Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Man Who Changed Youth Culture - Tom Freston

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Tom Freston is a cofounder of MTV and the former CEO of Viacom, where he oversaw Paramount Pictures. Before his Viacom roles, he ran MTV Networks for seventeen years, overseeing Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, and other legendary networks. He is a board member of Imagine Entertainment and a board member emeritus of both the American Museum of Natural History and the think tank New America. I really recommend you read Tom's book Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. 📚 Get a copy of my books: Solana Rising: Investing in the Fast Lane of Crypto ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/43F5Nld⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ From Wall Street to the White House and Back ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47fJDbv⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Little Book of Bitcoin ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47pWRmh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Little Book of Hedge Funds ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/43LbM83⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hopping over the Rabbit Hole ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/3LaykJb⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Goodbye Gordon Gekko ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/47xrLYs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎥 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻𝘆! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cameo.com/themooch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎙️ Check out my other podcasts: The Rest is Politics US - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@RestPoliticsUS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Lost Boys - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYFf6KS9ro1p18Z0ajmXz5qNPGy9qmE8j&feature=shared⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SALT - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/SALTTube/featured⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📱 Follow Anthony on Social Media Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/scaramucci/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ X - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/Scaramucci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anscaramucci/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@ascaramucci?lang=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@therealanthonyscaramucci Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I don't think MTV is ever going to be able to have the kind of force in the culture as it had once before when life was easier and media wasn't so fragmented. But it could carve out a corner. It could be a place for music conversation, music discovery, and fun. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Tom Freston. He is the co-founder of MTV and the former CEO of Viacom.

The title of the book is unplugged. Adventures from MTV to Timbuck 2. But boy, what a rollicking read. And by the way, I listened to a lot of it on Audible, Tom. So I got the full immersion experience there as well. But listen, I want to go way back if you don't mind. I want to go back to your early start, your origin, what sparked your direction going into entertainment. And then we're going to talk about this very deeply used. memoir of yours? Well, what sparked me going into entertainment was, I mean, from a very early age, I was always a music fanatic. I knew all the songs, all the singers, all the flip sides or the singles. So I was always interested in entertainment, but that was not my initial, you know, when I started my career, I didn't even know getting a job in the entertainment industry was even that feasible. The industry hadn't really developed that much. So my first thing was I got a job been advertising because I wanted to do something creative that was business related. And then from there, I quit, quit an agency and went up on a sort of wanderlust,

starting off across the Sahara Desert, ending up in Indian Afghanistan, where I stayed for eight years. My other love besides music was traveling. So I built a business in Afghanistan and India, which I, to design and make clothes and sell them to better stores in America and a few other. countries. It was a ruse to allow me to live there because I was very fascinated with both of these countries in the 70s. It was really a very, I would say, intense and tumultuous time in both of those countries. It was quite an experience to do it and I wanted to live there.

So I did that for eight years and a series of unfortunate events, which you read about in the book, led me to come back to New York after making millions of dollars and losing it all and starting all over and I landed an interview at the company that was to become MTV. And that was something I had very consciously went about looking for, finding a job in the music industry. And I arrived at, you know, people say luck counts for a lot, but so does timing. So I happened to show up during the one week they were hiring a bunch of people. That's the long way to go about. We're going to get to that part of the story.

But I want to go back to Hindu Kush, which is a real business, okay? You learned about Rish. You learned about doing business in different cultures. You learned about trust. Take us to that business prior to getting to MTV, because I feel like this was a seminal thing that anchored a lot of your core principles throughout your career. Do I have that right? I feel like that.

It's exactly right. I mean, to have lived and survived and started a business in that very tumultuous work, easily the hardest work I ever did. It was like sort of managing this supply chain, but it was a point in time when air freight was just really becoming a reality. It was a point in time when boutiques were flowering across the United States and in Europe. So there was a lot of stores to sell to. I hired a designer and set about finding partners in both of these countries, who I could trust. We built factories. I had a showroom in New York. I mean, this started as a ruse,

Anthony. And next thing I know, we're in Women's Wear Daily and Vogue magazine and we're making a ton of money. And I had a house in India. I spent a lot of time there. It was a very frustrating time to be in that country. I was still under pretty much a socialist regime, not trusting foreigners in any way, shape, or form. Afghanistan was still largely a tribal place, very peaceful. People would be shocked to know how wonderful it was back then. They called those years the golden years before the war started. I mean, basically they've had 40 years of war since I left. But, you know, we would design clothes, sell to Bloomingdale's, places like that. Sometimes they would give us clothes. They wanted us to manufacture. I could make something in New

Delhi for $5 and have it a day later at JFK and sell it for $25. Again, I'm going to tie this is sitting because this is how I read the book. And again, if I'm wrong, you got to correct me, but you are literally sitting there. Afghanistan, and I've been to Afghanistan, Tom. I went on troop support missions during the war. My last visit to Afghanistan was in October of 2015. And so it is, as you describe, it is very, very tribal. But it's also a cross-section of a lot of different cultures, sort of a trading ground, if you will. And I feel like it was a rosetta stone for understanding culture. And it's something that you figured out in Afghanistan that you used at MTV and in your business career. And I sort of feel like you get the difference between a

cultural fad and a durable platform, which you created at Paramount or Viacom. some of it come out of Afghanistan? Well, some of the things I learned there was I built up my confidence that I could go anywhere and do anything. One of the things we did do was take MTV around the world. I had the confidence that we could do that when markets began to open up the cable and satellite. I also was very much into risk-taking.

We took a lot of risks, which would... And it's sort of, I had to deal with a lot of eccentric off-the-wall characters. It was sort of a perfect training ground to run an eccentric sort of left-of-center media company like we had MTV and Comedy Central. And I was presiding over a group of people who clearly did not want to work at any kind of formal corporation. And I was sort of used to living closer to the ground, not your typical MBA management style. And it jelled perfectly. I also had a great respect for the creator process, which was key to what I did in my businesses in Asia. You know, the music video, Tom, is a precursor for some of the great film

directors, right? So many great film directors started in the music video industry. Tell us about the music video and how it captured America's imagination, you know, from the days that you first turned on the channel. We'll talk about the ending of that channel on a second, but tell us about what it was, the elements that grabbed everybody. Listen, I'm an MTV viewer. I'm somebody that went home, put it on. I wanted to see what was going on from Max Headroom to Robert Palmer. I mean, I remember all the videos, of course, Michael Jackson. But tell us what it was. Tell us the element that happened to all crazy. Their genesis was really in Europe in the 70s and 80s. And the fact was, it was very hard. There wasn't a lot of radio air.

time for acts to get, you know, most of the radio was state control. There wasn't a lot of music shows. You can remember you would read about some of these pirate stations that operated off the coast of England. They were falling a void for the desire for people to listen to music. So the record companies would make these music videos and they would use them on top of the pops and TV shows to sort of a, it was a way to kind of promote the music, have people relate to the song because they really couldn't hear them on the radio. Another reason Why it happened was groups like the Beatles and the Stones early on. I mean, artistically, they wanted to express themselves in a video fashion.

So there was an artistic sort of imperative that drove a bunch of these. So they were popular in Europe, and I would see them there because I would spend some of my summers in Europe when I was living in Asia. But for the American audience, they were largely unknown in that whole sort of video style. We used to call it that Zootie, you know, fast cuts and everything was the really, brand new thing. It was like a whole new video landscape to the American audience and it really would engage it. But the fact of the matter is, if you have a good song with engaging videos, it makes that song more familiar more quickly and it makes it a lot more powerful to somebody. So they, we put them on MTV and that was for Americans pretty much the first place they ever

saw music videos and they were, you forget how revolutionary MTV was back in the day. You know, I mean, I'm going to date myself for you, Tom. I was in Camden Palace, which is in North London. It's a, you know, dance hall or you and I would have called a disco tech back in the day. And there I was. I was an exchange student in London. And they had a big projector. And they put Madonna up on the projector.

And her like a virgin video was being played. This was a mid-80s video. and the whole dance hall stopped dancing. Look at me. Everyone looked like this. And they were enchanted with these videos. These videos were many concerts. These videos had a story thread to them.

Some were incredibly sexy. Others were like suspenseful. How much of a part did you have in that in terms of video selection? Or what was the eye on that to make it so colorful and a tranceful? to us as younger people. Well, we selected them. We didn't really give a lot of input to the record companies or to the artists about how to make a music video.

We would often be asked, and we didn't want to look like we had our thumb on the scale. We would tell them be creative. And, you know, it was kind of freeform in those early years, like when you saw it in Camden. There was clubs downtown like the Ritz. It was sort of still an underground thing. It started sort of in the underground downtown Manhattan,

as an example, or, you know, really flowered up, much as it did in Camden. But we never told them what to do. It was experimental. It was lo-fi. People made videos. They were sort of fun. A lot of directors came up like Spike Jones and David Fincher and so forth.

They got their first licks making music videos and then would go on to make feature films. You know, MTV, the visual style of MTV really impacted fashion. It impacted film. No question. You know, added the whole. advertising business. It was more nonlinear. I was in law school, and we had this thing at Harvard Law School called the Law School Forum. And do you remember Jerry Farwell? You have to remember him, the moral majority leader. He didn't remember him. He didn't like us. He didn't like

you guys. So he came up and he railed on us for watching MTV. And it's 40 years later. I'm going to ask you this question, okay? Is today's culture more permissive, Tom, or more afraid? Boy, I think it's a combination of both. That's a really good question. It had become gradually more permissive as standards sort of went down. And, you know, you would see things now on TikTok, Instagram, online that you never would have seen years ago when we had more of a monoculture. And I think it's fair to say that people are afraid of that. And, you know, not maybe in some cases not with good reason. I remember watching Elvis Presley in 1956 with my father.

He swore that Elvis Presley was going to be the beginning of the end of Western civilization. We were going to be on some slippery slope. Well, I was told MTV was going to be the end of the civilization. Then hip-hop was going to be the end of Western civilization. But the slope keeps driving down. standards that we used we used to have program standards that weren't that weren't bad unlike the broadcast networks. You don't see that with social media anymore.

So there's reasons if you're a parent, there's a reason to be scared about what some of the stuff is. The book is very revealing about your life. You know, you're a humble guy, Tom, because you did a lot of amazing things. But I feel like, you know, I've read some successful memoirs before. Some people have a tendency to take this very high brow. I'm perfect. I did everything right approach.

And I felt that your book was very earthy and very humble, which made it more enjoyable to read. And I actually got a lot of insight into your personality. But the question I have is what part of this book did you hesitate most to include? But then why did you include it anyway? Well, there were things I didn't include, like, diving too deeply into my personal life. I didn't, I really only touched on that briefly. I did not come after certain people I might have had rouse with or trouble with in a real forceful way. I didn't see that there was any need to come down like some of the things that happened,

say, advice media, you know, that seemed to be a little out of control. I didn't see, I didn't see a need to really go after any of the individuals there. It wasn't really going to serve the story. Some of the corporate people at Viacom in my career there, Sumner Redstone, as an example, I had great respect for Sumner Redstone, but he was a flawed man. I didn't get into his flaws too deeply.

I mean, I think a lot of those flaws were well-known, and they became well-known after I left the company. Something you've learned. There's a humbleness, you know, I mean, I can say it, but I would rather have you say it. But let me make the following statement. When I read the book and closed the book, I said to myself, okay, wow, this is a super thoughtful, creative, intellectually curious guy that wasn't afraid to tell us about his warts and wasn't afraid to tell us about his mistakes. You didn't go after anybody else.

You sort of went after yourself a little bit, I felt. No? I mean, you're pretty honest about your. Well, I'm an honest guy. I didn't know how else to handle it. You know, this humility is sort of baked in. I mean, I guess I was always humble from the start, but my years in Asia kind of, you know, baked in humility and confidence. So what came out is just what naturally what I feel. I always, I was never someone to try and hog the spotlight.

In my company, we had a lot of successes, but I tended to allow the people under me to shine because in many ways they were the ones who were really doing the real work and making the creative breakthroughs. I'd seen too much in the entertainment business, too much flamboyance and bragging and egomaniacal activity is really sort of a turnoff. I mean, there's a real lack of humility in the higher levels of the entertainment business. It came across. I mean, it was a very, it was a very heart in many ways, a heartwarming book. I want to go to your creativity for a second because you created things that, you know, in the immortal words of Steve Jobs or Henry Ford, you know, we didn't know we needed them until we had them, right?

Henry Ford once said, if I listened to my customers, they wanted faster horses. And Jobs said, you know, they don't know what they want. Let's give them something and make them realize it. But there you are creating Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, VH1. Tell us about your creative impulses and your creative team at Viacom. And what are some of the things you guys were thinking about when you brainstormed these wonderful ideas? Well, you know, I go back when I was in, I went to NYU business school and my professor was Peter Drucker, who at the time was sort of the key management guru. And this was in the book. His basic philosophy was like the American, the America runs on innovation and change and entrepreneurship.

And innovation isn't like inventing something. Innovation's taking things that exist and putting them together creatively in a new. way. So in a way, MTV was that. The music and television existed, and we put that together in a new way. I always made it a mandate with the people who worked for me that we were, we were off on the side of the road. We weren't a mainstream television operation, and we should be pushing down barriers and trying to do things that were totally novel and new. The perfect example would be the real world on MTV. It was really the first reality show. Some clap that would be really subtle or simple, but it would be always the holy grail at the company was always to try and break through and do something new. It could have been as easy as just, how about unplugged?

We had been listening to a decade of all this hard rock and heavy music. A new way to approach it might be, what if we take the electricity away and let the instruments be acoustic and let the artists speak more authentically? So little tweaks like that, you know, sometimes you're just one or two degrees off normal would be, you know, those would be big victories for us. We were doing things at low cost that no one else was doing. And I had a stable of people who worked for me who were really good at that, really good at that. Like we had no money in the beginning. So we couldn't do what NBC and ABC and CBS were doing at the beginning of the cable time. So we found out we could get all the NASA footage for,

free. So why not rip off man's greatest moment? Let's take the rocket ship blast and a landing on the moon and let's slap our logo on there. And, you know, that's sort of a rock and roll or reverend. I mean, it's iconic, you know, I mean, I loved it, you know. There was a lot of creative chaos. But in, and through the creative chaos, there was a lot of decision making. So what was one of the high risk decisions that you made that you think really turned out well for you? A high risk decision that we made was the birth of Comedy Central, which came about one day. I was in a staff meeting and someone said, HBO is launching a comedy channel. We didn't want HBO in our business, the basic cable business.

They said, well, if they're launching a comedy channel, let's say we're launching one too, even though we didn't have one. Let's put our hat in the ring and go head to head with them because if they're successful, And we didn't think their idea was that good. If they're successful, they're going to come after our music and kids networks next. So we built an asset, like in a five-minute meeting, the beginning of an asset that became worth billions of dollars and launched the careers of all kinds of comedians over time. Yeah, I mean, all of them are still with us, right? You know, whether it's Steve Pierre or Bill Maher started there, Jimmy Kimmel started there, John Stewart, Steve Colbert.

I could go on and on, you know, John Oliver. Yeah, it's a pretty amazing list. I mean, second only to Lauren Michaels in the SNL stable, I would say. Yeah, no kidding. No, listen, I've been on. I've been picked on by those people, Fresden, over my life. I've read. No, I mean, you, you blazed brightly there.

I've read, I've read mean tweets on Kimmel's show. I owe you for all of that mudraking. Okay, but. You wear it well. Let's say so. You're going to be able to laugh at yourself first, right, Tom? But let's go to mistake. That's a big decision, big risk works out.

What about a big one? You're like, wow, that really didn't go in the direction I thought it was going. Well, one thing was just some ideas you didn't do. Like one guy, this guy, Bob Frazzan who used to run electric records, he was like a wild record man with great taste and instincts. We had a lot of fun with him. He would always give us something unusual. He called me up one day, says, I got to come and see.

I have this guy, Emerald Lagasse, with me. I got a big idea. He came into my office. He said, look, chefs are going to be the rock stars of the 90s. You need to do a food channel. I'm telling you, that's what's coming. And, you know, Emerald's just the tip of the iceberg. And Bob happened to be a gourmet and was really, which I'm not.

And I got to admit, I didn't see it. I didn't throw him out of my office and everything. But, I mean, when he left, I just scratched my head. I go, well, that was kind of a line of bullshit. I mean, who would believe that you can make a food channel? Meanwhile, that turns out to be a multi-billion dollar business, low cost. It would have been a perfect thing for us to do, but I didn't see it. I didn't see that.

We had a lot of failures in terms of shows we would create that didn't work, but since none of them were like, you know, making 22 episodes of something at a million dollars, an episode, they were kind of low-cost things. We just move them aside and keep going and do something new. So there was lots of failed program attempts. So I had a Wikipedia, you because I didn't believe it. Okay. Now, you may or may not remember as I met you 20 years ago as Sun Valley at the Allen

and Company conferences with West MoonVez and others, Bob Iger. And I had a goal. You're 80 years. You just turned 80 years old. God bless you. Okay. But you look about 20 years young. and you think about 30 years younger.

So what's the secret to that? Okay, and I'm going to be taking notes. So speak slowly so I can get all in, Preston. Well, you know, one is genetics, because if you have good genetics, you'll have hair. Right. Well, you and I have that in common. You're doing good on that score. Yeah, God left the perfect heads bald.

You and I have to suffer with foreheads of hair. When people turn, you know, once people turn 60, they seem to age at very different rates. so you never really know. But I try and stay in shape. One of the things that's been helpful to me, most of my career, I work with young people. So I'm always around young people. I seem to always be the oldest guy around.

I forget how old anyone else is. I mean, I just think everyone's sort of my peer. So I love the energy of working with older people. I'm not hanging around with people who are talking about medical procedures all the time. I work out five, six times a week, and I try and eat right and do all those things. and I'm paranoid about getting sick and fading away.

But I never really think of my age, except when a landmark birthday comes around like the one I just had. And I'm saying, wow, man, 80. That doesn't like roll off the tongue really easily. But I'm thankful, and I would ascribe a lot of it to my genetics, although my parents both died rather young. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, I try and think young.

I'm still curious. I'm still engaged in the popular culture, not like I used to be, but I, you know, I can spend a lot of time on YouTube going down rabbit holes and amusing myself. Well, you know, listen, I learned a lot from the book about risk taking and being curious and you may have missed the food channel, but you got so much right. And you were able to keep it together. And I think you taught us something about leadership, Tom. you know, where I got from the book that you're a servant leader, you know, that you really tried to put people in place, let them do their creative things. You were there to enable them and to buffer them. And if they made a mistake, you were there to run interference for them.

I felt like you had a lot of people underneath you that really benefited from your leadership, your willingness to take risk and also deal with the aftermath of risk taking because sometimes things don't work out. Yeah. Well, you really have. have to celebrate risk, but also, you know, you have to understand that failure is going to come here. One of the key management things I had that I did was to always put a creative person on top of one of these networks. Each network had its own P&L, so to speak. They had a goal, but I were, by putting a creative person there, most television networks would have, you know, a business guy, a sales running things. But I thought if we had a creative person there, it would send a signal to

the employees and to the company that creativity and risk taking was our primary aptitude. It's very clear. I mean, that also, I mean, you resisted the over-institutionalization of these products. You didn't have too many suits around to block that creative process. I give you a lot of credit for that. Living your life on your own terms, though, too, no? I feel like that was a big part of your life. You know, I know you've got lots of chapters ago, but I feel that was up until now. I think you've lived your life on your own terms. But always through your time is the most precious resource. And why do I want to waste time doing something I didn't really love

or work with people I didn't really want? I mean, I've obviously done that. I've had every menial job imaginable. But I thought, you know, I like to, it's a lot more fun if you're doing something that you love with people you like. You stay young. You stay young if that's the case. All right.

So we're down to the five words. And so if you've listened to our podcast before, my producer and I, we come up with five words from your book. It's sort of a raw shot test, if you will. I'm going to say the word, and you can give me a sentence or two of what comes to mind. Okay, you're ready? I'm ready. All right.

I say the word music. You say what? Music's the greatest unifier in the world. It operates below language. It links up people. It operates, you know, puts people in sync with each other. And it's highly, highly enjoyable entertainment form. To me, when I hear the word music, I think a heartbeat, I feel this is indispensable to us as our

hearts beating, Tom. When you go to a concert, you know, your heart is beating in synchronicity with everybody else there. Yeah. You don't get that. Yeah. That's a great example of it. Okay, I'm going to say the word culture, Tom. What do you say? Culture can be a competitive advantage in business. If you have a culture where the values are imbued and the people in that company represent the culture, which to us was all friendly, fun, risk-taking, smart, meet your numbers. I mean, we had an informal risk-taking culture. We were populated by people who didn't want to work in regular companies.

They were all a bit of regular. We had the worst-looking group, worst-dress group of people going in and out of any Manhattan office building. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. You know, I spent the early part of my career at Goldman. and one of the partners there, one of the old school ex-World War II veterans, he said, hey, we all got the same desks and phones and the same pencils. But what's going to separate us is our culture from other people.

And I think it's a really good statement about business and competitive advantages. I said the word creativity. You think of what? Doing something different, doing something in a new way, even if it's a slightly new way, creative something that wasn't there before. using your working with your wits. I bet the word Viacom. Well, Viacom was, uh, been pronounced two different ways.

Viacom and then it was Viacom and Sumner took it over. But Viacom was like a large media conglomerate, which is seeing better days and hopefully he's going to be on the rebound under the new Paramount logo. But Viacom never be, the word Viacom to me was always subservient to like the pieces underneath it. It never really knitted together as something, and maybe that's the best way it should have been. It was like a holding company for a conglomeration of media assets. That's a good train to look at it.

All right, I'm going to give you the last word, but this is the last word, and it's three letters, MTV. An iconic youth brand that came up in the 1980s and sort of had a heyday in the 80s and 90s and the early 2000s. It was a centerpiece for the youth culture. And it was about music and all the things that music infected or impacted movies, fashion, and so forth. It was sort of a town crier for a, you know, it was a must get. And the era of MTV, you know, it's sort of been decimated like a lot of these linear networks by the advent of digital. and its challenge now is to figure out a way to come back as an iconic brand in a new digital format. That's what Paramount is facing.

So will it come back in a new digital format? It could. You know, they have a lot of assets. They have a brand that's worth something they could start by sewing music television back on the bottom of the logo. It had been trained of all the music fans who worked there and replaced by a lot of more traditional Hollywood people who wanted to make shows. So they weren't about music anymore. Music is a huge category.

People consume tons and tons of music. It's hard to think that with a library like what they have, like with the brand that they have, and, you know, 20, 30 years worth of music news, that they couldn't form some kind of curative scheme that would work in this digital environment. And I keep saying, you know, met with David Ellison and Jeff Schell. And they want to, what would you do?

I said, you know, I get like 20, 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds, put them in a room and come up with something. Let them come up with something that makes sense. There's an appetite for music curation. People get a bit tired of the algorithmic feeds that they deal with. I don't think MTV is ever going to be able to have the kind of force in the cultures that had once before when life was easier and media was in. fragmented, but it could carve out a corner where it could be a place for music conversation, music discovery, and fun. And, you know, not just a bunch of reality shows that they run the

video music awards once a year. They put, they put no money into this thing for the long, I don't know, 10, 20 years. I hope it comes back, Tom. You know, listen, the title of the book is unplugged, Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu by the legendary Tom Fress. And thank you so much for joining us at Open Book today. What a great discussion and I look forward to the next chapter in your life, Tom. It's going to be very exciting. I really enjoyed this, Anthony. Good, good questions. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers

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