#mtv networks

[retrocgads]

USA 1997

[mfi-miami]

MTV Is Shutting Down: Paramount Global Kills The Video Star!

MTV Is Shutting Down: Paramount Global Kills The Video Star  Paramount Global announced MTV is shutting down. After more than 40 years of influencing music culture, MTV networks are to sign off on December 31, 2025. Paramount Global made the announcement on earlier this week. The channels being shut down are MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. MTV was the place for GenXers to…

MTV Is Shutting Down: Paramount Global Kills The Video Star!

[90s-2000s-barbie]

[fredseibertdotcom]

 Fearless. Three stories. 

Bob Pittman was my boss (I wrote about Bob as one of my mentors here), the one who gave me a lifetime career in television, when I was positive I was going to be a record producer. Like great bosses can sometimes do, he drove me nuts on more than one occasion (God knows how many times I annoyed him!), but more often than not gave me the rope to hang myself (thanks Bob!). But over the years I watched him succeed over and over and I finally have had enough distance to see...

...that Bob is fearless. A fearless competitor, fearless leader, fearless mentor, probably a fearless flyer. It’s one of the many qualities of Bob’s that’s brought him from radio and MTV to the heights of media.

I had a first hand look on this numerous times, with Bob as a boss, then a client, and finally as a friend. Here are three stories that not only have stuck with me for the past 40 years but have affected my own behavior, but personal and professional ever since.

1.

Very early on at MTV Networks, we had a management offsite meeting in Montauk. I’m not much of a joiner and not a drinker, but one night I found myself in a packed car of party co-workers; seven folks in a car meant for five. I was stuffed in the back with Bob and someone sprawled across our laps. 

You have to know how isolated Montauk is, and at night there are no streetlights, and here we were barreling through the darkest of roads. Suddenly, Bob leaned forward and put his hands over the driver’s eyes.

“We did this all the time at home in Mississippi. No one ever got hurt!”

I wasn’t so sure his luck was going to hold.

The woman on my lap leaned in close and said, “That’s what I like about Bob. He’s fearless.”

.....

2.

Bob was 25, I was 27, he was my boss as the head programmer at The Movie Channel, a start up, early cable channel owned by Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment (WASEC), a joint venture between two huge corporations, Warner Communications and American Express. Every expense was heavily scrutinized for efficiency and effectiveness, and my first production assistant was brought on as a freelancer only. He was creative, smart and funny, if a little disorganized.

A few months in he up and quit. “I’ve got an eye disease, I’ll be legally blind in a few months. I’m going to go live with my parents and I’ve sold my comics.” He’d been collecting since he was in grade school.

It came out that his vision was kind of like being underwater with eyes open and the degeneration would stop at a certain point. Reading was possible but only with a machine that could take books and papers and blow the type up by several inches. Insurance would pay for it, but he was a freelancer with no coverage.

“Well, I’m not going to let you quit. Your problem isn’t your vision, you’re just a little messy and undisciplined. Let's see what I can do.”

Back in the day, corporate health insurance wasn’t as computerized and organized –or quite as necessary– as it is now and maybe I could pull a weasel move and back date him as an employee for health coverage and get him his machine. I didn’t know Bob all that well, we’d met through my first media mentor, but he seemed like a real corporate type –at least compared to me– and he’d have to clear it.

I held my breath and launched into the PA’s issue.

“It’s simple, backdate his employment, get him insurance.”

The PA stayed, got his gizmo, and legally blind or not went on to become the company’s worldwide creative director for sister channel Nickelodeon.

Bob wasn’t a corporate weasel after all, he was a fearless warrior for his people.

Bob in MTV days, with a frame from Silver Cloud Productions’ “Dot to Dot”

.....

3.

A month into my gig at The Movie Channel, Bob announced The Music Channel and asked me to lead the creative efforts of the channel-to-be. He had a clear vision of a format that would be, exclusively, music videos 24 hours a day, interrupted occasionally by “VJs.”

“So,” I asked Bob, “what else will be in the clock? Jingles, like Top 40 radio?” I hoped not, but I couldn’t really picture anything else.

“No! Are you kidding? NO!!! We’ll do animated logos.” Remember, we didn’t have a name no less a logo.

He could tell I was a little confused. “What?”

“Imagine this.” He was already sounded triumphant. “There’s an animated cow grazing around. All of sudden! An axe comes of of nowhere and cuts off its head. The head falls to the ground, veins spurting blood. The cow vomits! And in the vomit is our logo!!!”

Wow, I thought. Bob will let me do whatever I want!

Bob’s creative fearlessness was the beginning of a change in television that would reverberate for decades.

By the way, we’d never produce the vomiting cow, but...

"Bessie the Cow" by Tom Pomposello from fredseibert on Vimeo.

[raccoonfootproductions]

Bob Bakish told investors he has plans to roll out a direct-to-consumer product that leverages around 10,000 hours of library content.

This new CEO is officially smarter than the last one.

Viacom’s been needing to hop on the streaming train for years. Television viewership has been getting lower each year, so they can’t possibly stay alive if that’s the only platform their programs are available on. They need to get with the times and make their content more accessible online in order to survive. Bakish knows this and pretty much says himself so in the article, which is refreshing to hear from the CEO of a company that’s been so infamously stubborn when it comes to going digital.

Let’s hope this service also ends up getting original shows from Viacom’s networks. There’s a lot they can do without the limits of TV.

[fredseibertdotcom]

Freddie, Rich & Al

My last year at Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (or WASEC, the original owner of MTV Networks, MTV and Nickelodeon) was spent running the corporate Creative Services department with my future partner Alan Goodman. It was a job to which I’d been “promoted” after running MTV, and it ended up being the dead end that prompted us to quit and start Fred/Alan, the world’s first agency that specialized in branding media.

All that being said, we had a great, creative year; among other things it was the period where we ran the advertising part of the business and supervised the creation of “I Want My MTV!” And it really took off when Alan suggested we hire one of his companions from CBS Records (now Sony Music, home of Columbia and Epic Records), art director Richard Frankel.  

We had a fun partnership, particularly with Manhattan Design, the original designers of the MTV logo. 

Anyhow. It was a great surprise one day when MD partner Pat Gorman delivered a few T-shirts with a parody of The Pep Boys: Manny, Moe & Jack.

[mateushonrado]

A year and seven months ago

Status Post #9663: Popular German music channel Viva bowed out after 25 years of broadcasting following parent company Viacom (now Viacom CBS) phasing out the channel in favour of Comedy Central Germany becoming a 24 hour channel.