I mean, it's sort of exciting, isn't it? Breaking the rules. | | | | The genius that was the ever-changing MTV logo. A brand that was never nostalgic and never felt shame about.
(Viacom) | | | | |  | “I mean, it's sort of exciting, isn't it? Breaking the rules.”
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| | rantnrave:// I wanted to be in the media business because my grandparents bought me 5 shares of WARNER COMMUNICATIONS. My idol at the time wasn't THE YANKEES' REGGIE JACKSON, but rather Warner CEO STEVEN J. ROSS. Warner's joint venture with AMERICAN EXPRESS invested in MTV. And that's the first time I heard the name. When I was 28 years old I sold my first startup to MTV NETWORKS, a division of VIACOM. I wanted to work at MTV since I was 12 years old. MTV, the channel, was mesmerizing. No one had seen anything like it. From their irreverent voice. Their innovative on-air look. They were the coolspotters. The trend magnifiers. Before TWITTER, YOUTUBE, INSTAGRAM, and SPOTIFY. MTV put artists right in your living room. You could see them. It wasn't the radio (though I listened to WLIR simultaneously). They were the conduit for the connection. From the jump, they had tons of musicians angling to get on as seen in the famous “I Want My MTV” campaigns. Some great, some one-hit wonders. Important to note they fumbled with black artists early-on. The on-air promos were groundbreaking. The logo designs were the s***. OG employee FRED SEIBERT used to say “our consistency is our inconsistency.” They had the coolest contests and award shows. It launched at 12:01 a.m. EDT on August 1, 1981. I watched into my teens, MTV introduced me to music. To politics. To culture. To diversity. To a world beyond my shores. And the new-jack execs that helped to build it became as well-known to me as any famous athlete or rock star. BOB PITTMAN (a REDEF investor), TOM FRESTON, JUDY MCGRATH, JOHN SYKES, and so many others. And when I finally ended up there, they became my bosses. Later my colleagues. And now my friends for life. We still text each other almost every day with some pop culture nugget craziness or the song we're currently listening to. I’m the baby of the bunch, so I love the stories. Well, Pittman runs IHEART RADIO now. And as modern media would have it he hosts an excellent podcast called “MATH & MAGIC: STORIES FROM THE FRONTIERS OF MARKETING”. "How do the smartest marketers cut through the noise? And how do they manage to do it again and again? Pittman analyzes the Math and Magic of marketing—sitting down with today's most gifted disruptors." He’s smart. He’s well prepared. He knows how to extract a good story. Especially the ones from his former partners in crime. All of them a little f***ing nuts. In the greatest ways. Some of the best episodes are with those executives from the early days. These are the birth stories. Because when they started at MTV they had no money. They had no idea what they were doing. They knew they were right and the true north. But everyone counted them out and thought they were crazy. They outsmarted the incumbents. They disrupted broadcast TV. Broke every rule. They made lots of "wrong" decisions that were right. It was a GEORGE CONSTANZA-like "Opposite" strategy. Sound familiar? Today that’s called a startup. Naiveté can be a strategic advantage. Nowadays, some think it's all about platforms. Back then, brands were navigators. Tom Freston: “I never wanted to be a mainstream businessman. I still don’t.” John Sykes had the gift of “making everyone want to be at the party.” Judy McGrath: “I didn’t know anything about TV; I didn’t even like it!” Current VIACOM employees would benefit by listening because the ethos should be exactly the same as day 1. Start with these. But some other great ones: My pal, music and marketing guru STEVE STOUTE. CEO of NPR, JARL MOHN. And many others. There is so much information today that few look back at the past. None of these executives live in the past, but their stories and learnings can help any entrepreneur or executive with their future. Especially the young ones. The lessons are timeless. Great stories from the best raconteurs in the biz. I can't wait to sit down and tell my stories as well. I look to the future, but I did love those days. When JOHN MAYER sings "it's a bittersweet feeling hearing 'Wrapped Around Your Finger' on the radio" I think of MTV... Happy Birthday to MATHEW INGRAM and SORAYA DARABI. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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 | NPR |
| In 2004, German programmer Tobias Lütke was living in Ottawa with his girlfriend. An avid snowboarder, he wanted to launch an online snowboard shop, but found the e-commerce software available at the time to be clunky and expensive. So he decided to write his own e-commerce software. | | |
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 | Benedict Evans |
| Way back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the tech industry created a transformative new technology that gave governments and corporations an unprecedented ability to track, analyse and understand all of us. Relational databases meant that for the first time things that had always been theoretically possible on a small scale became practically possible on a massive scale. | | |
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 | POLITICO Magazine |
| More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world. | | |
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 | Vox |
| How much would you pay to watch Apple’s original TV shows? | | |
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 | Variety |
| Gunpowder & Sky co-founders Van Toffler and Floris Bauer knew that the entertainment landscape was shifting under their feet. Younger consumers were cutting the cable cord in favor of streaming services or YouTube shows, and they were going to fewer movies in the theaters. Both men had substantial experience navigating traditional media companies. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| September 9 at 11:19 AM Heather Waldron and John Hawley are losing their four-bedroom house in the hills above Blacksburg, Va. A teenage daughter, one of their five children, sold her clothes for spending money. They worried about paying the electric bill. Financial disaster, they say, contributed to their divorce, finalized in April. | | |
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 | REDEF |
| Over the past century, technological advancements have massively reduced the cost and time needed to create and circulate content. Though this has liberated artists, consumers are now drowning in a virtually infinite supply of things to watch, listen to and read. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Dawn Ostroff, Spotify's chief content officer, says she plans on making hundreds of original podcast series next year as part of a strategy to expand the streaming platform's podcast offerings. The company aims to have 20% of the listening on its service be non-music. | | |
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 | Bloomberg Opinion |
| Old people don’t like small ones, and young people may never get to experience big ones. | | |
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| REDEF |
| Did you know: Booger's belch in "Revenge of the Nerds" involved an overdub of a camel orgasm. "Eyes Wide Shut” holds the Guinness world record for longest consecutive movie shoot—400 days. The swamp where Kermit sings "The Rainbow Connection" was the old "Gilligan's Island" lagoon. What else didn't you know from your favorite films? | | |
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 | ABC News |
| A Florida boy who was bullied and laughed at for his homemade T-shirt representing the University of Tennessee Volunteers at his elementary school's college colors day has not only had his design made official by the university - but the demand for the product is so high that it crashed the school's website. | | |
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 | Narratively |
| After leaving the Children of God, I was so proud to join the Army. But then I had to ask myself: Was I trading one culture of blind obedience for another? | | |
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 | Medium |
| The disruption theme is probably overblown. In the end, it’s really just…television. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| They attract money and attention to the predominantly white universities that showcase them, while HBCUs struggle. What would happen if they collectively decided to go to black schools? | | |
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 | WIRED |
| After the death of Zoë Quinn's alleged abuser, the trolls have escalated their racket, raising the question of whose mental health society tries to protect. The videogames industry is having its #MeToo moment, and the backlash against it has been fast and brutal. | | |
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 | Kotaku |
| Everybody at the strip was convinced that Caleb had stolen the cash. We were leaned back in uncomfortable metal chairs that left dents in our legs, sitting around a table littered with menthol cigarette butts. "The strip" was a strip mall, sterile and unexceptional, home to a Starbucks, a Cold Stone, a Chipotle, a GameStop. | | |
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 | Digiday |
| Sports publishers and sports gambling platforms are wagering that connecting the two sides will lead to a big payoff. | | |
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 | Rock and Ice |
| What it's like to write them in our climbing world. | | |
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 | Björn Jeffery |
| As a part of Techfestival 2019 in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was asked to present my thoughts on kids, screens, and technology. In order to get the nuances right, I wrote a speech. | | |
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 | Eater |
| Why doesn’t the coursework at traditional culinary schools reflect the diverse cooking happening in today’s restaurants? | | |
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 | Complex |
| Increasingly, data is being used to discover potential breakout songs, help advance artists’ careers, and even to determine the sound of the music itself. | | |
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 | Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech |
| But the public is less accepting of facial recognition technology when used by advertisers or technology companies. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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| © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group |
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