"Tom Freston"

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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? Do they fit okay? Are they tight? My headphones? Yeah, for the record today. Yeah, mine are in my... Everything seems to feel pretty good. When are they in your... Wait, wait, you've got new headphones on, don't you, Shani? 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 because you wanted compliments from your new headphones? Yeah. Okay, this is it. Did you want to mention the company or something like that? Is that what you're hanging for? I have no idea what the company is. Oh, wait, I just got a text. Welcome, it's an all-new smart list. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. How about I fixed myself? No way. It's about time. I know how to fix myself now. 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. Tap the lips. That's how the brain works. Audibly went... It's a 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, it tightens the core to make a little noise. Sean, do you do it now too? I do it when I get in the car too. I realize I've been doing it since I was 35 because of you. Yeah, so what number episode is this for us? We're north of 200, right? Over 250, I think. We're in the 280s now. No, really? I can now. I'm basically my own tech support now. I know how to find the little... We don't need to tell you 290 times. That's the good news. It 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 hold on to it? 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 vote. This is true. I scream my head off if I'm like, I can't log on. I'm on computer. Who has the least? Oh, least problems? Yeah, technical. Not problems. Not problems. Not world problems. No, it's always you. Why is that? Because that's what you do for a living. Well, I'm more probably used to the setup of the mic. Yeah, isn't that nice? That's... And you also, you started, weren't you one of the original Geek Squad guys? I still own the name. What is it? I still, I did all the art. I went to a... I just 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. Yeah, that was crazy. Jason and I had all the concessions that Jason bought. I was holding them. This guy looked like he was at a state fair. Yeah. It did. It looked like I had like... Old Bessie had two armfuls. I had it. I had like a soft pretzel and Jason has a hot dog and his phone. And I had all the drinks and the pretzels. And the cheese dipping. I once described you as a soft pretzel. That's funny. Just a knots all over. But it sounds like you're really living your best life though, Jason. 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 here. Yeah. So, you know, 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 because you don't want to like block the wall behind you. And here come these big, these big dickhead actors. With all our growing actors. With all our growing actors. Yeah. A little late. Right. And there was like, oh, you're going to kick these people out? I know. But you have to like leave proof of your tickets. And you remember you used to pass your tickets down the aisle. Yeah, see. But now the tickets are on your phone. I used to love you. Tickets are on your phone. You got to like pass your phone down the aisle. People are touching your phone. You know, I don't like that, Willie. Right. And these guys... Guess what? Here's the news. While they're eating his hot dog. Yeah. They wouldn't move. Yeah. No. They're like, yeah, I see this is 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 got to get them and tell them to move us. That's right. And then I'm... So we had to sit on the stairs with our groceries and wait. I mean, oh God, it was the war. It took like 10 minutes. And then they finally got them out of what was the attitude. And then they finally got out of a family of four were relocated. Yeah. And just us two sat down and now we got two extra seats next to us. And we looked like super assholes. And I ate my pretzel on the stairs and my cheese went everywhere. Oh no. You mean actual cheese. Yeah. It wasn't a result of eating the pretzel made your cheese go everywhere. You created cheese. No. Okay. We'll save that for smart less after dark, which we still haven't gotten off the ground. But I'm still working on the logo, which is funny because our guest today, I said smart less. He often refers to it as shameless. And I know he's joking in his tongue and cheek because I love him. It is pretty shameless. It is. And this, this is a guy who is really, you want to talk about live the life. This guy's really lived 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 and India. No joke. Back in like the early seventies when nobody was over there. He just, I mean, he's the kind of guy you'd find him on a night boat 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 going to change everything and he goes in. And he starts to create, he creates this thing that literally changed the way that we saw music, fashion, culture, everything. It went global everywhere. Andy, wow. He runs a bunch of little networks that you might have heard of called Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central. Oh, this is old Mr. Tom Freston. 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 him my friend. You guys, this is Mr. Tom Freston. Cannot wait. Oh, Mr. Hey guys. Wait to hear all about this fella. It's an honor to be here. 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, out on Long Island. 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 he rest in peace. Yeah, I'm sorry about your loss. The great Jimmy Buffett. 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. How did you, Tom? How'd you meet Jimmy? I met Jimmy in the basement of a bar called JPs in Manhattan in the 70s. It was like, at 5 a.m., you'd open up one of those bilko 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. And we just would hang out and trips. I would travel with him a lot. He liked to go to, he liked to travel. And that 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, all kinds of big fancy ones as well. Tom, he had a few, Jimmy also crashed a few planes. Did he back in the day? He did. He crashed, he landed in Nantucket and sort of flipped it over. And that was one of, there was other instances of malfeasance. One time when we were, I told that story when we, when they did that show at the Hollywood Bowl in honor of Jimmy and I told the story about he was, he was going to 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 got to go get certified. I'm doing takeoff and landings. Do you want to go? And I go, yeah. And then he left the room and Jane turned and she goes, dude, he's crashed like three planes. You're not getting on. Oh my God. The key word there is training. Do you want to go training? No. So, so Tom, I want to go, I want to go all the way back. By the way, Tom's, Tom's got a book that we're going to get, we're going to get into Tom's book in a second because I read it a while ago and it's phenomenal. But I will, it's called unplugged, which is fantastic, which is I think out now, right, Tom? It comes out November 18. Yeah. So, but you know, again, we've, 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 wonder. I can know how and why. 1970. How, how is one able to do that? Well, let's see. I was, I had been working in an ad agency in New York. I got assigned to Charmin toilet paper. Sure. It was like a tough, a tough account working with Mr. Whipple and this, my old girlfriend was in Paris, call me and said, Hey, you can't do that. Come with me. We're going to cross the Sahara desert. And I quit my job and 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 that at one point 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. I, 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. And what year ish? This is 1972. So I stayed through 1979. 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 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 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, I actually ended up smuggling three tons of stuff in from Canada. Yeah, wait, wait, Tom, Tom, take us through that. So, 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 got to get it into the States. And so you decide what? Well, I had met in my years, they're all these smugglers, you know, sort of rife with drug smugglers. And they would always say how easy it was to smuggle stuff into the United States. Wow. But by just by just by putting it on a plane and just nobody checking. Well, they had, they would, they would, 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, if 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 admit. I mean, but I just want, I forget some money back. I felt I had really been ripped off by the government with no, no prior announcement or anything. So that was the end of my business. And I also had my business in Afghanistan kind of vaporized because there have been a communist coup there. Right. But Tom, can you, can you, for a, for a real soft Hollywood idiot like me, any, this whole thing sounds just so foreign from anything I would ever imagine, let alone pursue. He won't go east of Lebrayah. Put it that way. Yeah. Let's just forget it. Or south of the airport. What was your life like at that age, at that time that gave you either the courage to have this wanderlust or maybe the opposite of courage. There was just stuff happening in your life. It was 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 of the latter. I mean, I was, yeah, I was, it was the 60s. So, you know, there was a lot of alienation around freedom sounded like a good option. 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 foreign. 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 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. Have you ever tried selling 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. It 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. I felt like I needed to stretch out a bit. I'd been in school for like 18 years or something. So I was 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 like, well, I might as well try it now. Yeah, I was 25, 26. I mean, young, so if not now when? Yeah. I remember you sort of describe in the book, when you first get to Morocco, when you're still traveling with your friend, your girlfriend, and just like meeting these people and they're all on the beach, like people you had met along the way and you were 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 it kind of that opened your eyes to it. And then so good. Right. Yeah. There was a bit of a phenomenon they call it the hippie trail. I mean, no one's self identified as a hippie. But like in California, New York, people were in those days, if you want to drop out, you sort of went to a common in 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. Yeah, I'd meet people who travel for years. That sounds like a really sort of contributing factor that it was in, it was in more so in society then than it is, I think today. More common place for folks to 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 reenter mainstream. Yeah. Was that, 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, they're being. Get out and you 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. Dude, out of curiosity, Tom, do you give that, did you impart that on your own sons, just, you know, as much as you're comfortable with talking about? Yeah, I do. I encourage them to, they become, 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, they, they really, you know, would take actually my oldest son, he kind of went to work almost right away, but they, they, none of them have really taken, made extensive trips like I had. Yeah. Right. They're more caught up in this time. Go back to the, to the Canada. So did you end up bringing those clothes and all those goods into the U S or no? Yeah, it was so easy. You just drove them over. But you did it yourself though, Tom. What? 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 bandit. 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, you know, in India, you get pretty spoiled because people speak English a lot. Yeah. But I mean, I could move my way around in Hindi, but in Afghanistan, I picked up a fair amount of Farsi, which is the language. I mean, a Dari, they called it, 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, yeah. Not so much. Wait, so, Tom, so actually this is good. You go out there, because you've got this, as Jason called this, wanderluster, this desire to get out in the world and we talk, 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 Charmin 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 loved 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 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 and 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 finally 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. So this guy, Bob Pittman, who was 26, never bothered going to college. He was a big star. They call him the long haired one-eyed hippie. And he programmed these radio stations like with Don I miss you. 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. That was almost like the magic words. I said, well, they didn't even have television where I've been living the last eight years. And I'm a music fanatic and you're looking for entrepreneurs and I know business and blah, blah, blah. And then he goes, you were a hashy smuggler, weren't you? I go, not really. And 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 TV? It was you and Bob Pittman and you. Me and Bob Pittman. There was a guy named John Sykes. Seriously, my name. Oh boy. John Sykes. Steve Casey. Who else was there? Carolyn Baker, Sue Steinberg. And there was about six or seven of us. Fred Seiberg, who was like really sort of the creative genius of the group. And we were said, get this thing on the air by August 1st. We had like eight months to put this whole channel together. So. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Did music videos, were they already kind of happening on other platforms or somewhere? And that's why you knew it would work or? No, there was really very little awareness about music videos in the States. They existed in Europe. Right. Because the 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 tops of the tops of the pops on the BBC. So, but America, and I, I, I, at one summer I had a girlfriend in Berlin. I remember just going to her, she would work. I go to a record store and just watch music videos all day. It's one of those kind of days. I was like, this is like a video wonderland. So I, 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, remember like? Video killed 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. We called Skate Away. Well, I was going to get into Dyer Straits because it's actually, it's a big part of the book. Jay, that's 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, yeah. And yeah. And, and you guys also, you started this thing, but I've heard stories from you and from Sykes 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 cheapskates second line. So then you guys started this and then you took, but then Dyer Straits had, they, 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 a, 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 vapidity that we were vapid. Yeah. And yet the line in that that really sold you guys was, I want my MTV. Yeah. Yeah. They had Sting sing it. And in those days, you know, those kinds of bands could be worldwide, you know, could have worldwide hits. 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, that very line. 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. Oh yeah. 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 they've never even seen it. So we knew if we could get people, these people to call their cable companies and demand their MTV, he could eventually force these people to put us on. And that really worked. That'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, it, it cycled into like just such a phenomenon, the whole, the, 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. And what do you, what do you feel that, that, that the music video has, has, what, 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 mute, they make as many music videos today as they use. 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 on 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 network model. You guys would, at the end of every video, 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 of directors said, Hey, how come our names aren't on there? Oh, yeah. We want to get some credit. Yeah. And yeah, David Fincher too. David Fincher was a great Russell Mulcahy. There was a Spike Jones. I mean, lots of people came up that way. When you, when the, the, I just, we'll talk about MTV ending in just a minute, but the initial, like the launch, the, 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 and became iconic, we got that for $1,000 from some guys down. Wow. Wow. Try it back. And it was sort of a kind of, you guys, I'm sure we're kind of tongue in cheek, how grandiose this whole thing is going to, we're putting our flag on the moon and yeah, here comes some of you. Yeah, that was it. Right. We're going to rip off man's greatest moment and this is going to put our flag there. That's amazing. Tom, what was the moment that you guys realized that you had really broken through? Okay. I mean, there were so many, I remember as a kid, you know, there were like, when the thriller video hit, it was just everywhere. It was like so. Top of the hour, every hour. Was there a moment for you where you went like, holy shit, we really got something here. 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 with big production budgets and their iridescent. And John Landis directing that. And the second thing was Live Aid. Yeah. Oh yeah. Live Aid. Live Aid, you know, ABC said, we'll run, Bob Geldof came to that. 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 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. Martha Quinn. You know, 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 groundbreaker in that one. Did you guys end up having all these, you got to know a lot of artists too through this, through this. At first, you guys were trying to launch and get them to do stuff. Then there must have been the tipping point where they're just coming at you and all the artists are winding and dining you guys, right? Sending you Rolexes and stuff. I didn't get any Rolexes. Yeah. I got a time mix. No, but I mean, it was true. We used to get like 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 serve as MTV. Yeah. I'll 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 at certain days and times maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It was, we were the biggest radio station in the nation. And it didn't always bring out the best in some of the people at MTV when you had that kind of power. 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, which really bugs me, but whatever. That's still there. But I needed to die at death because it can't exist really and be a business. When you're competing with all these videos on the internet, and it's not like you have exclusive videos that the people on 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 reimagine what MTV could be digitally and 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 want a fast channel, you could just pick your favorite artists like Taylor Swift and just click on her and just watch all her videos. All her stuff and 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's, the way it started was kind of in response to what somebody else was doing. I love this story. Walk us through that a little bit. How Comedy Central came to be. Okay. I was having a staff meeting one day and someone slips in a piece of paper to say that HBO has just announced they're going to do a comedy channel. They're going to call it the comedy channel. And we went, oh, 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 going to get in our business. They have a lot of money. They have all these, you have to do all these big standup shows with Robin Williams and everything. What are we going to do? I said, well, we're going to announce our own comedy channel the same day. Let's announce we're doing one too, because then we'll be in every article that's ever written about that their competitors also doing a comedy channel. And you had no idea for it. We didn't have a name or anything. But we had this thing called Nick at Night. And we would take old TV shows and repurpose them and repackage them and everything. It's like, at the worst comes the worst. We can do like a version of that. But let's put our 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. And they, because I thought if this worked for them, then they'd launch a movie, a music channel and a kids channel as well. And be head to head competitors with a lot more money than us. 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're like, look, it'll buy us a couple of days. And then by the time we have to make the actual announce, we'll have time to come up with a name and what we're going to do. Is that true? Yeah. I put him on the speakerphone to my staff and he says, yeah, because he had been, he had left HBO and he did not have a great relationship with Michael Fuchs who said he was like the king of this was his baby. So Frank was all in, you know, fighting like a tooth and nail against. 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 smoke and 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 hollering and 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 ripped 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 then they have like their equivalent of VJs. 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 thought, well, we'll just run comedy shows. So I did things to create headlines. I hired Fred Silverman who programmed all the big networks at one time. We did deals with like Brian Grazer and, you know, we licensed stuff from Norman Lear. And we just would continue to throw out announcements. So we, we 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 that you describe is what really set you guys off was when you hired John Stewart. Is that right? We had hired John Stewart before he had been, he was on MTV in the late 80s, early 90s. He's got a show called the John Stewart Show. Yeah, I remember it. Yeah. 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, who was a 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. And he got his voice doing that and just got better and better. I mean, I just, I just watched, you know, he's on every Monday night again still. He's so brilliant. He should run for president. Perfect. But we had, what came out of that was we had John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha B, Bill Maher 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. Yeah, I remember that. That was the, that was the. I mean, Tom, I, you think about, you name these people, all these people, musical artists, 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 in truth, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't the person who like picked everybody, but we had a great team there and we were always looking for edgy new talent that was coming up and get them, you know, get them young and then they'd leave us like Bill Maher 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 were sort of like the resistance almost politically, it's all these comedians and they all, so many of them had their roots with us, although they have been in other places for a while. Colbert, Kimmel, Maher and so on. And Steve Carell too. And Corell. Steve Carell. Yeah. So then. Yeah, good. Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, so then, because I want to get into all the one stuff, you know, God, we don't have enough time for everything, Tom, your life is too full. So 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 as CEO and that means what? That means your days are numbered basically. That means how long till I get fired? But the thing is, he always liked to fire people on holiday weekends. So like, he fired Frank Peiondi on the 4th of July, he fired Mel Carmes in 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. And one of the reasons, one of the things that I know there are a lot of issues and you talk about it in the book, but, and you and I have talked about this before, it's widely known, there was a thing called, one of the first social media sites out there was a thing called MySpace. And it was up for grabs. And he wanted it. I'm still on it, I'm still on it. Right? You're still on it, it's his main source of communication. So he wanted MySpace and so did News Corp. Right? Is that, is that fair? The Sumner had never heard of MySpace. 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 $560 million. I'll just say, ultimately Rupert sold it for $30 million. Wow. Wow. I'm still waiting for a thank you note. That was a reason, one of the reasons he cited for firing me. Right, one of the reasons, which is you did him such a favor. And the other thing was you early on saw the power, the potential maybe of YouTube. Is that true? Yeah. YouTube kind of took away all of MTV's mojo, ultimately. I mean, who could have imagined what YouTube's become today? If you check out like YouTube TV and everything, it's amazing. And it's been around forever and they still say it's the quote future. But how would you... But it's been around. If Alien landed on the earth and you're trying to explain what YouTube is or was 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 is? That's what it was initially and that was like 2005. They launched it and it was initially you could... Anybody could upload anything and 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 Samberg. I'm trying to think some of... 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 then this digital revolution, this social media thing where people can communicate directly with each other. And people like us aren't gatekeepers anymore. You know, 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 Biocom board thought it was a copyright infringement machine. It would make us liable for lots of lawsuits. And they ultimately... After I left, they sued him for a billion dollars and lost 10 years later. But no one could have imagined what YouTube was able to morph into. But 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 Biocom purchased. I mean, for 1.6 billion is right now the deal of the century. They're worth almost $600 billion, YouTube. Wow. That's unbelievable. I mean, that could buy all the media companies a couple of times over. Wow. And then... $600 billion. On the side of that, you also helped these guys start Vice Media as well, right? You were instrumental in getting... I worked with Vice for a bunch of years. Yeah, yeah, that was a wild ride. That's another fun... That was a lot of fun too, though. Yeah, yeah. And it crashed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's still around though, isn't it? No. It's barely around. They have a little studio operation. They imploded a bit. They had a great run when they had that HBO series on that really made them famous. They had a whole suite of YouTube channels. After all of these successes, does any part of you still want to be involved in media? I'm happy now. I'm not in it. It seems like a lot of the funds have been taken out of it. A lot of the money has been taken out. You look at these companies that are 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. Things were ascendant. Now it's like, why was I telling you guys you're all in Hollywood? You know what the situation... Barely, Tom, barely. Yeah. We'll be right back. And now back to the show. 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. 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 what... 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? This sort of this moment of pioneering maybe? Yeah. And the whole AI thing is sort of daunting. On one hand you've got people saying that these... 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 it's going to put... And someone else say, yeah, it's going to get put 20% unemployment on the board. 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 a 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 all. It's not that there's not a lot of smart people involved. You know, these AI guys from, you know, you always say, well, they're from up north and you can see the battle in Hollywood. They need the media savvy too, though. Yeah. They're not this media savvy, but you know, 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 just mind boggling. But they need someone like you to steer it, though. You got, you know, I might have to hand off the bench. Come on, get in there. Wait, Tom, Tom, speaking of coming off the bench, if you were, if you were, if you were 26 and you, uh, 26 year old Tom Freston today and you were just coming back from doing your being off the grid for a couple of years and you were, you were going to start in this world today. What would you launch? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good question. Well, you know, I'd want to do something that I really liked. So I'd probably find my way somehow to the entertainment media business. You know, I would probably there and say, well, now, I mean, to your point, it is sort of an inflection point. And you'd want to align yourself with someone who's, that's a business that's ascendant. 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, uh, I don't know which, which place that is, but that's probably where I would gravitate. And I feel confident that they're going to figure this out somehow. Yeah. In a way that doesn't put everybody out of work in the entertainment business because, uh, but I just heard something today. It's, um, uh, they have a channel for in the UK has, uh, these newscasters that are AI generated that sound exactly. Exactly. No way. Really? Yeah, exactly. Like it could be one of you guys. Well, it is. Well, yeah, Sean's got wires coming out of him. Um, uh, uh, well, it sounds like you are, you are, you are, um, Satisfied for sure with, with your accomplishments as, as well you should be. And so have you, have you given yourself a chance to sit back and, and, and, and, and look at that guy who went off to India and Afghanistan and, and, and started in advertising and God is MBA and all that stuff. And have you, have you, have you landed at a spot that, uh, that is satisfying to you, given where you started, your frustrations early on. And it seems like you, you managed to create a space for yourself that, 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 do a lot of not-for-profit work for like 18 years. I've been working with Bono, uh, as the board chair of this thing, the 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 red stuff, uh, you know, 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, to really explore Africa a bit more, which I also enjoy. But, uh, so I'm sort of in that phase of life, I guess you could say. I'm, I'm, you know, it's not like giving back, but I'm, I enjoy this kind of work. And I like being an observer of what's going on in the, in the media and 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. Yeah, I did that. I 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, and not, not, not, not, not that not for profit, but meaning like you did that is, it's not like that, that was like going to be a huge windfall. It was more, it was sort of giving back to a place that you, you really loved. And you described the people, especially early on in the seventies, 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, still doing it, right? Still broadcasting. And in that time, I remember you, 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 escaped my fascination with Afghanistan and it gets a bad rap these days, admittedly, but they're 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, change, help change society, connect Afghans to each other, to the outside world for the first time for, you know, women, liberate women. It just seemed seeing a man and a woman newscaster side by side, since a huge signal. We brought music back after the Taliban had outlawed everything. So we brought back music with the arts and it's still running that the network. Well, it's been, you know, it's been, we've now had, we had like 250 advertisers. Now we're down to one. Wow. Energy drinks like Red Bull kind of stuff. That's what they have there because 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, Malala Foundation. That's great. And we are making these episodes in Afghanistan inexpensively. We have a diaspora group of Afghan educators that helped develop the curriculum. And so it's just kind of keeping people employed in this very difficult time. But these programs for educating women are still, are now allowed? Yes. Because we've picked sort of non-ideological subjects like mathematics, physics, things like that. And so there's, they're allowing it. Yes. And there's a whole sort of digital part to it as well. It's, you know, it's just awful what's going on there. But this way, the business stays alive and you can employ 500 people. And, you know, you're, 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. Just awful. You can imagine. So women who used to be able in that 20-year interval when we were there, which we blew, but, you know, people went to school, became parliamentarians, became lawyers, became, you know, now they're just extremely depressed and at home. Man. Tom, you really, you really, I know what a life, dude. And you've done it all. I mean, you do this kind of stuff and you, you, you help start MTV and you have a clothing company from the, and you're, and you're smuggling clothes across the network. And you talk in the book, you take, you take Sumner Redstone to a sex club in Thailand, which you talk about in the book, which is just a great, I implore you to read this. Is that true? Yes. Yes, I guess. That's crazy. Well, just give us a little taste of, not too much of a taste. You don't want the full taste, but we, I kept telling them, you got to come to Asia. We've got MTV in India. We've got it in China and Taiwan. We got an Indonesia. It's like the great market. You know, we were still really positive about how he 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. He'll, 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. You know, that's like one place that there's a company there that's going to 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. Oh my God. You know, I had to go do some advance work, you know, 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, you know, it's become because of the Vietnam war has become like the commercial sex capital of the world. And they have plain loads of Japanese and Germans men that come in to run wild in the various red light districts. And I'm thinking, wait, those were the two haxes powers. And now they're invading Bangkok. But I took Sumner to a, I did my job as a loyal employee and Shepard hit him around. You had to take your boss, you describe 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. 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 like regular people, Thai people, everything in the, you hear this roar and a motorcycle slowly comes down to small Harley and there's this couple on there and they're naked and they're all greased up and they're doing it and the guy's revving the engine. Oh my God. After a while, after a while, the people in the bar, the locals, they're not even looking. People are fornicating on a motorcycle two feet over your head. Yeah, we got. Yeah. You like another beer. I said that'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 want to end on you. The time you went to the music festival, I remember when you and Jimmy were going to 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 to talk about your journey. Burning man with people on camels. It was like the local Torek people would come. It would be like, we love West African music. So I got a few other people, Chris Blackwell, my friend Bill Flanagan. We flew to Bamako, the capital of Mali, and then we got a plane. We took the Jimmy jet. We flew to Timbuktu and we landed 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? It was like, you're in the middle of nowhere. Daggers. 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, 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. After about four or five hours, the security guy goes, stop, stop. And he gathers the local guy and gets him out and they start screaming at 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. He says, I'm going to kill this motherfucker. Because 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 going to come on. 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 going to witness a murder and I got a turban on my head. So we, Jimmy said, let the guy free. We just leave him in the desert. And we picked up like a guy who was a hitchhiker. He had a cell phone with a Bob Marley ringtone. 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 all the way across that. It's unbelievable. Man, what a life. It sounded like 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 as interesting as him. The good news is we've got a book to read about it. So thank you for writing that. Unplugged adventures from MTV to Timbuktu on sale as of November 18th from the great Tom Fressen. It proof 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. You are an inspiration to a lot of people, including me. You always have been your 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. So sight that you came on today. Thank you. Well, thank all of you. It's great to create the chat with you guys. I'm a regular fan. Yeah. Nice meeting you. Love the podcast. So thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. Thank you. The great Tom Fressen, you guys. Take care. Thank you. Bye, Tom. Bye, Tom. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye, pal. Wow. Oh, boy. Wow. I'm uplifted and also depressed at the same time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly how I feel. I know. I'm just feeling like, wow. Fuck. You know, there was a time when like, I think I've probably told this boring story before, but you know, when my career was, you know, in a real dry place and I thought about. No, talk about that. I thought about going down to the Tom Bradley terminal here in LAX, the International Terminal, and just picking a day. I love that. Just going there and starting over. Yeah, you can still do that. Well, I got the wife and the kids, and you know, it's a little awkward now. No, but you can just get up and go somewhere. It's called deserting your family now. I was like, you know, 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. Yeah, right. And so I'm certainly not, you know, bo-boo-hoo, you know, you know, I'm certainly not, you know, bo-boo-hoo, you know, your life turned out so shitty. No, I'm very, very grateful, but man, you listen to that. And like, I just don't know if you, I was going to 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, you know, mainstream society. And not only that, what's cool is he took all of that, that sort of that, that wanderlust as you described, and he took all, and all those experiences, and he brought it into that environment. And that's what set him apart, and still sets him apart. He's like, he has such a broad worldview. He also had, like he said, 18 years of school. So then he was like, anything is, I just got to get out. Like, 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, 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 the stuff that maybe being out in the world might, he might not have had, but then he's like, yeah, we're MTV, we're going to start this, and we're going to start this comedy channel. It's like a drug. It's like it changes your mind. And like, oh, YouTube, let's buy that. And everybody's like, no, Tom, no. I wonder if like, I wonder if 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. Like, are we two set in our ways then at that age, at 60 going around and like, can you really be affected? 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 already stuck in your ways, and now you're 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 40, 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 rolling their eyes. Don't put it down before you get a smart mobile plan. No, no, no, switch to smartless mobile and get a good plan, right? And then 10 gigs for 10 bucks. Yeah, all right, but then you're gonna get it. But it is true. But it is true, yeah. Go out and have a rich life, and Jay, you were saying to him, like, do 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, I'm in Albania, I'm in 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, is he married? He has a longtime partner, his, Kerry, who's amazing. Yeah, okay, so he's traced, he's not still going around solo bopping around. No, no, no, he's, no, but he's, 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 the key, you know. Well, that's the key, you gotta stay curious and interested the whole time, right? But it seems like everybody that was around, everybody that was around had such fun. And I had fun today with all of you, and I think a good time was had, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Smart. Less. Smart. Less. 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