Tom Freston
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What early experiences shaped Tom Freston's outlook before moving to New York?
Tetragrammaton.
When I was in college, this guy told me, you know, you'll go to Lake George and work there for the summer. Don't go home. Stay in a resort town. I was a bellhop first. And it was like uh the bellhop where all these gamblers from the Saratoga track would stay. They were big tippers. But I met these guys who came from Aspen. They would be in Aspen in the winter, and they were what they called on the circuit. They would work In resort towns. They were bartenders, or they became weed smugglers, or they became just free spirits. I learned from these guys and watching them that they didn't have a career path. Their career path was not to have a path at all. To improvise your life, experience would count more than anything else.
And I learned more there, probably, than anything I did in college. And I decided it would be a lot more interesting to live my life sort of on the side of the road than going down the middle and take some years off and try to mass experiences. At the same time I was consumed with the beat literature. So That was all about the journey is the destination kind of stuff.
On the road.
And I was on the road and I went on the road. I mean, when I got out of I went to graduate school to beat the draft 'cause I was an early baby boomer. I was born on November twenty second, I turned eighteen the day of the Kennedy assassination. That's like the day people thought the sixties started. So I was kinda going into adulthood then. What do you remember about that moment? I was a freshman in college. I remember coming out of this class, like around one thirty or something. I was in Vermont. And you heard the news and you were just like, What? You know, we hadn't had assassinations before. Did it seem impossible? Seemed impossible. And then you don't want to go watch the television. Well, the only television was in a four story dormitory.
There's one black and white TV. So that's where you spent the next three days watching this whole thing unfold. But people would say that that's when the sixties began. The whole country went into this profound depression. Which was sort of awoken from with the arrival of the Beatles the following February. Yeah. Which was a national salvation. Wow, people are happy. Things could be good again. And they brought the country kind of out of this sort of depressive state. And then we were off into the sixties. I decided early on I would wanna like not have a mainstream life. I wanted to have a life of adventure and experience. And largely that's what I've been able to do, doing different things. It's
amazing. You think the guys who lived that life, were they all inspired by the Beatniks?
No, I don't think so. They were they were inspired m first of all, they were all kind of ski freaks, so they loved to ski. So they loved an aspen. An aspen in that era was because I w I I would when I got out of school I would I would work there. I remember I was a dishwasher and I had all these menial jobs when I got out of graduate school. But they they weren't inspired so m they weren't like readers.
Yeah.
They were like Tours, they were chasing girls. Having fun. So
they would be like ski bums, which later became surf bums.
Ski bums, surf bums, beach bums. They were bums. Yeah. But then, you know, they were they were they
were after something.
Yeah. They were after and they'd like to make money without having to work in a straight job. And those days having a straight job was sort of to this crowd, that was like arsenic, man. That's the last thing you want to do is give your life up but work for somebody else on some conveyor belt.
Yeah.
Life seems a lot more interesting not doing that. So and then I moved to New York City in nineteen sixty seven. So I was sort of in the cradle of the c of the of the birth of the counter culture in a way. So
Describe New York City, you arrive in sixty seven, what do you see?
I see dog shit all over the sidewalks. That was the first thing that struck me 'cause we didn't have that pickup law yet and that just seems God is a Fucking thousands of dogs shitting on the sidewalk every day, nobody's picking it up.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What early experiences shaped Tom Freston's outlook before moving to New York?
0:02–12:22
2
How did Tom describe life and the creative scene in 1960s New York City?
12:22–23:54
3
What lessons did Tom learn at business school and from Peter Drucker?
23:54–52:42
4
Why did Steve Ross sell MTV to Viacom and how did the early leadership respond?
52:42–1:02:47
5
How did Sumner Redstone’s takeover reshape Viacom and MTV’s growth strategy?
1:02:47–1:14:56
6
What inspired the creation of MTV’s Unplugged series and its early episodes?
1:14:56–1:31:29
7
How did MTV develop its VJ format and early creative branding choices?
1:31:29–1:45:17