I Want My MTV (11 page)

 

TOM FRESTON:
Our success was so ephemeral. We were selling records in some store in Des Moines? Who gives a shit? Where's the fucking money?

 

BOB PITTMAN:
We expected to lose about $10 million on MTV before we turned it around, but we probably lost closer to $50 million.

 

TOM FRESTON:
The advertisers didn't want to buy time on a cable network. They figured, the best we would get was a 1.0 rating. And a 1.0 rating didn't matter. The three networks were bringing in 20–30 rating points on shows. Nowadays, you have 150 networks that do less than a point, and they're all making a fortune.

 

JORDAN ROST:
It wasn't as profitable for ad agencies to buy small ratings on cable channels, when they could buy a 25 rating on NBC. Buying ads on cable TV was actually more work and less money for the media buyers, so it wasn't in their self-interest to help us.

 

JOHN LACK:
Advertisers weren't buying into the idea. Bob McGroarty, who was head of distribution, said, “Procter & Gamble and Coke won't sign on to this.” I'd heard that CNN wanted to launch another news network, but they needed to buy a satellite transponder. Luckily, we had an extra one. I thought we could trade them a transponder for the rights to sell CNN ad time. If we sold CNN and MTV in combination, advertisers would have to buy from us.

Ted Turner, who owned CNN, said, “I want to meet Lack face-to-face before I do this deal.” Bob McGroarty and I met him at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Ted said, “Johnny, let's go upstairs. I want to smoke a peace pipe with you. I want to look in your eyes.” He's out of his mind, Ted Turner.

We went upstairs to a vacant ballroom. He said, “I want a transponder from you. I know you guys are good salespeople. You can sell our ad time for a year. If it works, you can keep selling it for us.”

He said, “Do you get high?” Turner always had good weed. He pulled a corncob pipe out of his pocket, lit the thing, took a puff, and put it in my mouth. He said, “Let me see the whites of your eyes, big boy.” I smoked. He said, “We're in business.” We walked out and I said to McGroarty, “We've got to tell Jack Schneider how the meeting went. You call him. I think I'm a little too high.”

 

RONALD “BUZZ” BRINDLE:
At that point, cable wasn't set up like it is now. I mean, you would go to your hardware store and sign up for cable.

 

JUDY McGRATH:
I was writing for
Glamour
magazine when I took a job writing on-air promotions at MTV. My boss said, “You're out of your mind. This cable thing will never last.” Saying you were going to work in cable television was like saying you were going to work for your uncle's carpet business.

 

TOM FRESTON:
We thought MTV was irresistible. We thought we were so fucking smart. But our optimism was chipped away by this cascade of rejection from cable operators. Back then, the cable operator was a monopolist: there was no direct home satellite, there was no Internet, so they controlled the geographic area.

 

JOHN LACK:
The biggest cable operator was TCI in Denver. I can't even get their CEO, John Malone, on the telephone. I finally go to his boss, Bob Magness, who was the founder and chairman. Magness is a nice guy and he deigns to see me. I fly to Denver. I said, “Bob, will you please convince John to let me talk to him?” He goes, “Come on, he's in the next office.” We go in to see Malone, who is kind of pissed I went over his head. Malone says, “I told you we're not interested.” Bob says, “Will you just listen to his presentation?”

I show him the clips, I tell him what's in it for TCI. He says, “This is sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. We're in little markets all over America. We can't put this stuff on the air.” I tell him, “Look, you're gonna get new cable subscribers. These kids are gonna demand it. This is gonna be a sea change for you in basic cable. HBO is the only place you're making money.” He literally leads me to the door and throws me out.

 

JACK SCHNEIDER:
John Malone would only consider carrying MTV when I went to see him. I had to humble myself, which was really difficult for me. I'd had a much more influential career in broadcasting than he could ever dream of, so it was very annoying to me to have to go and explain to various cable operators what we were doing. The goddamn pole-climbers didn't get it. They didn't understand that I was offering them a demographic that was going to sell cable connections for them. But we all did what we had to do to get this off the ground. Not just MTV, but the whole segment of advertiser-supported cable. Because without distribution there was no business.

 

JORDAN ROST:
The guy who ran Manhattan Cable, said, “Who the hell cares about you? Who's gonna watch?” He had the most important cable TV system in the country. John and Bob McGroarty and Jack Schneider had been involved in sales at CBS, and they were tough negotiators. But it was a different environment with cable operators. The last thing other networks wanted to do was alienate a cable operator they were pitching. But Warner Amex was getting a little arrogant with them.

 

BOB PITTMAN:
We needed to find a way to get the cable operators to carry us. They were reluctant, because MTV was sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Ad sales wasn't working, affiliate sales wasn't working. In the first year, we sold only $500,000 of advertising. Coca-Cola didn't think it was a “family environment.” The only thing we had going was the consumer liked the product, when they could see it.

I hired Dale Pon, who had worked as the promotion director with me at WNBC radio. Dale had formed an ad agency with George Lois.

 

FRED SEIBERT:
Dale had a reputation as an out-of-control maniac. He was a hothead. And George was also known as a raving lunatic, but he was a famous raving lunatic.

 

DALE PON, advertising executive:
I wanted the MTV account. I thought the idea was huge.

TOM FRESTON:
Fred Seibert is a genius. Dale Pon was a genius, too, but he was difficult. He had no interpersonal skills. If you disagreed with him, he thought you were a fucking asshole.

 

DALE PON:
If you're an ad man, you have two jobs: You make 'em rich, and you make 'em famous. No one knew what MTV was. The idea was to acquaint the world with MTV in thirty seconds or less. In any ad campaign, what's central is to convey the essential nature of the product immediately. What was the nature of MTV? For me it was insatiable desire, the Rolling Stones lyric, “I can't get no satisfaction.” That's the very nature of Americans: We want what we don't have. One of the characteristics of American consumers in the early '80s was
Shop till you drop
. “I want it. I don't know what it is, but I want it.”

 

FRED SEIBERT:
Dale hired a woman who'd been his girlfriend for many years, an unbelievable copywriter named Nancy Podbielniak. They wrote a tagline, “Cable Brats,” and a sub-tag: “Rock n' roll wasn't enough for them, now they want their MTV. The exploding twenty-four-hour video music cable network in stereo.” George Lois would tell you it was his phrase, but George claims credit for everything, including the MTV logo. I love George, but he's an absolute liar.

 

DALE PON:
We ran that ad in trade magazines for a few months, but MTV didn't like the campaign. Whenever they walked in to see a cable operator, he would say, “Here come the cable brats.” So we gave it a twist, and it became “I Want My MTV.” That was our slogan.

 

FRED SEIBERT:
In 1956, an animator named John Hubley had come up with an ad campaign for a cereal, in which his four-year-old son, as the voice of a cartoon cowboy, says, “I want my Maypo!” About ten years later, Maypo comes to George Lois's agency and gives him the account. And George, who, like a lot of great creative people, only had a few really good ideas in his pocket, takes the sports stars he'd used in other campaigns and has them sit in front of a bowl of Maypo with a spoon, crying like a kid: “I want my Maypo!”

So we go to a presentation and George shows us pictures of Mick Jagger with a tear coming down his face, going, “I want my MTV.” I was so pissed. I said to Dale, “This is what I get? The third version of an ad from thirty years ago? We're gonna have rock stars crying?” And Dale says, “I'm not gonna ask Mick Jagger to cry. That's stupid. But it's a really good idea. Trust me on this.”

LES GARLAND:
I love George Lois. He
is Mad Men
, a real renegade. George starts off with a little Q&A: “Pittman, who owns MTV?”
Uh, WASEC
. “Wrong. Garland, who owns MTV?” He has everybody engaged now. He says, “They do, the kids do, it's
theirs
. They have a sense of ownership. It belongs to them. A young guy has MTV, all the kids on the block come over to watch it.” And it was true, I'd seen it happen.

George says, “Garland, can you get Mick Jagger”—the biggest star in the world—“Can you get Mick Jagger to say, ‘I want my MTV'?” Mick had been a friend of mine when I worked at Atlantic Records, and lived across the street from me on the Upper West Side. My assistant Joan Myers had worked for the Rolling Stones, and I buzzed her and said, “Find out where the Stones are.” And that happened to be Paris.

 

DALE PON:
If you're asking who said we needed to get rock stars in this campaign, that was me. The “I” in “I want my MTV” was always someone who nobody could doubt loved rock n' roll. So when you see a rock star say, “I want my MTV,” they are giving you an example of how to express yourself.

 

JOAN MYERS, MTV staff:
I was Les's secretary. I was serving Bob and Les coffee in Garland's office, and one of them said, “How do we get to the Stones?” I'd worked with them, so I made a phone call, and they agreed. Garland and I flew to Paris. While he was out having fun, I sat in a hotel room waiting for Mick to call and tell us he was ready.

 

BOB PITTMAN:
Les Garland talked Mick Jagger into doing the “I Want My MTV” campaign. He went and sat in Paris for days, waiting for Mick.

 

LES GARLAND:
Joan and I flew to France, along with Dale Pon. I had two days to spare when we got there. I'd been working hard, and I went out rocking. And got lost for a day and a half. I met some women, and I had a pretty good time. Joan was freaked out. She had the police looking for me. I finally come rolling in, and she says, “Where the fuck have you been?”

I get my meeting with Mick. “Okay, Garland, tell me what you want.” I go, “I'd like to convince you to go on camera to help us with a new ad campaign, and all I need you to say is, ‘I want my MTV.'” And he goes, “You want me to do a commercial?” I go, “It's really more of an endorsement. It's an endorsement for a new phenomenon called music videos.” He says, “Yeah, that's a commercial. The Rolling Stones don't do commercials.”

I go, “Well, that's not really true. I was at Atlantic when Jovan sponsored your tour.” “Well, we got paid a lot of money for that.” I said, “So what you're saying is, you do commercials for money.” And that got a little laugh. I said, “Mick, we don't have any money. But if this is about money, I'll give you a dollar.” And I threw a dollar on the table. He looked up and he said, “I like you, Garland. I'll do it.” We shot it the next day. And it blew everybody's mind. From there we called Pat Benatar: “Mick Jagger's in.” David Bowie: “Mick Jagger's in.” We used Mick to get the cooperation of everyone else.

 

JACK SCHNEIDER:
Jagger saying “I want my MTV”—I don't think we ever thanked him enough. It legitimized us. People called their cable companies and said to the poor operators, in these lousy imitations of Mick Jagger, “I want my MTV.”

 

JOHN SYKES:
I had a very thin connection to Pete Townshend's manager, Bill Curtis, through a friend, so I took the red-eye to London. I went straight to see Bill, and they said, “He's not here.” So I waited and waited, and all of a sudden, Pete walks in. I said, “Hi, Pete, uh, I'm John Sykes with MTV, it's a new channel that plays videos. Would you do, um, would you do a, a, a commercial for us like you do when you visit a radio station?” He goes, “Okay, I'll do that. When do you want to do it?” I go, “Now? We rented a garage across the street.” Six months later, the Who came to our studio to do an interview. Pete saw me and said, “I know you. You're the guy who stuck a carrot up my ass.”

 

ADAM ANT, artist:
I didn't know anything about the network, because video didn't exist, really. I turned up at a studio somewhere and did it. They said Pete Townshend had done it, and Jagger had done it, so I thought,
If it's good enough for them
. . .

 

BILLY IDOL, artist:
It made sense for me to help promote MTV because, in a sense, I was promoting myself.

 

PAT BENATAR:
Back then, it was completely taboo to promote any kind of product, so I had a little bit of hesitation. But MTV always had promotional campaigns, and whatever they asked, people did. It was good for you and it was good for them.

 

JOHN SYKES:
I went somewhere to do the Police, and Les did Bowie in Gstaad, Switzerland, where Bowie skied right up to the camera. I think Gale got Cyndi Lauper, and somebody got Pat Benatar. The campaign exploded. The cable phones rang like crazy, and we began to get added to different systems.