Carol Massar

I thought you were going to start with Beavis and Butthead.

Well, speaking of those deals, the fate of Warner Brothers Discovery.

David Zaslav mentioned in your book a few times.

Do you have a view on whether that company should go to Netflix or Paramount Skydance?

What about, you know, a lot of your book goes into your relationship with Sumner Redstone.

We're going to get to some of that in a minute.

What do you think he would think about today with what's going on at Paramount Skydance?

You describe him as being just so obsessed with the company stock price and always trying to buy more shares.

You describe him as always being on the phone with his stockbroker at the time because that's how it worked at the time.

What do you think he would think of what's happening at Paramount Skydance?

We're speaking with Tom Freston.

He's the author of Unplugged, Adventures from MTV to Timbuk2.

He's a co-founder of MTV.

Tom, on that, I was surprised when I was reading the book,

As like an elder millennial, I grew up with MTV, so it totally, everything you wrote about made a lot of sense.

I remember all the shows that launched on MTV and on Comedy Central too.

You mentioned though a few minutes ago, this kind of common refrain that we had about MTV, even in the 90s, which is, it doesn't show music videos anymore.

What I was surprised to find was how strategic of a decision and how important of a decision that was and what you found sort of early on in showing one music video after another and why that didn't necessarily keep viewers for extended periods of time.

Explain how that transformation started and why it did become a place that wasn't just music videos.

Tom, you know, you're known for creators at MTV, but I do want to talk a little bit about Comedy Central, too.