MTV Creator Tom Freston on His Iconic Career and the Future of Creativity

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Paula. And Tom Freston, welcome to the show.

 

TOM FRESTON: Great to be here, Walter. Nice to see you.

 

ISAACSON: You know, I’m gonna cut right to the chase. There’s just an amazing scene in this book “Unplugged,” and I think you know which one it is. It’s in a sauna in Gstadt, and it sort of sets the whole tone for the book. Tell me about that scene.

 

FRESTON: Well, I had gone to Gstadt at the invitation of David Bowie. We were recruiting rock stars, basically, to be in our, “I want my MTV” campaign. This was early on in our existence, probably 1983. And we were doing this campaign to try and get our fans to demand their MTV so cable operators would carry us. So we had recruited Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend, and my assignment was to get David Bowie. And I called his manager and she said, well, you know, David’s skiing and Gstadt and if you want to come over here, he’ll do it. So, got on a plane with a 35 millimeter crew. We flew to Zurich, took a train to Gstadt, long haul. We went out on the slopes and David was there looking great. He was in his “Let’s Dance” phase. He had sort of figured out what he wanted to do. He was gonna ski down this hill and do a swoosh and say, “I want my MTV.”

So we did a few runs and then it really went smoothly. He’s quite good at that. We would then take it back and, you know, post produce it, so put the logo there and so forth. But at the end he says, “well, why don’t you come take a sauna with me at the, the Palace Hotel?” Which was the grand dame in Gstadt. And I was staying in basically like a cut above a youth hostel. I went back and told my compatriots and the crew, I said, you know, “see you losers later, I’m gonna go to take a sauna with David Bowie in the spa at the, at the Palace Hotel.” And when I show up there, you know, get down, I, I have a towel around me and we both walk into the sauna. It’s really steamy. There’s one other guy in there. He’s up like on a, on a shelf, basically, up in the back. And it turns out it’s Paul McCartney.

 

ISAACSON: Well, wait, here’s one reason I ask you to tell that story, because in normal hands this would be place-dropping, you know, Gstadt and Paul, Sir Paul McCartney and name-dropping and everything else. But one of the things you say in the book is that by hitchhiking around, being an adventurer, you learn a sense of humility. And there’s a self-deprecating quality in the book that makes all these famous names and places become funny as opposed to arrogant or name-dropping.

 

FRESTON: Yeah, I wasn’t being arrogant or name-dropping. And, but those were the two guys of the whole sort of rock and roll pantheon that I was the most intimidated by. Normally I wasn’t that starstruck, but I sat in the sauna and we kind of, they wanted to know about MTV ’cause neither of ’em had really seen it. We talked about this and that, and threw some water on the rocks. And it was – for a half hour little Tom from, you know, my home, Rowayton, Connecticut was in there with these two huge stars. And they couldn’t have been nicer. It was a great experience and probably one of my greatest stories of all my years there at –

 

ISAACSON: So wait, let’s get from Rowayton, Connecticut suburban kid growing up in a very conventional thing. How all of a sudden – forget about getting to Gstadt – how all of a sudden were you hitchhiking around the world and doing all these adventures? Where did that risk gene come from?

 

FRESTON: Well, one, I had sort of a pent up desire to travel. My dad never wanted to go anywhere. So we – I really went any– nowhere as a kid. I went off to college and learned how to – you know, in those days you could hitchhike. So I found this freedom on the road and I also, I had sort of fallen in love with the literature of the Beats where, you know, experience was a thing and you could travel and get out on the road, it’s the great classroom. And I gradually built up confidence, like I could kind of go anywhere. I was working in an ad agency and they were gonna assign me to Charmin toilet paper, of all things, which wasn’t a ple–. And I had a moment, I said, man, I can’t do this. I mean, but then this girl called me from Paris, who I knew – an old girlfriend – she says, “forget it, you can’t sell toilet paper. Come with me. I’m gonna cross the Sahara.” And that sounded like a good idea. I quit my job a week, I was on a plane a week later.

 

ISAACSON: And you say you got off the ferry in Tangier. You write, “And as soon as I disembarked I was hit with a high I would chase the rest of my life. The peculiar joy of disorientation.” Explain that one to me.

 

FRESTON: Well, you know, you could say it’s a bit of culture shock. I had never really been anywhere before that seemed that unusual. And when you’re in a place where you don’t know where you are, essentially, everything seems a lot more vivid and alive. You know, you hear the call to prayer and you think you’re in some kind of time capsule, some–. So I, I love the feeling of being uncomfortable and then having to adjust to this new altitude. And I would spend a lot of my life in places in what we used to call the third world, traveling around and being in environments that were radically different from everything I had grown up and been around, you know, beforehand.

 

ISAACSON: So how did MTV get started?

 

FRESTON: Well, it got started with that Warner Communications and American Express had a joint venture called Warner-Amex, and cable TV was just getting really started. The notion was, rather be a broadcaster, we’re gonna have specialized channels for all these niches for specialized audiences. And we were sort of the tip of the spear in that group as cable was being laid across the country. And it was, you know, cable didn’t really reach the big cities, you know, until years later. But in the early eighties that’s when these brands that we know today, like ESPN and MTV really got formed and started, and it was all very entrepreneurial and seat-of-your pants and really done on a low cost.

 

ISAACSON: MTV was not just a business, it was actually a cultural revolution. It just changed the way music was. When you helped found it and then ran it, did you see it as just another cable business enterprise, or did you see there was some sort of mission there? 

 

FRESTON: Oh, no. We were on a mission. I mean, everyone who worked there, and we worked for very little money. We were like on a crusade. We wanted to sweep the nation and then ultimately the world with this new musical invention that we thought was irresistible. We believed in the power of music. Music was a real powerful force at the time. There had been nothing like this on television. People had never really seen music videos, so it was like a whole new visual vocabulary we were throwing at people. And it’s hard to think today how revolutionary MTV was in its earlier years, but it really was unlike anything people had seen before on television. So people would spend untold hours watching MTV and it really created, it really generated a creative renaissance in the video business and the music business. And it became a real force. We became like the biggest radio station in the nation. And then we drove it internationally. We became the world’s first really international network. CNN was international, but they were mostly in hotels. We actually had 50 versions in different languages set up in different countries. It really went out to people’s homes.

 

ISAACSON: Well, I remember when MTV would just create hits, somebody like myself say, “okay, this just came out. I’m gonna get it.” Nowadays with so much niche media and streaming and everything else how has that changed the way music hits can be created?

 

FRESTON: It makes it really difficult. I mean, there’s more people making music that seems less remarkable. All the – there used to be 40 record companies, now there’s like two and a half record companies basically. And it’s, there is no monoculture, there is no massive medium. I mean, Taylor Swift is really the exception to the case, a couple of others that really cross over to different demographics. It’s hard to discover new music. I mean, if you’re younger, you get it through word of mouth. But if you’re an older person in your thirties, forties, fifties it’s hard to really know where new music’s coming from. People tend to go onto Spotify and listen to artists and get into this kind of algorithm. And you don’t really get exposure to different types of music other than the type you started listening to in the first place.

 

ISAACSON: One of the other things you helped start was of course, Comedy Central. And that launched the careers of so many people like John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, I think John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill, perhaps Bill Maher too. And all of them became very much in some ways political defining, not just humor, but the politics of it. I think South Park was part of that whole thing.

 

FRESTON: South Park. Yeah.

 

ISAACSON: Yeah. And it’s part of now the cultural resistance, both of the Trump administration and other things. Are you surprised that comedians have emerged as sort of the resistance?

 

FRESTON: Yes. You know, going back to the late sixties and early seventies when there was resistance to the war and to Richard Nixon, it was largely musicians who kinda led the charge. And, and, and certain cultural figures, it certainly wasn’t comedians. Comedians then really didn’t have this type of edge. Right now, you don’t hear anything from musicians. I mean, no one’s standing up but these comedians. They are the front line. And I’m, I really gotta say all of these people, the, the leaders of this new line of resistance – throw Dave Chappelle in there also – all got their TV start on Comedy Central, Amy Schumer’s another one. And they have a big impact. I mean, you saw the impact they had and the, the kind of following they’ve been able to establish when you saw ABC drop Jimmy Kimmel and had to put it back on.

 

ISAACSON: Yeah. But let’s drill down on that. Are you worried about the pressure? I mean, ABC had to drop Jimmy Kimmel partly because of the administration, some blow back on politics. Are you fearful that we’re getting to suppress the type of free speech that makes comedy so important?

 

FRESTON: Yes and no. I mean, in this Jimmy Kimmel instance, I mean, I think in the calculus of determining,  ABC determining what to do, they left out one cohort, which was the audience. And I just know from experience from the early MTV days when we used to be thrown off cable systems for one reason or another, the fans would always demand it to get back. Sometimes we would fan the flames of their discontent. But, you know, they’re very powerful. And you saw in the case here, you know, they canceled – I don’t know – a million and a half streaming subscriptions for Disney. They did a lot of reputational and economic damage. So you can’t just – I don’t think it’s that easy. Yes, you could smother if you really wanna be ruthless, but these comedians, it’s gonna be hard to suppress them unless, unless they start carting away these people and sending ’em to El Salvador, I don’t see that they’re gonna shut them up.

 

ISAACSON: You know, throughout this book I watch you as sort of rebellious against all the corporate overlords you have to deal with when you’re at MTV, Comedy Central, dealing with Viacom and Paramount. And then as if the good Lord had a perverse sense of humor, suddenly you become the CEO. What was it like moving from being a rebellious division head to somebody who had to be a CEO of a company like that? 

 

FRESTON: Well, it was a change, it was a change for me because running MTV networks where every one of our networks was sort of out of the mainstream and on the sidelines and sort of erratic and experimental. And now I’m having to deal, rather deal with creative people and animators – it was a place where everything I love kind of came together. But when I got elevated to CEO of Viacom, all of a sudden now I’m dealing with bankers. I’m dealing with Wall Street, I’m dealing with earning calls, a whole bunch of other things. It was a necessary step. I mean, someone said, well, you can’t stay a child forever. But, you know, it seemed to be something I liked more, but I was able to kind of get going and get in the groove. And I thought it’d be a way to kind of improve my skillset and move my career ahead. But I only had eight months at it before I was cashiered.

 

ISAACSON: Yeah. But you said even when you took over as CEO of Viacom, you said, I knew I was gonna be fired. Why was that?

 

FRESTON: Well, my boss, Sumner Redstone, he’d fired all my predecessors. I mean, he was a very – he’s always do it on holiday weekends, which I thought he had –. There was Frank Biondi, he was a really competent guy, did a great job, but he began to get a little more attention than Sumner liked. So he was out. He was out like on a, a memorial – on a  4th of July weekend. And then Mel Karmazin came in, who was a very able, extremely able guy, we loved Mel. He got fired. He got fired on the 4th of July. I got fired on Labor Day. So you, I used to think if you made it through Labor Day, you probably had a whole other year without having to worry about being dusted.

 

ISAACSON: Well, in some ways Sumner Redstone is almost a humorous villain in this book. Tell me more about your relationship with Sumner Redstone.

 

FRESTON: Well, he was an interesting guy. I mean, he came in at like the age 65 to take over Viacom in a very big battle of the eighties, to kind of dispose of the current management and begin to build a Hollywood empire, which he did do. He was very smart, he was very tenacious. He was a lawyer who wasn’t afraid to sue anybody. He made lawsuits like a whole new profit center. He’d be, he’d be suing half our customers. 

And I got along with him because primarily I had gone to see him before he took over the company and gave him a bill of goods about what we could be if we just had the right resources, which he provided us. And he kinda let us run with a pretty light hand. I mean, I think it was 65, 70 quarters in a row we delivered. So I was not a problem to him. People who were, were out pretty fast. 

And he had a sense of humor. He wasn’t like a, he wasn’t like the worst guy to be around, but he could be ruthless when he wanted to. But there always seemed to be a thing. He wanted to be in charge, so he was not gonna take it. At the end he wanted to fire Tom Cruise. That’s when things started to unravel between me and him, because he thought Mission Impossible didn’t do as well as it was ’cause he was jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch and destroying his reputation. That people hated him. But we told him, you know, you can – he went out and told the Wall Street Journal, I’m firing Tom Cruise. Well, we said, Tom Cruise doesn’t really work for you. You know, it’s not a, it’s not actually something you can do. 

 

ISAACSON: Sumner Redstone’s daughter, Shari Redstone just sold your old company Paramount and settled lawsuits with Donald Trump in order to get it through and stuff. Tell me what you think of the way she handled that.

 

FRESTON: Well, I was not a fan. I mean, she really bent the knee and almost started a trend that we saw affect a lot of other, you know, media consolidations and things. I think she felt the beat, the drumbeat of this thing coming, which, if she didn’t close this deal by October 1st, she would have to pay the Ellisons, David Ellison and his father, a $400 million kill fee. Which is a lot of money, which would’ve put an already suffering paramount into more of a death spiral. And the only way she was gonna get it done and pass the FTC/FCC was to be nice to Donald Trump. And that’s what she did. And in the process, compromise what had been one of the great television news organizations that the country had ever seen. So it was a disappointment, big disappointment to the people who worked there.

 

ISAACSON: Looking at today’s cultural landscape with, you know, streaming wars, algorithm driven content, this – we don’t have shared cultural things like MTV creating a hit on any given week. What is that going to do to storytelling and creativity?

 

FRESTON: Well, good storytelling, if you’re a good storyteller, you can still have a hit. I mean, we see that now there’s, there’s hits on these various streaming services. The problem is, as a consumer, you know, there’s so many more choices than there ever used to be. But if, if you have a hit, which is really the rare thing, you know, word will get around and more and more people will watch it. But it’s, it is harder to have a hit record. It’s harder to have a hit TV show. And it’s not as if people aren’t looking, but the attention spans are short. Social media is a bigger factor. You know, people keep saying how interesting TikTok is. And if you ever spend any time on TikTok, maybe I’m just talking like an old person, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to engage you there other than that quick sensationalism and moving along. But if you have something good and you’re in the mood, people will sit down and watch a long movie or watch a, or spend 50 hours going through an episodic television series.

 

ISAACSON: Tom Preston, thank you so much for joining us.

 

FRESTON: It’s good, Walter. Nice to talk to you. Thank you.