"Tom Freston"

(upbeat music) - It's so good to be here with you guys today. - It's so fast. - It feels like it's been a while since I've said, it's really good to be with you guys. - It's really good to be with you guys. How are your headphones? Are they, do they fit okay? Are they tight? - My headphones? - Yeah, for the record today. - Yeah, I'm wondering if you seem feels pretty good. - Wait, you've got new headphones on, don't you shy? - I do, yeah. - They're new, I might wear them out. I might wear them out. - Why? - Because you want to look like Princess Leia? - Yeah, I think they look cool. - Wait, wait, wait, wait. This whole thing was a setup 'cause you wanted compliments for your new headphones? - Yeah. - Okay, so you want to venture into the company or something like that? - I don't have any. - No idea what the company is. - Oh, wait, I just got a text. Welcome, it's an all new smart list. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Smart. - Blast. - How 'bout I fixed myself. - No way. - Guys. - It's about time. - I know how to fix myself. - I saw you looking. I saw you looking and then doing stuff. And I actually saw you do the class you literally went like this. - What? - Yeah, tap the lips. - That's how the brain works. - Automely went to button on the lips. - By the way, JB, you have ruined forever. I noticed it yesterday again. Somebody commented on it. Getting out of the car I went. - Holy. - Yeah. - It tightens the core to make a little noise. - Sean, you do it now too? - I do it when I get in the car too. - Holy. - Holy. - I realized I've been doing it since I was 35 because of you. - We're all getting that. - Holy. - Yeah, so this is, what number episode is this for us? Are we north? We're north of 2 Rob. - Right? - I think I was about anybody. - Over 250, we're in the 280s now. - I can know, really? I can now, I'm basically my own tech support. Now I can, I can find the little-- - We don't need to tell you 290 times. (laughing) - You know, that's the good news. - That is true. - Out of the three of us, who has the most technical problems? - Who gets, do we get to vote or do you have to vote? - I think I'm, I think I'm all right. I'll bet Sean, you're worse because you're able to, because Scotty can catch you every time you spot it. - I scream my head off if I'm like, I can't log on. Or my computer-- - Who has, who has the least? - The least of, least problems? - Yeah. - Tech problems. - Tech problems, not world problems. - No, it's always you. Why is that? Because that's what you do for a living app. - Well, we're probably used to the setup of the mind. - Yeah, isn't that nice? - That's what, and you also, you started, weren't you, original, one of the original geek squad guys? - I did, I did, I still own the name. - What is it? - Yeah. - Yeah. - I still own, I did all the art. - I went to a, the address came with Jason a couple of weeks ago. - You sure did. - And then we went to the USC football game. - Yeah, you did, and you had a decent, we had a decent quarter there. - Well, yeah, that was crazy. We, Jason and I had all the concessions that Jason, I was holding there. - The sky looked like he was at a state fair. - Yeah. - Fuck. - It did, it looked like I had like, - Old Bessie had, and two armfuls. (laughing) - I did, I had like a soft pretzel, and Jason has a hot dog in his phone, and I had all the drinks in the pretzel. - And the cheese dipping sauce. - I want to describe you. I want to describe you as a soft pretzel. That's funny. (laughing) - Just a knot. - All over. - Yeah. - But it sounds like you're really living your best life, though. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah. - But that was so embarrassing, that was so fun, but it was so embarrassing because we, somebody was in our seats, and then I felt like the whole stadium was looking at us as we were just standing. - Yeah, so you know, and you show up a little bit late, and people spread out, and they get in your seats, and then you have to like, you have to, you show up at the aisle, and you're kind of in a half squat, 'cause you don't want to like block the high high high. - And here comes these big, these big dickhead actors, - With the hollering actors. - With the hollering actors. - Yeah, right, and they were like, "Oh, you're gonna kick these people out?" - I know, but you have to like, show proof of your tickets, and you remember, you used to, used to pass your ticket down the aisle. - Yeah, I see. But now the tickets are on your phone. - I used to love you. - The tickets are on your phone, you gotta like, pass your phone down the aisle. People are touching your phone. You know, I don't like that, will I? - Right, and these guys, guess what? Here's the news. - While they eating his hot dog. - Yeah, they wouldn't move. - Yeah. - They're like, "Yeah, I see this as your ticket, but they told us to sit here." I'm like, "Who told you to sit?" The usher. I said, "Well, I don't see the usher now." Well, you gotta get them and tell them to move us. - That's right. - And then I'm sitting on the stairs with our groceries. - Right. - I mean, oh God, it was the four, it took like 10 minutes. - And then they finally got the money. - And then they finally got out. - And it come to blows that it almost came close. - A family of four were relocated. - No. - And just us two sat down and now we got two extra seats next to us and we look like super assholes. - And I ate my pretzel on the stairs and my cheese when everywhere. - Oh no. You mean actual cheese? - Yeah. - It wasn't a result of eating the pretzel major cheese go everywhere. - You created cheese. - Okay. - We'll save that for Smirlis after dark. Which we still haven't gotten off the ground. - No, he's still working on the logo. - Which is funny because our guest today, I said, Smirlis, he often refers to it as shameless. And I know he's joking in his tongue and cheek because I love him. - He's pretty shameless. - It is. And this is a guy who is really, you want to talk about live the life, this guy's really live the life. Okay. - Oh boy. - He starts out, he's the pride of Connecticut sort of. He started out running a clothing company out of Afghanistan in India, no joke, back in like the early 70s when nobody was over there. He just, I mean, he's the kind of guy you'd find him on a nightboat to Tangier. That's the kind of duty is. Out of nowhere, he comes back after running, literally trying to avoid tariffs and running clothing illegally across the St. Lawrence into upstate New York. He then decides he's gonna change everything and he goes and he starts to create. He creates this thing that literally changed the way we saw music, fashion, culture, everything. It went global everywhere. - Anyone. - It runs a bunch of little networks he might have heard of called Nickelodeon VH1 Comedy Central. - Oh, this is so Mr. Tom Fruston. - He becomes CEO of Viacom and now he's the chair of the One Campaign Fighting Poverty. He's done it all. He's the coolest guy and I'm happy to call my friend. You guys, it's Mr. Tom Fruston. - Can't not wait. Oh, mister. Hey guys. - I can't wait to hear all about this fella. - It's a, an honor to be here. - Thank you. - Here on Shameless. You've seen all 10 seasons on Showtime for us? - Shameless. - Shameless. Welcome to the show. - Wait, how do you and Will know each other, Tom? - Just for hanging around in New York, got a long island. - Yeah. - Oh yeah. - We originally met through our mutual friend many years ago through Jimmy Buffett back. Jimmy and Jane Buffett introduced us back in the day. Tom's good friend, may rest in peace. - Yeah, I'm sorry about your loss. - It's a great Jimmy Buffett and who was, Jimmy, one of the things he did was, he brought a lot of people together and introduced a lot of people. Am I right about that, Tom? - Yeah, he sure did. - Yeah. - How did you, Tom, how'd you meet Jimmy? - I met Jimmy in the basement of a bar called J.P.'s in Manhattan in the '70s. It was like, you know, at 5 a.m., you'd open up one of those Bilco doors or 8 a.m. and walk out in the sunlight like a vampire. But he would hang out there. It was like sort of a music industry hangout. So I met him there in 1977. - Wow. - And we just, you know, would hang out and trips, I would travel with him a lot. He'd like to go, he'd like to travel. And it was especially good, especially after he bought a jet. - Yeah, was he flying planes back then? - Yeah, he could fly all kinds of planes. The Jimmy jets. - Yeah, he was very serious about it. He could fly sea planes, you know, all kinds of big fancy ones. - And Tom, he had a few Jimmy, Jimmy also crashed a few planes, didn't he? - He landed in Nantuckin and sort of flipped it over. And that was one, and there was other instances of malvery reasons. - One time when I told that story, when they did that show at the Hollywood Bowl and in honor of Jimmy and I told the story about, he was gonna do takeoff and landings on this little island. And he said, what do you, I said, what are you doing this morning? He goes, I gotta go get certified. I'm doing takeoff and landings. Do you want to go and go, yeah. And then he left the room and Jane turned him and she goes, dude, he's crashed like three planes. You're not getting on. (laughing) Oh my God. The key word there is training. Do you want to come with training? No. - So Tom, I want to go, I want to go all the way back. By the way, Tom's got a book that we're gonna get into. Tom's book in a second because I read it a while ago and it's phenomenal. But I will is called Unplugged, which is fantastic, which is, I think, out now, right Tom? - It comes out November 18th. - Yeah, so, but again, we've known each other a little bit over the years, but I read your book. So Tom, walk us through and I wasn't joking when I said, you started, you started a clothing company in Afghanistan in India. - Yeah, I wanna know how and why 1970. How, how is one able to do that? - Well, let's see, I had been working in an ad agency in New York. I got assigned to Sharman Toilet Paper. - Sure, exactly. - A tough account. Working with Mr. Whipple and my old girlfriend was in Paris, coma said, hey, you can't do that. Come with me, we're gonna cross the Sahara Desert and I quit my job in a week later. I was on a plane and I met her and we traveled around and then she left and I kept going. I tried for a whole year and at one point, Bye. I met some woman who said, you know, you've got to go to India. That's the greatest show on earth. So I did do that and I ended up loving India and Afghanistan. And I stayed for, I've tried to figure out, how can I live here? This is like living a whole other, on a whole other planet back then. >> Wow. >> And what year is? >> This is 1972. So I stayed through 1979 and I started a couple of businesses. We would design and make clothes, I mean higher quality clothes we'd sell to Bloomingdale's and so forth. And it became a big business, I mean, and I had a house in Delhi and I was able to travel everywhere. I was living like a Pasha. It was wonderful and then a bunch of bad things happened to me and not the least of which was Jimmy Carter put an embargo. It's sort of like what's going on today with the tariffs. There would be no more clothing imports from India. And I had all this stuff in production, and it was a nightmare working there in those days. So I actually ended up smuggling three tons of stuff in from Canada. >> Yeah, wait, wait, Tom, take us through that. So you get, by the way, this is like, so this before, obviously before the internet and all that stuff. So you guys, this is all sort of phone calls and everything takes a little bit longer. And now you've got all these goods that you're sitting on and you've got to get it into the States. And so you decide what? >> Well, I had met in my years there all these smugglers, you know, sort of rife with drugs smugglers. And they would always say how easy it was to smuggle stuff into the United States. >> Wow. >> Just by putting it on a plane and just nobody checking it. >> Well, they had, they would send stuff in shipments. They would take stuff across borders. But in this case, I was allowed to bring stuff legally into Canada. And you know, I figured, you know, these long haired goofballs could do it. I could do it. And I felt like I wasn't really committing a crime. It was really foolish. I mean, I mean, but I just, one, I figured, get some money back. I felt I had really been ripped off by the government with no prior announcement or anything. So that was the end of my business. And I also have my business in Afghanistan kind of vaporized because there have been a communist coup there. >> Right. Tom, can you, can you, for, for a, for a real soft Hollywood idiot like me who any, this whole thing sounds just so foreign from anything I would ever imagine, let alone pursue. >> He won't go east of La Brea. >> For that way, okay. >> Yeah, just forget it or, or, or, or South of the, of the airport. What was your life like at that age, at that time, that gave you either the, the courage to, to have this wanderlust or to, or maybe the opposite of courage, there were, there was just stuff happening in your life who's like, fuck all this, I just want to go to the end of the earth for something completely new, something completely different because this ain't working. >> Yeah. >> What was it? One of the two? >> Yeah, it was, it was more the latter. >> Yeah, it was, it was the 60s. So, you know, there was a lot of alienation around, freedom sounded like a good option. I, I decided early on, I didn't want to really have a mainstream kind of life. I had taken a year off and sort of bartended around that work. >> But you had gotten your MBA, you'd, right? >> Yeah. I had an MBA. I did that. That was a way to stay out of the draft in those days. >> Right. >> And then, so it was, I just wanted to sort of leave out of the mainstream life and it sounded very exotic and interesting to be living in a place so far on. >> What was it about the mainstream life that just didn't feel something that you were attracted to, especially given the fact that you had gone down this road of mainstream. You got an MBA and like, you're, you're set, you're ready. You put a huge time and financial investment into the mainstream and then you said, yeah, no, let's flip it, let's go 180 this way. >> It wasn't fun. We were trying to sell toilet paper and before that, I was on the GI Joe account, which was like, you know, the war toy of the military industrial complex. There was a very alienated time. A lot of people were quitting jobs and sort of trying to go off and do their own thing. >> So everything looked appealing at that point? >> Everything looked appealing and it looked really exciting because I wasn't having any fun. Like, I need to stretch out a bit, I'd been in school for like 18 years or something, so I'm ready to go. And then I fell in love with this very foreign place and in those days, it was really foreign, you know. >> Also age because if you're young, you're like, well, I might as well try it now. >> I was a 25, 26, you know, I mean, a young, so if not now when. >> That's, yeah. >> Yeah, I remember you sort of describe in the book when you first get to Morocco, when you're still with your traveling with your friend, your girlfriend and just like meeting these people and they're on the beach, like people you had met along the way and you're like, look at this life, everybody's, nobody's kind of, everybody's just kind of doing whatever they want a little bit, right? And to kind of, that opened your eyes to it and then- >> That's so good, right? >> Yeah, there was a bit of a phenomena they call it the hippie trail. I mean, no one self identified as a hippie, but like in California, New York people were in those days, if you wanted to drop out, you sort of went to a calming and a cold place in Northern California, or somewhere upstate New York, but in Europe, people would head south you know, to Morocco or India or Lebanon and you know, kind of like see how long they could travel. I'd meet people who travel for years. >> Well, that sounds like a really sort of contributing factor that it was in, it was in more so in society than it is I think today. More commonplace for folks who just, you know, pick up and get out and explore a bunch of different corners for a few years and then presumably maybe come back and re-enter mainstream. Yeah, was that a bit more part of the culture than it is today? >> Yeah, you know, I think the world could use a little bit more of that today. You see, these kids are so anxious and they go to school and they're having panic attacks and they're- >> You don't get out and you've got to immediately start providing and accomplishing. >> I meet these kids, they say, "I'm graduating from college, I'm starting work on Monday," starting my career on Monday, so we'll take a break, the world's like the best educator out there traveling around. >> Did you impart that on your own sons just as much as you're comfortable talking about? >> Yeah, I do. I encourage them too. Both of them become good travelers and they're very comfortable, you know, going anywhere making their own plans and really proud of them in that regard. >> Did you notice a big change when they came back? >> Well, they didn't go like- I mean, I traveled for a couple of years. They really, you know, would take actually my oldest son. He kind of went to work almost right away, but none of them have really dated, made extensive trips like I had. >> Yeah, right. >> They're more caught up in this time. >> Go back to the Canada. So did you end up bringing those clothes and all those goods into the US or no? >> Yeah, it was so easy. >> You just, but you know- >> Don't do it yourself, though, Tom Boyd. >> Well, I enlisted a guy I knew in Canada whose father used to be like a rum runner and he was ready for another trail, another trip. >> Wow, it's like smoking in the manor. >> You came on the boat with the stuff yourself, though. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So that, you know, you go through the thousand islands. There's all these islands and, you know, then no one knows where the border is really. So, you know, and there's boats floating around, no one knows who's who and ice wasn't around. >> Right, right, right. >> Did you end up learning any of the languages over there? >> In India, you get pretty spoiled because people speak English a lot, but I mean, I can move my way around and Hindi, but in Afghanistan, I picked up a fair amount of Farsi, which is the language. I mean, a Dari, it's a dialect of Farsi. I could get myself around the bazaars and, you know, order food and take taxis and- >> Do you retain it now? >> Not so much. >> Yeah. >> Not so much. So, you actually, this is a good, you go out there because you've got this as Jason called this wanderlustre of this desire to get out in the world and we talked, but there's not enough of that. But you kind of bring a little bit, you leave on the sort of, because you've come, you don't have a great corporate experience in that you're working on Sharman and G.I. Joe and you're like, fuck all this. You go out into the world and you come back and you kind of bring a little bit of that rebel attitude with you as you, because you re-enter into a corporate environment a little bit, but you bring a little bit of that sort of, that rebellious nature into what you do. You start to work on pretty immediately on MTV and can you talk to us how, I mean, it's like a perfect, you're the perfect guy for that because you were bringing that rebel spirit into the corporate world. >> Well, you know, I really love traveling and being over there and when I came back, I was like wiped out of that life. What else do I really love? Well, I was really, I was a major fanatic about music and rock and roll, and I just caught an article in Billboard magazine. I started studying, where could I get a job? And there was a guy who said, you know, we're going to start a video music channel. That's going to be the cable, the TV revolution is starting and they had already started Nickelodeon. They had a thing called the movie channel. So I got an interview, my brother knew a guy who had just gone to work there. So I got an interview and I made this case and funny, there was a guy named Bob Pittman who I was like 32 at the time. >> And the interview was with what company? >> This is called, then it was called Warner Amix, satellite entertainment. company. Doesn't roll off the time. It was a joint venture of Warner and American Express. Yeah. Wow. This guy Bob Pittman, who was 26, never bothered going to college. He was a big star. They called him the long-haired One-Eight hippie and he programmed these radio stations like with Don I miss him. He would have got along with my mom. My mom had one home. Anyway, I interviewed him. I said, "I'm your guy." They said, "Well, first thing we're looking for people with no experience in television." Those were almost like the magic words. I said, "Well, sure." They didn't even have television where I've been living the last eight years. I'm a music fanatic and you're looking for entrepreneurs. I know business and blah, blah, blah. Then he goes, "You were a hashi smuggler, weren't you?" I go, "Not really." Then he goes, "Not really. That means you were." So you're hired. So I got a job on this initial team that started MTV. And who was that team? Who was you and Bob Pittman and you? Me and Bob Pittman, there was a guy named John Sykes. Sure. My name, oh boy. John Sykes. Steve Casey. Who else was there? Carolyn Baker, Sue Steinberg. There was about six or seven of us. Fred Cyberg, who was like, really, it's sort of the creative genius of the group. And we were said, "Get this thing on the air by August 1st. We had eight months to put this whole channel together." And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Did music videos or are they already happening on other platforms or somewhere? And that's why you knew it would work? No, there was really very little awareness about music videos in the States. They existed in Europe. Right. Because radio stations there were still really regulated, didn't play any music. So the record companies there would make these videos. And you could see them like in record stores. Or they would put them on top of the pops on the BBC. Yeah. So, but America, and at one summer, I had a girlfriend in Berlin. I remember just going to her, she would work. I go to her record store and just watch music videos all day. It's one of those kind of days. That was like thing. This is like a video wonderland. So I said, this is, you know, people are going to like this. Sort of build it and they will come kind of thing. You guys were the egg. And then the chicken came along or vice versa. And like those early videos, what was the early one like? I remember like the radio star was the first one. Frankie goes to Hollywood and I feel like Dyer Straits had one of the early ones. Dyer Straits had a bunch of early ones. Yeah. Cold skate away. Well, I was going to get into Dyer Straits because it's actually in it's a big part of the book. Jay, this thing is a really good point. First of all, video killed the radio star was the first video you guys aired, right? When you first launched. Is that true? Yeah. And yeah. And and you guys also, you started this thing, but I've heard stories from you and from sites that like you guys had like a basically like a one like a closet with like a phone with like call waiting on it, right? You guys, it wasn't a big operation. That's cool that the cheap skates second line. So then you guys started this and then you took, but then Dyer Straits had they gave you guys the gift of all gifts because it was Mark Knopfler from what I understand and what I've read wrote that as a sort of almost like a rebuttal to the sort of, you know, music video and the corporatization of music and all that. Is that right? And then money for nothing. Yeah. It was all about our vanity that we were vaping. Yeah. And yet the line in that that really sold you guys was. I want my MTV. Yeah. He had stings in it. And in those days, you know, those kind of bands could be worldwide, you know, could have worldwide hits. Yeah. And wherever I would go, because we took MTV around the world. People would know about us through that song. Wow. MTV had been preceded by that by money for nothing. So Mark Knopfler gave us the greatest of gifts. It was unreal. Like that idea that like he did this thing is this and then, but it became like the almost the rallying cry. And you guys also got that very line. You guys, I mean, you and your whole team at various points got different artists to scream out. I want my MTV on camera. And that was your. Yeah. Because the cable companies didn't like us and didn't want to put us on. And they, these were older guys. They didn't get it. And they didn't want to pay. We were just somebody who's going to cut into their margins. So we knew that wherever we were, and for the first couple of years, we were only like in these towns in the Midwest, like Tulsa. People loved us. They couldn't believe it. But no one in New York or LA had it and that never even seen it. So we knew if we could get people, these people to call their cable companies and demand their MTV could eventually force these people to put us on. And that really worked. It's cool. With videos now having kind of cycled. I mean, they still sort of exist. But my God, you guys, you birthed it. And it cycled into like just such a phenomenon on the whole, the addition of videos to the whole music industry. And now it's sort of settled into a place of sort of a sidecar kind of thing. What do you, what do you feel that that the music video has has what what positive of it has remained in the music industry? Has it been additive? Yeah, you know, music videos are still popular. They don't exist on MTV. That's become sort of a reality show channel. And they make as many music videos today as they used to. A lot of them are made more economically. But you know, they don't you can get them all on the internet on on YouTube or Vivo. And you get them on demand. So you don't have to sit around watching some channel to wait to see Nirvana. You can just click on it and watch it right away. So that sort of killed the MTV linear linear network model. You guys would at the end of every video, you you put the name of the song, the album, the band and the director. Yeah. And it you guys launched a bunch of really incredible directors into the film industry. Yeah. You know, the whole there was a whole bunch of them. And there was a whole issue after after a couple of years, the director said, Hey, how come our names aren't on there? Oh, we want to get some credit. Yeah. And yeah, David Fincher too. David Fincher was a great rust rustle. Okay. He there was a spike Jones. I mean, lots of people came up that way. When you when the the the I just we'll talk about MTV ending in just a minute, but the initial like the launch, the logo of the rocket taking off is that that was the first image ever, right? Yes, of MTV. And was that just what it is, which is like we're launching a new show? Well, we didn't have any money. And we realized that all this NASA footage was public domain. So we could rip off NASA and man's greatest moment and kind of make it our own. Yeah. Yeah. But we got it for free. Oh, that's great. And the logo that everybody loved them became iconic. We got that for a thousand dollars from some time. Wow. Wow. Try back. And it was sort of a kind of you guys were I'm sure we're kind of tongue in cheek out grandiose. This whole thing is going to we're putting our flag on the moon. And yeah, here comes. Yeah, that was it. Right. We're going to rip off man's greatest moment. And this put our flag there. That's amazing. Tom, what was the moment that you guys realized that you had really broken through? I mean, there was so many. I remember as a kid, you know, there were like like the like when the thriller video hit, it was just everywhere. It was like so every hour. Was there a moment for you where you went like holy shit, we really got something here. We're we're shifting culture. Yeah, it was a slow build. You know, it took us a while to get to New York and LA where people could see us. And then they could talk about us in the media. But then I mean, two things. One was thriller, Michael Jackson beat it, you know, and people say, oh, big artists are making videos and with big production budgets and their irises. And John Landis directing the second thing was live eight. Yeah. Oh, yeah, live eight. Live eight, you know, ABC said we'll run Bob Geldof came say ABC said we'll run three hours of it sort of a highlight show. We said, hey, man, we'll run the whole thing for 16 hours. We got nothing else to do. So we it was like the biggest show ever. And that really really legitimized us. Wow. Yeah, there was nowhere else to see your favorite artist really unless you bought a ticket to a concert. Right. It was the only channel that you could see these people. And the VJs were cool too. Remember like Mark Goodman and Martha Quinn. Yeah, you know, you got people forget, but you know, for its day, it wasn't like a flying car stuff or anything. But MTV really was revolutionary. It was a whole new visual language for people. Of course, we've gone so far past that now, but it was sort of a ground breaker in that one. Did you guys end up having all these, you got to know a lot of artists too through this, through this. I mean, they at first you guys are trying to launch and get them to do stuff. And then then there must have been the tipping point where they're just coming at you. And all the artists are whining and dining you guys, right, sending you Rolexes and stuff. I didn't get any Rolexes. I got a time X. No, but I mean, it was true. We used to get like four or four or five videos a week. Then we were getting 50 or 60. And so there was record companies set up whole departments just to service MTV. Yeah, I bet you guys were a real bell of the ball. All these record label heads were probably working you guys like they used to work radio stations, right? Or they would. Ask for certain placement of certain videos as certain days and times maybe yeah, yeah, it was We were the biggest radio station in the nation. Yeah, right and It didn't always bring out the best in some of the people at MTV, you know when you had that kind of Sure, power And and what did you think or feel when just recently they announced it's No longer right? Well, they announced that in the UK For a bunch of channels that just play music videos and the MTV channel that just plays reality shows, you know, which really Bugs me, but whatever that's still there But I you know it needed to die a death because it can't exist really and be a business if it when you're competing With all these videos on the internet and it's not like you have exclusive videos that the people that the internet doesn't have I mean, there's no business there. It's not going to grow. I do think that the new the Ellison's and Paramount have a chance to really Re-imagine what MTV could be digitally and and figure out oh because Figure out a way to put together something more interesting that then's out there now Which is a lot of sort of siloed algorithm driven? Yeah, well those fast channels if you if you if you want a fast channel You could just pick your favorite artist like Taylor Swift and just click on her and just watch all her videos All right one one stop shopping. So speaking of which So you're at MTV and then you guys decide to then you have a bunch of other things that I mentioned in the intro Nickelodeon VH1 and Comedy Central and this is great. So Comedy Central ends up becoming this huge thing But it it's the way it started was kind of in response to what somebody else was doing I love this story to walk us through that a little bit how how Comedy Central came to be Okay, I was having a staff meeting one day and someone slips me a piece of paper to say that HBO's just announced They're gonna do a comedy channel. They're gonna call it the comedy channel And we went all wow they're getting into our business. They were the pay TV people. We were like the little low Rent basic people. We said well that means they're gonna get in our business. They have a lot of money They have all these you have do all these big stand-up shows with Robin Williams and everything. What are we gonna do? I said well, we're gonna announce our own comedy channel the same day. Let's announce we're doing one two Because then we'll be in every article that's ever written about that their competitors also doing And you have no idea if you have a name or anything But we had this thing called Nick at night and We would take like old TV shows and repurpose them and repackage them and everything is the worst comes the worst We can do like a version of that, but let's let's put her hat in the ring And so we had a big battle with them for a couple of years and finally we merged and it became comedy central But and they they because I thought if this worked for them then they'd launch a movie channel a music channel And a kid's channel as well and be head-to-head competitors with a lot more money than us So so you basically started you hear our competitors are starting A comedy channel and in that moment you go let's announce it So anytime they get mentioned we get mentioned and we don't even have a product yet Right, and you said and you were like and I remember reading in the book You're like you said to Frank beyond the right who you worked with over there and you said to him You you're like look it'll buy us a couple days and then by the time we have to make the actual announced We'll have time to come up with a name and what we're going to do. Is that true? Yeah, I he was Well, I put him on the speaker phone to my stab and he says yeah, because he had been he had left HBO on it He did not have a great relationship with Michael Fuchs who who said he was like the the king of this was his baby So Frank was all-in you know fighting like tooth and nail against uh, we're like a gorilla operation fighting against the HBO and I think HBO couldn't believe You know that we we we did as well as we did It was all in smoking mirrors And so when did you come up with the name? How did you come up with programming and the whole thing for the channel? Well initially we called it like the two days later was we called it ha the TV comedy channel It was hot in an exclamation point sure sure, you know, and we had a great logo And it was TV comedy because what they were doing was just they were in a rip like funny scenes out of You know TV shows and movies and some stand-up guys in front of brick walls and just put them together And they didn't have like beat their equivalent of VJ so it would be like an MTV model But you know We didn't think that would work. We actually had tried that once So we we thought well, what does run comedy shows? So I did things to create headlines I hired Fred Silberman who programmed all the big networks at one time we did deals with like Brian Grazer and uh, you know, we licensed stuff from Norman Lear And we just would continue to throw out announcements So we we've got Saturday Night Live the original five years of that, you know 75 to 80 And we built up a you know a decent show and then when we merged You know, we had to come up with the name Us and HBO and comedy central was the name and then the turning point for comedy central in your book The you describe is what what really set you guys off was when you hired John Stewart is that right? We had hired John Stewart before he had been at we he was on MTV in the late 80s early 90s He had a show called the John Stewart show. Yeah, I remember yeah It it ran for a while so John was sort of in the stable We never found him and we actually had a guy named Craig Clairborn on the daily show first Yes Different type of guy and then we replaced him with John Stewart and John's vision was look. Let's let's let's just not do pop culture stuff Why don't we take a crack at the news? Well, I'll be a fake news man. Yeah, and He got his voice doing that and he's got better and better. I mean, I just I just watched uh, you know He's on every Monday night again. Still he's so brilliant. He should run for president But we had what came out of that was we had John Stewart Steven co-bear John Oliver, Samantha B Bill Mar was on our channel first Dave Chappelle. I mean, it was a good Launching place for young talent Jimmy Kimmel had the man show you may remember that I mean Tom, I you think about you name these people all these people musical artist comedic voices brilliant voices who came up under sort of the umbrella of stuff that you did Do you ever do you get a little satisfaction when you watch people now all these years later like? Yeah, I was right about all of this Yeah, and then truth I didn't I didn't I wasn't the person who liked picked everybody But we had a great team there and we were always looking for edgy new talent that was coming up and get him You know get him young and then they'd leave us like Bill Mar was on politically incorrect and then ABC hired him and then they fired him and he ended up at HBO and his show now is spectacular And so you see now the front line of people who are sort of like the resistance almost Yeah, it's all these comedians and they all well so many of them had their roots with us Although they've been in other places for a while co-bear Kimmel mar And so on and Steve Correll and and Correll yeah So then yeah, okay, no go ahead. Well, I was gonna say so then because I want to get into all the one stuff You know god, we don't have enough time for everything time your life was too full So you you while you're at Viacom you become CEO of Viacom ultimately and you work for a guy called Subna Redstone Which was He was a difficult Boss to serve is that a good way to put it? That's very fair. Yes He fired he fired every CEO Including me including you and so you knew so he hires you CEO and that means what that means your days are numbered basically How long till I get fired but the thing is he always like to fire people in holiday weekend so like He fired Frank Beyondy on the 4th of July fired Mel Carmazan like on the memorial day and I got it on Labor Day So if you could make it through the summer season pretty much you had another year of good times ahead Oh wow And one of the reasons One of the one of the things that I know there were a lot of issue and you talk about it in the book but And you and I've talked about this before before it's widely known There was a thing called one of the first social media sites out. There was a thing called my space And it was up for grabs And He wanted it and still on it. I'm still right your shun still on it's his main source of communication So he wanted my space and and so did News Corp right? Is that is that a fair? Sumner had never heard of my space He didn't hear about it until he found out that Rupert bought it and we had then he found out we'd been kicking the tires and We didn't we never made a bid to buy it but Rupert bought it and He went on the covers of all these trade magazines as the new media visionary and that really annoyed Sumner Yeah, and he bought it for five hundred and sixty million dollars I'll just say ultimately Rupert sold it for thirty million dollars. Wow I'm still waiting for a thank you note That was a reason he one of the reasons he cited for firing me and right one of the reason which is you did him such a favor and the other thing was You you Saw the power the potential maybe of YouTube. Is that true? Yeah, you two kind of took away all of MTV's mojo Ultimately, I mean who could have imagined what you two's become today? like YouTube TV and everything it's amazing. - And it's been around forever and they still say it's the quote future. But I'm like, but it's been around. - If Alien landed on the earth and you're trying to explain what YouTube is or was and it's in its inception, how would you describe it? Is it just a free sort of destination for user generated videos? You just kind of upload anything you want and it's just a gathering place for all that. Is that what YouTube really at its core? - That's what it was initially and that was like 2005, they launched it and it was initially you could, anybody could upload anything. Kids could comment on it, you could send stuff. It was a form of social media person to person and that was a whole new idea. And then like SNL would put up like some stuff like with Andy Sandberg, I'm trying to think some of, they would, media companies would use it as sort of a promotional vehicle. So they started to get more promotional content on there and then they've just, - And did you want to buy it? Did you saw? - We thought this is a whole new thing and the world is going in this, we had the TV revolution, now we got this digital revolution and this digital revolution, this social media thing where people can communicate directly with each other. And people like us aren't gatekeepers anymore. We thought how do we get in on this? You got to own a platform. And we made a, I wanted to make a bid on it, but it was difficult for a company like us. I mean, ultimately Google bought it for 1.6 billion. The Viacom board thought it was a copyright infringement machine, it would make us liable for lots of lawsuits. And ultimately, after I left, they sued them for a billion dollars and lost 10 years later. - Wow. - But no one could have imagined what YouTube was able to morph into. - Right, you know, which is. - But you did see, you did see that there was the potential, even though you didn't know exactly what it would become. Imagine how different the world would have looked had Viacom purchased. I mean, for 1.6 billion is the, right now, the deal of the century. - There were almost 600 billion dollars here too. - Wow. - That's unbelievable. - I mean, that could buy all the media companies a couple of times over. - Wow. And then. - 600 billion dollars. - On the side of that, you also helped these guys start Vice Media as well, right? You were instrumental in getting. - I would work with Vice for a bunch of years, yeah. Yeah, that was a wild ride. - Yeah. (laughing) - That's another fun. - That was a lot of fun too, though. - Yeah. - And it crashed. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was. - It's still around though, isn't it, no? - It's barely around. They have a little studio operation. You know, they kind of imploded a bit. You know, they had a great run when they had that HBO series on that really kind of made them famous. They had a whole suite of YouTube channels. And. - Yeah. - Does any, after all of these successes, does any part of you still want to be involved in media? - You know, I'm happy now. I'm not in it. I mean, it's really, it seems like a lot of the funds been taken out of it. A lot of the money's been taken out. You look at these companies that are sort of stripped down and are forced to consolidate. You know, I came up, it was a more optimistic time. Things were moving in an upward direction. You know, things were ascendant. Now it's like, you know, why I was gonna tell you guys, you're all in Hollywood, you know, the situation. - Barely Tom, yeah. - Barely, yeah. We'll be right back. - It does seem like though that we are at a bit of an inflection point that's not too dissimilar from sort of the launch of something like a YouTube where we're not for the invention of the internet and then the personal communication device. You know, those two things together were the necessary components that make up a YouTube. Now we've got something similar perhaps in AI and its ability to be transformative and create these new platforms or entertainment options or we have no idea about some ideas are scary, some ideas are interesting. But like maybe we're at another kind of launch moment. I'm sure you've done, I'm sure you read very interesting books and niche articles and periodicals and things like that that does it not hold some kind of interest to you? Is this sort of this moment of pioneering? - Yeah, and the whole AI thing is sort of daunting. On one hand, you've got people saying this is going to create these machines, they're going to kill us all and on the other hand, it's going to open up this great new world and someone else is going to get put 20% unemployment on them. - But it seems like the big brains like you are really the only people that are uniquely qualified to really kind of cut through all that and say, yeah, it could be this, it could be that, but it also can be steered and can only be really properly steered by somebody that has the combination of your creative acumen and your business acumen and your time in the industry. So are you not interested or excited to kind of grandfather some of that in there? - I'm sort of following, it's not that there's not a lot of smart people involved. These AI guys, you always say, well, they're from up north and you can see the battle in Hollywood. You need the media savvy too though. - Yeah, they're not this media savvy, but they're going to create new media. I, yeah, I'm curious and I'm watching and it's, they're just, the amount of money that's being invested is mind-boggling, but they need someone like you to steer it though. You got, you know, I might have come off the bench. Come on, get in there. - Wait Tom, we need you coming off the bench. If you were 26, and you, 26-year-old Tom Preston today, you were just coming back from doing your, being off the grid for a couple of years, and you were gonna start in this world today. What would you launch? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good question. - Well, you know, I'd wanna do something that I really like, so I probably find my way somehow to the entertainment media business. You know, I'm probably there and say, well now, I mean, to your point, it is sort of an inflection point. And you wanna align yourself with someone who's, that's a business that's ascended. So if you get in it and you choose the right place and they got the right plan, you're likely to be able to move up. And I don't know which place that is, but that's probably where I would gravitate. And I feel confident that they're gonna figure this out somehow, in a way that doesn't put everybody out of work in the entertainment business. Because, but I just heard something today. Some, they have a channel four in the UK as these newscasters that are AI generated that sound exactly like. - Exactly. - Totally. - Really? - Yeah, exactly. Like it could be one of you guys talking. - Well, yeah, Sean's got wires coming out of him. Well, it sounds like you are, you are, you are satisfied for sure, with your accomplishments as well you should be. And so, have you, have you given yourself a chance to sit back and look at that guy who went off to India and Afghanistan and started in advertising and got his MBA and all that stuff. And have you landed at a spot that is satisfying to you? Given where you started, your frustrations early on and it seems like you managed to create a space for yourself that combined all the things that you loved and that you were good at. - Well, I kind of went full circle. I mean, if I look at my life in chapters, the chapter now I'm doing a lot of not-for-profit work for like 18 years I've been working with Bono. It's the board chair of this thing to one campaign that really focuses on extreme poverty, infectious disease in Africa. And I find that very satisfying work. You know, we have red. You've probably familiar with some stuff with Apple and everything and that's interesting. Keeps your arm into the private sector. But you know, and it gives me a chance to really explore Africa a bit more, which I also enjoy. But so I'm sort of in that phase of life, I guess you could say. I'm, you know, it's not like giving back, but I enjoy this kind of work and I like being observer of what's going on in the median entertainment business. - Well, you also, it is giving back. And you did start, you know, you started a media company in Afghanistan, which still exists today, right? I did that and went back to Afghanistan for 10 years until the Taliban arrived and built up a TV network there, which was fascinating. - That's right. - And not, not the not-for-profit, but meaning like you did that is, it's not like that was like going to be a huge windfall. It was more, it was sort of giving back to a place that you really loved and you described the people, especially early on in the 70s when you first got there and what a wonderful place Afghanistan was. And now you've got these people who are there sort of holding the line, still doing it, right? Still broadcasting. And in that time, I remember you would take young people who were there who were working for the company and send them over here and do semesters working at USC media school and stuff and give them and educate them. And I mean, that was a real thing that you did for a long time. - Yeah, I mean, I never expected that. gave my fascination with Afghanistan. And it gets a bad rap these days admittedly, but there's wonderful people. And I was lured back there to start this TV net station, which became very powerful. And in terms, I thought it was a way to, you know, chain help change society, connect Afghans to each other to the outside world for the first time for, you know, women, liberate women. It's just a thing, a man and a woman newscaster side-by-side, since a huge signal. - Wow. - We brought music back after the Taliban had outlawed everything. So we brought back music with the arts and-- - And it's still running the network? - Well, it's been, you know, it's been, we've now had, we had like 250 advertisers. It was, now we're down to one. - Wow. - And it's energy drinks like red bull kind of stuff. That's what they have there, 'cause there's no alcohol. But we've now switched into doing programming for school for women. So we're doing educational programming. And instead of advertisers, we're funded by people like Gates and other foundations. Milalo Foundation. - Oh, great. - And we're making these episodes in Afghanistan inexpensively. We have a diaspora group of Afghan educators that help develop the curriculum. And so it's just kind of keeping people employed in this very difficult time and-- - But these programs for educating women are still are now allowed? - Yes, 'cause we've picked sort of non-ideological subjects like mathematics, 'cause things like that. - Got it. And so they're allowing it, yes. And there's a whole sort of digital part to it as well. It's just awful what's going on there. But for sure. This way, the business stays alive and you can employ 500 people. And you know, women have basically been erased from public spaces in Afghanistan. They're not even allowed to talk when they're in public. - Yeah. - Wow, it's just awful. Women who used to be able in that 20-year interval when we were there, which we blew. But people went to school, became parliamentarians, became lawyers, became, you know, now they're just extremely depressed at home. - Oh man. Tom, you really, I know what a life dude. And you've done it all. I mean, you do this kind of stuff. And you help start MTV and you have a clothing company from, and you're smugglers. And that was a thick network, huh? And talking to the book, you take, you take some of the rest don't do a sex club. - Right. - In Thailand, which you talk about in the book, which is just a great, I implore you to read this book. - Is that true? - Yes, yes, I did. - That's crazy. - We'll just give us a little taste. It was not too much of a taste. - You don't want the full taste, but we, I kept telling them, you gotta come to Asia. We've got MTV and India. We've got it in Thailand and Taiwan. We've got an Indonesia, it's like the great market. We were still really positive about how we could do in Asia and he had never really been and then he called me up to his office one day and he says, "You know, I've made up my mind. "I'd like to finally come to Asia with you." Well, where do you want to go? He goes, "I want to go to Bangkok." I go, "We don't really have any business in Bangkok." That's like one place that there's a company there that's gonna lay cable, but they haven't started yet. But he wanted to go to Bangkok and then he told me quietly, he'd like to go to some sex clubs. (laughing) - Oh my God. - I had to go do some advance work to get him in a sex club. I wasn't really, I'd been to Bangkok before a bunch of times, but I was not an expert on the sex club front, which is quite a scene there. One of the most interesting things is that, it's become because of the Vietnam Morris, become like the commercial sex capital of the world, and they have plane loads of Japanese and Germans, man, they come in to run wild in the various red light districts. And I think, mate, those were the two axis powers. - Right. - And now they're invading Bangkok, but I took Sumner to a, I did my job as a loyal employee and shepherded him around. - You had to take your boss, you described it, and you guys go into a room and this couple are lowered on a motorcycle having actual sex. On the motorcycle, you're there with your boss, and then he looks at you kind of like, we're good now, and you just let yourself out, right? (laughing) - Well, no, I had to take him to another club after that, but the interesting thing about that club was, it was just filled with regular people, Thai people and everything. You hear this roar, and a motorcycle slowly comes down, the small Harley, and there's this couple on there, and they're naked, and they're dull greased up, and they're doing it, and guys revving the engine. - Oh my God, after a while, after a while, the people in the bar, the locals, they're not even looking, you know, it's like, people are fornicating on a motorcycle two feet over your head. - Yeah, we got it. - Yeah. - Would you like another beer? (laughing) - It's amazing. - It's amazing. - Pulled back up into the ceiling. - Yeah. - And then you got, I mean, you did everything you talk about, I mean, you literally, people go like, from here to Timbuktu, you literally went to Timbuktu, I wanna end on you, the time you went to the music festival, I remember when you and Jimmy were gonna go, you were talking about it, and you guys, you and Jimmy Buffett went to this music festival, right? - It's a festival in the desert, out in the middle of the Sahara. - Yeah, so how do you talk about English? - Talk about your journey. - Burn man with people on camels. It was like, the local Toreg people would come, it would be like, we love West African music, so I got a few other people, Chris Blackwell, friend Bill Flanagan, we flew to Bamako, the capital of Mali, and then we took the Jimmy jet, we flew to Timbuktu, and we land in the Timbuktu airport, people, there's nothing there, there's no planes there. People are just running at our plane, trying to sell us daggers, you know? (laughing) It was like, you're in the middle of nowhere, it's like a town in the desert, and we had to drive a bunch of hours from there to get to the festival. And you had your own security with you and a driver, talk about that. - Yeah, we had one security guy from Bamako, and then we had another guy, and then when we got to Timbuktu, so we got to find a guy who knows how to get there, so we need a local guy who can find his way to the festival. So we hire this guy, and we set out one morning to go to the festival, and we're winding our way through the sand dunes and going and going and going, and after about four or five hours, the security guy goes, stop, stop. And he gags the local guy and gets them out, and they start screaming each other. We don't know what's going on. And then he puts the guy in a headlet, takes out a gun, sticks it to his head, it says, "I'm gonna kill this motherfucker." 'Cause he is taking us, we're going in the wrong direction, and he was taking us to an al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda was kidnapping tourists in that area, and like there was just over the border in Mauritania there. There was a Germans that had been holding for a year, and we were on our way there. And he said, I'm gonna, and I'm a little bit buzzed, and I'm looking at this, I'm going, Jesus Christ, man, I mean, I just came out in the desert to hear some music, and now I'm gonna witness a murder, and I got a turbine on my head. So Jimmy said, let the guy free, we just leave him in the desert, and we picked up like a guy with a hitchhiker. He had a cell phone with a Bob Marley ringtone, and that was enough. He said he knew how to get to the festival, so we put him on board and off we went. - You know, you could just watch MTV, you don't have to go across that. - It's unbelievable. - Man, what a life. Is that a good idea? - Yeah. - Well, good news for, if you're like me, or you finish listening to this guy talk, and you're envious that you have not lived a life, even halfway is interesting as him. The good news is we've got a book to read about it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So thank you for writing that. - Unplugged adventures from MTV to Timbuktu, on sale as of November 18th, from the great Tom Fresson. It proved that there's a big world out there, get out into it, which is, I say all the time, and boy, did you do that? - Yeah. - You are an inspiration to a lot of people, including me, you always have, and you're a great dude, and honestly, I read this book just, I devoured it. It's so good. So Tom, thank you, man, for taking this. It's been a long time coming. I'm so excited to see you. - Yeah, thank you. Well, thank all of you. It's great to chat with you guys. I'm a regular fan. - I'm a regular fan. - Nice meeting you, Tom. - Love the podcast. - Thanks so much for coming on and talking to us. - Thank you, the great Tom Fresson, you guys. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Bye, guys. - Thanks a lot. - Bye. - See you. Bye-bye. - Bye-bye. - Oh, boy. I'm uplifted and also depressed at the same time. - I know. - Exactly how I feel. - I know. - I'm like, wow, fuck. There was a time when, I think I've probably told this boring story before, but when my career was in a real dry place, and I-- - No, talk about that. - I thought about going down to the Tom Bradley terminal here in LAX, the International Terminal, and just picking a destination up on the board and just-- - I love that. - You can still do that. Well, I got the wife and the kids, and it's a little awkward now. - No, but you can just get up and stuff. - It's cold deserted in your family now. - I was 23, 24, I was like, Tom's age, and I was like, let me just start over somewhere else where, fucking, being on entertainment tonight isn't the end all be all. - You're right. - And so, I'm certainly not, Bobu, you know, your life turned out so shitty. No, I'm very, very grateful, but man, you listen to that. It's like, I just don't know if you-- I was gonna say you can't have both, but he seems to have had both. Like you went, he did that. He came back and he was still a part of mainstream society. - And not only that, what's cool is he took all of that, that sort of that wonderlust as you described, and he took all those experiences, and he brought it into that environment, and that's what set him apart and still set some apart. He's like, he has such a broad world view. - Yeah, like he said 18 years of school, so then he was like, anything, I just gotta get out. And you know, like, I've just been reading books for 18 years. And it changes what you use as your sort of baseline norms that you think that you can, and so you come back and you're affected by these experiences, and you're like, no, well, why don't we just do this? - Yeah. - You know, if you think about it, like he does all this stuff that maybe being out in the world might not have had. But then he's like, yeah, we're at MTV, we're gonna start this, and we're gonna start this comedy channel. - It's like a drug, it's like a change in your mind. - And like, oh, YouTube, let's buy that. And everybody's like, no, Tom, no, you know what I mean. - I wonder if like, I wonder if that doing it at that age, though, is much more meaningful and significant than doing it. Let's say like, you know, maybe after Maple goes to college, you know, Amanda and I take off and we start doing all this time. Like, are we two setting our ways then at that age of 60, going around and like, can you really be affected? - Yeah. - Well, there's one way to find out. - Just do it. - Just do it. - I think, honestly, but what if it turns out? - Yeah, no, it was a waste of time. You're stuck in your ways and I was 70. - But at least it's worth going to try to find it. And I would say like, you hear that. It makes me want to say to my own kids and to my younger self and to anybody if you're under 30 or whatever it is, whoever you are, put your phone down and get out in the world. You know, that's kind of, it makes you just think like, just get out there and I'm sure people will be willing to try. - Don't put it down before you get. - No, no, switch to smartless mobile and get a good plan. - Yeah. - And then 10 gets you 10 bucks. - Right, but then you have to go out and have a rich life. And Jay, you were saying to him, like, you have this moment now looking back where you feel a sense of satisfaction. Like, yeah, he's thinking of the stuff and the people he's met. Like, even now he'll be like, if you follow him on Instagram and he'll be like, you know, I'm in Albania. I mean, some like, Gord, I'm talking to the Prime Minister and I'm doing this and that. And he's just, you know. I didn't even, does he, is he married? - He has a long time partner, his, Kerry, who's amazing. - Yeah, okay, so he's traced, he's not still going around solo, bopping around. - No, no, no, but he's, and she's a good friend and an awesome person in her own, right, just amazing. Yeah, and he's just, but he's always, he's just interested. - Yeah, that's, yeah. - Well, that's the key. You gotta stay curious and interested in the whole time, right? - Yeah, but it seems like everybody that was around, everybody that was around, as such fun. And I, I had fun today with all of you. And I think a good time was had, bye-bye, oh-bye. (upbeat music)