bob, I mean you are the guy
always keep your eye on the consumer, find out what
the consumer want. We would always see this resource the
consumer wanted what we were selling, and we could tune
it up a bit. And we also had this sort
(46:26):
of slightly subversive, underground feel and you know, there was
nothing really around like that. And we would continue to
launch new networks Comedy Central or tv Land, and the
whole international world of television began to deregulate in the
late eighties. All these countries really only had state TV
pretty much as you know. So the confidence I had
built from my years living in Afghanistan and India was
(46:49):
actually very transfernable because I really knew we could go
anywhere and do anything. And if we could go to Europe,
we could go to Asia, we go to Latin America.
So we built really the first worldwide television networking company,
and we rolled out not just MTV, but also Nickelodeon
and Comedy Central, a lot of others right down through Africa.
So the business gradually evolved from one where we would
(47:09):
package other people's product like a music video, to where
we would increasingly own what we did. But at the
heart of it always a creative machine, which again was
something that you put in at the inception of the company.
When we first started MTV, it wasn't just entertainment. We
built a channel to be the voice of young America
and that included doing good and my time there. MTV
(47:30):
made its mark with massive events with important missions, Am
the Sky, International, band Aid, Farm Aid and of course
Live Aid. But it was Rock the Vote that truly
took the channel into politics, and some say even got
a president elected. Here's Judy talking about it. You've always
done good, Rock the Vote chooser lose AIDS awareness. How
(47:53):
did you think about that inside of a company and
how do you think of it for you as a person, Well,
you know, inside MTV. It was very interesting when we
decided to get into you know, and certainly Rock the
Vote was not our idea politics Jeff ear Off. So
Jeff was very passionate about this, and it sort of
(48:13):
grew in 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 instances
where we had a blowout. Really we really didn't agree,
but I listened to what he said, and he said,
this is a terrible idea. It's not going to work.
(48:34):
This is an entertainment brand. Nobody cares about this. We're
gonna get laughed out of town. We do not have
permission to do this. There's nothing about us that says
we should be stepping anywhere near an election or voting
or any of this. So I went back and I
thought about it a little bit, and I thought, Okay,
this is where I come into the picture. I think
(48:54):
I grew up in an era where one of the
many things I loved about music was its social commentary,
and it is about the times we live in, and
it's about all the things that 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.
(49:15):
It was saying, to people who make big decisions in
this country, this is a generation that is disengaged from you,
and you need to address them on their turf, their way,
and we'll invite you to do that. That's your shot.
It wasn't about trying to be parental or any of
that kind of stuff to them, or give them boring
(49:36):
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 Stor. Tabitha
went to New Hampshire 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 got back off the bus,
(49:57):
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
to the Vote spots. I mean Madonna wrapped in a
flag whatever, their disagreement, Tom Preston quickly embraced the idea.
We knew it was important to our audience. I also
knew it was extremely important to the employee base. Employees
(50:20):
would feel better about working there if they knew we
had some kind of social purpose associated with what we
would do, and we had one hundred and sixty eight
hours a week, we could certainly squeeze it in. It
also turned out it legitimized us in the eyes of
advertisers who formally wouldn't come near us, like American Express.
But most importantly, the audience liked it. And then fast
forward to you know, we're going to throw an inaugural
ball that's not official and see if anybody comes to
(50:41):
the party, and our EM's gonna play and Vogue's gonna play,
And we tried to make it as spirited as MTV,
but add a little bit of gravitas if you will,
and meaning you know, like you do matter. You are young,
but you matter, and you deserve to be heard and
listen to, and we're going to help you. MTV was
(51:04):
a wonderful ride. From the very beginning. My co founders
and I knew we were doing something that was important
to culture, but we had no idea we were going
to change culture. MTV changed TV, it changed music, it
changed graphic design, and it certainly changed my life. No
matter how old I get or whatever else I've done,
(51:25):
MTV is still an important chapter of my life, and
all of us as co founders are still very much
a very type family. But the truth is, looking back,
I think we all feel the same way Tom Freston
felt when he joined the team. I was happy to
have a job. I couldn't believe anyone was gonna hire me,
(51:45):
and lucky for all of us, we all kept getting
hired again and again. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. This show
is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger
for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
(52:07):
small feat. Nikki Etour for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Azar for their recording help, our editor, Ryan Murdock,
and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time
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