Tom Freston, Principal of Firefly3 and former CEO of Viacom, on his book, “Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu”
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One would expect a memoir from the co-founder of MTV to include quite a bit of sex drugs and rock and roll. Tom Freston's new book gives us that and quite a bit more. From hitchhiking through a pre-Taliban Afghanistan, using a drug smuggler to get clothes from Asia to New York City, tariff-free, to almost getting kidnapped in the Sahara Desert with Jimmy Buffett, to getting unceremoniously canned by Sumner Redstone, Tom Freston, Carol, he has seen a lot.
Yeah, he certainly has. He's co-founder of MTV, a co-founder and the former CEO of Viacom. He's also principal of the consulting and investment firm Firefly 3 and the author of a new book, which we want to talk to him about. It is entitled Unplugged Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu. It came out back in November. He joins us from California. Tom, so great to have you here with us. How are you?
I'm good, Carol. Hello to you. And hi, Tim. Nice to be here.
It's great to have you here, and there's so much we want to talk about. We do want to just start off with the media industry because it just feels like it's at a moment in time.
I thought you were going to start with Beavis and Butthead.
No, I'm not, but we'll get there. We'll get there and to so much more. I'm just thinking about what you witnessed at the beginning, the dawn of really the cable industry and the build-out of it. It's now being very much dismantled for a host of reasons. Some networks being sold for scraps. You know the headlines. How do you see this dismantling, Tom, continue to play out?
Well, I mean, we had during my era, the 80s and the 90s, so the early 2000s, sort of the cable TV revolution, which morphed into the digital revolution and streaming and all that, where people really... got to watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, on whatever device.
What insights does Tom Freston share about the evolution of the media landscape?
And now we're moving into the AI revolution. So the media industry is in a constant state of flux, always sort of, you know, influenced greatly by technology. And, you know, it's hard to say where it's going to go, but we're going to see more consolidation amongst the legacy media companies, that's for sure. There's a few deals in place right now, as you know.
Yeah.
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?
Yeah I think it's a better fit and you know you hate to see another movie studio sort of disappear in a form of consolidation and Warner Brothers is like the king of you know the most treasured studio of all but of the two alternatives I think the Netflix one is more interesting and bodes better for people in the business and bodes better for consumers. In the case of Paramount you really have two legacy companies Merging together, they talk about $9 billion worth of cost savings, and that means more people on the street. It's not that interesting of a combination as taking someone like Netflix, which is sort of a quasi-digital company, and marrying that with Warner Brothers seems to be a better fit, if you were to ask me, which you just did.
Yeah.
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.
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