Tom Freston

speaker

113 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 6 Feb

Tom Freston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.

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Look, we started, you know, we started the real world because we couldn't afford writers.

We just wanted to do a soap opera.

So in the end, we said, forget writers.

We were good at post-production.

Let's put seven or eight people in a loft and tape them and then make it into episodes.

That became this new low-cost form of programming.

And then we did celebrity reality show with the Osbournes over the first two real reality shows.

And it was very attractive to the networks as their business model began to deteriorate.

They could make shows that people wanted to see at a much lower price.

And yes, it led to like Naked and Afraid and The Bachelor and worst of all, or maybe best of all in some people's mind, The Apprentice.

It brought us the new president of the United States.

So I don't feel responsible necessarily for that, but there is a through line that when television programming became less scripted and more real,

Well, it's a reveal of mankind at its best and its worst.

I mean, it's true, everybody is their own individual broadcaster.

They can create content, share it, comment on other people's content, people comment on yours.

I mean, that's really been the social media revolution.

It's really been a whole new paradigm for media.

Yeah, it can be very disappointing at times to see what people do and come up with and what they say.

And, you know, that's a much larger issue owing to a larger discussion for which I don't know there's a solution.

But yes, all the guardrails and program standards and things that we used to enjoy and adhere to in the 80s and 90s, they've all vanished.

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