Bob Pittman

25:12And in those days, AM was much bigger than FM. FM wasn't in that full penetration of cars, et cetera. And they did really well. number one out of the box and then they took the FM and turned it to beautiful music. So I say they just did that. Why don't we make ourself sound like 13Q's FM again and get people to think because the FM had almost as much audience as the AM. Why don't we sound like we're 13Q's. So 13Q did the great ripoff, we did the great zip off, we did whatever they did, we would just do it, whatever music I play, we would play and we're just going to ride their coattails. And I think most people if you humiliated to do that, I wasn't, I just wanted to win.

25:50And we actually beat them in the ratings. And doing their thing. Yeah, right. How do you think it works? You could beat someone doing their thing. You know what? I think it was because, well, I understood their thing and agreed with their thing and liked their thing. So I was totally into it. Wish I've thought of it. And FM was just coming on too. Just timing had something to do with it. Of course, always, doesn't it? So I had that big success as this 19 -year -old kid. and suddenly people from the country noticed me. And I was at that stage where they go, yeah, but you're too young. And the general manager there, got him Charlie Warner, had been a part of Bill Paley's CBS and run their CBS radio rep firm, looked great, you know, St.

26:32Albans, Dartmouth, wore the right suits, handsome, set everything. Huge company. Well, it's CBS, he was, but he got fired at CBS. The only job he could find at that time and was in Pittsburgh as the general manager. So he came there and he became infatuated with me. He just loved the idea that I was 19 and by the way I had a beard and had long hair and wore a t -shirt, I didn't want to play the game. He just thought that was fabulous, just, you know, poking the bear in the eye. And he got fired in Pittsburgh but got hired in BC in Chicago. So he calls me up and goes, you wanna come to Chicago?

27:09And I'm 20 years old And somehow I got the NBC in Chicago when I was 20. And making more money than ever dreamed I'd make it like five or six times, the money my dad made. And I think back on my career now and say, you know, going from NBC to MTV, that's all probable. The improbable jump is to go from a small town in Mississippi five years later to be the afternoon guy and programming the big NBC clear channel station in Chicago. ago. And it was all because we talked about giving people a chance. Charlie Warner was willing to take a chance on a 20 -year -old kid to replace the 47 -year -old program who was there to program this station.

27:51And I think today, if somebody came to me and said, we're going to hire this 20 -year -old guy, we're going to give him our biggest station, I'd go, that was crazy. Are you crazy? That's insane. How he managed to pull it off, I don't know, probably part of it was, it was a day of not great information. So he probably had a lot of choices he could make in Chicago that nobody corporate knew about. Today we know everything everybody's doing. But he made that decision and then he then went to WNBC together too and was just like, you know, there are a couple of people who've changed your life. And yes, I was capable obviously as it turns out, but you mentioned luck earlier, but it's like luck.

28:31It's just like right place, right time. So you went to WMBC in New York. We had a big success with the AM and Chicago changed the country music, got you nothing about. But I was one of those guys who was beginning to do research and college I majored in social methods and sociology and research. And we began, there was a group of us beginning to say, hey, how do you do research in the 1980s? There's no internet yet. We did survey research to know what it had ever done. They used to call the record source, say, what's selling? And of course, the record comes out. I give you 10 extra albums to say my record selling well.

29:03So it was, by the way, I'm not sure if it was accurate about record sale. And as you know, record sales then necessarily correlate to what people want to hear on the radio. So we started this thing where we call people. It's just random. Back in those days, you could call anybody you wanted to. We'd go to the phone book and just randomly call people and ask them to join a panel to talk about music each week. And we would play little hooks of songs down the line to people and say, have you ever heard of this song? If you've heard of it, is it your favorite? I like it, but not my favorite. I like it, but tired of hearing it.

29:36I'm sort of neutral. I dislike it or I dislike it so much. I change the channel when it comes on. Good question. So now we would, every week we'd say, okay, well this one's number one with the top category. This one's the one they hate the most. Over the years we figured out, I like it, but tired of hearing it so much, runs people off more than anything else. But we were able to develop it. And so we built a playlist based on a random sample of listeners so we could, we're really talking to them to find out what they wanted. So I used that for the country music because I didn't know country music at all.

30:10And we became the number one country station in America almost overnight. Wow. And then I did it on the FM. Was anyone else using Gata yet in radio? There was a small group of us and we all traded notes. And we got Todd Wallace and Steve Casey, eventually the music director at MTV when I was there. And we were all saying, I'm learning this, I'm learning that, how are you doing this? How do you get to be able to call? How do you get it so quick? What's the system to use? And so we were regularly talking. And we were sort of the new Turks, the new kids, nobody liked us. We were ruining the music business, but they gave me an edge.

30:42And I did the FM station and beat the ABC FM, which at that time they were doing sort of album radio, album oriented radio. Lee Abrams had been there a few, no Lee, and that was where he made his mark. And we beat the ABCFM. We're the first ones to ever beat an ABCFM. So then this okay, it could come to New York. At age 23, I went there to program WNBC at Don Imas in the morning and all these big names. And so that was my big shot to get there. Amazing. Also interesting to have those similar minded people around the country who were sharing notes on the same things, which in most industries, people look at those as competitors, Even if they're not direct competitors, but there's that sense of competition.

31:27You don't talk to those people that your enemies, but you saw that it was like a revolution. It was a revolution. The camaraderie always works. Every place I go, camaraderie is really important. I mean, even we started MTV, that original group of people. We went to dinner together every night. We went on vacation together. We shared summer houses together. Yeah. We lived together. It was communal. and it was collegial and you know I'm a believer that nobody wins teams win. Tell me about WNBC. Well WNBC was the biggest radio station in New York. WNBC was the biggest. And WNBC was the old so rare.

32:07And they couldn't quite get over the hump. Part of the problem was what I would do at each station I gone to, I would do some survey research to people who were listening to like WNBC. What do you like about the station? What don't you like about it? Then I would go in the air position and be whatever they said they liked and we'd say we don't have the whatever They said they didn't like yeah, and then we talk about other station on the air and taught them so much to begin to change stuff I mean it worked for me So I sort of tried that and W ABC was oblivious they didn't change anything By the way the change sound hadn't changed since the mid -1960s so out of date so wrong But you know I learned something which was people have habits.

32:48Yeah, don't screw with this like you know other people who take that magazine and go, I can make it look better. I'm gonna do a magazine redesign. They killed the magazine. Because good or bad, you're accustomed to it. That's what you know it as. And they wouldn't change. And finally, I think it was WBLS or WKTU came on the air. While we were running behind them, it couldn't quite get them. And then they just go at that time or passed this go. I think it was disco that came on the air and they had a big rating. And WABC freaked out. They fired the programmer. They brought a guy in who made the station sound really new in modern and the ratings died We searched ahead and that's the way WNBC became number one amazing and then how many years did you do that?

33:32I did that three years and Herb Schloss you on air as well or no? The New York was the first place. I wasn't regularly on the air Mm -hmm, but I would do fill in and if somebody won a vacation I'd do a week shift I was the guy that if Don I miss didn't come in in the morning, which unfortunately happened some I get a call about 530 and say, Don's not coming in. I go, okay, give him a stay on the air till I get there. And we go do the shift. If you got that call, would you be bummed or would you be excited? I would say, okay, I mean, the other problem was, if I was out till midnight, I wasn't planning on getting up at 5 a .m.

34:05Yeah, so that was the bad part of it. But in general, it was fun to be on the air for you still. Yeah, it was always fun. I was never great on the air. I'm too controlled. I have that switch, which says, oh, I shouldn't do that. the greatest people on the air and the people just let go. So tell me about the format of WNBC. It was top 40. I mean, CHR played the hits. But heavy personality. We had IMS in the morning. When I got there, Don was like way off the reservation. We fired Don. Don couldn't get a job in New York. Wondered back and cleaved them where he'd come from. And about a year later, somebody said, Don's cleaned up his act.

34:43You ought to go here. So I took good no stays, no internet or anything. I fly to Cleveland. I sit at the airport, have a radio, turn it on and listen to his show. And the right, he's really good. He's back. He's back. Yeah. So I come back and we hire him back to the morning show and obviously he was spectacular and talented and right after I left, they hired Howard Stern to do the afternoon show. He had soupy sales in midday. That was the right after my time. But you know, it was about personalities. Again, I think back then I sort of discovered that what radio really is it's a companion to people You know as soon as you could get cassette recordings and you know eight tracks etc I no longer had to listen to radio for the music if I just want music I got to other places to go no commercials Exactly what I want but you realized the companionship's critical today Probably more than ever which is so you say that a playlist can't replace listening to radio for that period of time You know what, it's a different experience.

35:46Actually, if you ask people, do you listen to a playlist and you're in your music collection and radio, they agree with the statement, I listen to them both, but at different times for different reasons. And you'll see always, I've somebody had a CD on, you'd see them listening to it, and then for some reason, they just turn on the radio. Why did they do that? It's a middle of a song. They can't be away from people. It's a different experience. On the radio, I know what's going on in the world. It's a camaraderie of people. It's a gang of people. we always make it sound like there are a lot of people listening, we have people listeners calling in, put them on the air, sense of community.

36:20Sense of community. And they're listening for companionship. You know, it's interesting. The average person watches about 30 different TV networks in a month. The average person listens to two radio stations. Wow. At Ride to Work with Ryan Seacrest every morning, I have for 20 years. I'm gonna listen to him until he's no longer there. He's my buddy. I know everything about him. might keep track of him, he's talking about stuff relevant to me. I'm not going to go anywhere else. People say, oh my commercials come on, everybody leaves commercials, actually in radio. They don't, like TV, they don't leave on the commercial break.

36:54They leave on a song they don't like. On the commercial break, you know, commercials are sort of talking about stuff you need for your life. The same thing that, you know, what's Ryan talking about? He's talking about people and clothes and cars and food and movies and TV shows. Same thing, the commercials you're talking about. So it is this sense of like I'm with you. I'm gonna hang out with you And but I learned that sort of way back there At wmbc and I was doing really well there loved it and was Preparing to go be a TV programmer because her blasher said you're in I did the TV show after Saturday and I've got sort of beginning to learn TV and Then herb got kicked out and they brought a guy in Fred Silverman in and suddenly I was not special anymore And there was a group of us that we were actually called sort of, you know, sexist in those days of Herb's boys.

37:45And it was a bunch of guys that Herb loved. And it didn't matter what your boss said, you could call Herb a Herb a Herb a Rulah. Lord Michaels, who was doing Saturday night, Dick Ever saw, was doing late night. Like Donald Meyer was doing sports, Brandon Tartekoff may have been there by then. And me. And so when he got kicked out, it's like all of Herb's boys were in trouble. That's when the Lauren left Saturday Night Live, Dick Ibersal left, Olmire went to the Biscoe, everybody left. And so I'm like open to the idea of like, well, I don't know what I'm gonna do now. I was, have my life planned out?

38:21Everything was gonna happen the right way. Yeah. Plants don't come true. And I got a call from these folks saying, you know, we're doing this cable programming company. We think the world's gonna be narrow cast TV channels like I was describing to you. And, you know, you have radio experience. some things we like radio, they can be good. Once you come over. And so I mean, it was a long process to get higher because some of the people that are going, how can you hire this kid? How can you hire this kid with no TV experience? How can you hire this kid? And in the end, they gave me a shot. And originally did the movie channel and TV?

38:54And then it didn't work. Yeah, movie channel worked and TV. And we took Nickelodeon, which have been a preschooler's channel, which the cable company had been using to get cable franchises. just was like, look at all the do good stuff we do, and changed it to a tween channel, which the Galodian took off and just rewored. And was the idea that there's this thing Disney and it's its own thing and why don't we compete with Disney? We were like, we thought Disney was old -looking. It wasn't cool. And it was at that time. It was at that time. And so the Galodian was like cool and hip or reverent, sassy.

39:27It sounded in tune. And we had a same on air look. Got him Fred cyber did MTV. I got Fred. We worked on it. Did the Nickelodeon on air look with Jerry Laborn, who was the, who had been in programming at Nickelodeon. And I gave her the shot to run the whole thing. And Fred and Jerry worked on this whole look. Again, so MTV was about mood and emotion. Very few TV networks at the time didn't anybody care about. They cared about the shows. You know, like so I'm watching whatever show, the networks that I don't know, it's like my favorite show And the networks were nothing more than delivery systems for shows MTV was the first network where people say I'm tuning in to watch MTV see what's on They're going to MTV not a program.

40:13Yeah, and Nickelodeon began to turn on Nickelodeon. What's on? I don't know I'm going to Nickelodeon that the network became the the object of desire and that sort of changed how people did TV networks and And after us, other people had success with that as well. I remember also in the, I want my MTV campaign. You had huge rock stars doing commercials, saying I want my MTV. People who you could never hire to do commercial for anything, for any amount. I know. It was crazy. I mean, John Sykes talks about the idea, we want to get to who. So he camps out at Bill Kerblich's office in London and he gets across the street, he's got a set up of a camera and all.

40:57And he's just waiting. And he sees Pete Townsend coming. And he goes, he goes, Hey, I need you to help with them. The man he just Pete looks a little befuddled. And he walks across the street with him. And records, I want my MTV. I'm believe it didn't know what he was unbelievable. And I think seven or eight months later, we do something with the who they're on the air or something. And psych sees him and goes up to him thinking, him your buddy and he looks and goes, you, you, you're the one. And like you've been rewrote it into it, but we had Mick Jagger, we had Madonna. Madonna was a new act then.

41:33So David Bowie, etc. The police who were like, you think if now for MTV, we would know who Madonna is today. Boy, that's a great point. I think the biggest impact MTV had on the music business is we turn performers into celebrities. Yeah. One of the first things we heard was people say, wow, I'm being stopped on the street and people saying I saw you on MTV. They didn't stop many musicians back then because you didn't know what they looked like. And many musicians had trouble making the flip it was like when sound came in and fractures similar. Right, I mean, and there was someone thought it, didn't want it, took Bruce Springsteen a long time to do a video and some people like Madonna just knew it.

42:15I mean, she was one of the first MTV artists. Michael Jackson just got it, understood it. And getting idle, billions. Oh my God, it was just like, and they were lining up there. But I'm not sure what had been the stars, they were, were they not the MTV stars. And we sort of interesting to watch. I mean, we're in the middle of that revolution as well. But you think about what happened to the music business after those people became celebrities. Suddenly, the touring business is bigger. Suddenly, endorsements are big. suddenly they have enormous sort of personal power as a celebrity. They've changed a lot.

42:50Yeah.

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44:22What was some of the things that happened in Longway, MTV, there was like, couldn't believe this was happening. Well, becoming profitable was, there was a guy named Drew Lewis who had been Reagan's Secretary of Transportation. He had famously fired all the air traffic controllers if you recall this. And I mean tough, tough guy. And Warner MX was two things. It was a program company, Warner MX Satellite Entertainment Company, which is where MTV was in its Warner MX cable. In the cable business in the early 80s, they've made all sorts of promises to cities to get the cable franchise, to build out the big cities.

44:59The problem was, as usual, happens is people have made very un -economic deals. And so it was crushing Warner Mx, these deals they had done. So they hired Drew Lewis to come in and fix it. Drew's just a tough nut. No, it's nothing. Just bottom line. Bottom line. And Drew, it turns out I had one of the meetings with him and I was talking about something. We were doing the Rolling Stones. And one of the people at work for Drew goes, Drew, do you know the Rolling Stones are? And he goes, no. You ever heard of Mick Jagger? No. And I go, boy, I am a deep shit. Drew takes me to lunch and says, okay, Bob, look, and it's a complicated drama, but they don't like your boss, Jack Schneider.

45:40They're going to fire Jack Schneider eventually, and I need you to get ready to be that. And then he goes, but the first thing I need you to do is, MTV's got to be profitable. Said, if you can't make it profitable by the end of the year, I'm going to shut it down. And the board of directors, a couple of times, it said, we're going to shut MTV down. Steve Ross had saved it. And now he's saying, we're gonna shut down. This guy's got the power to do it. So I came back for that meeting and go, I can't tell everybody that works for me, that we're at risk of being shut down. So I just have to sort of suck it up, but I have to do something rather dramatic.

46:15So we cut costs like crazy. I mean, if you hear people from the early days, Creve, I think they're gonna say, oh yeah, I remember working, Bobby is so creative. They'll say, Bob was the cheapest son of a bitch ever worked with in my life, because mine was fine, every penny I could, everywhere. And you had to. It's survival, but I couldn't tell anybody. Because it would bum them all out. So, I mean, we're riding high, the press is riding about us, everybody loves us. The cable operators were getting it for free. And we decided, you know what, we need them to pay us. If they don't pay us, we, pencil out would never gonna be profitable.

46:48So we go back and we do these fights with the cable company saying, I know he says, for you, you gotta charge for it. And in that time, a couple of the big cable operators trying to get leverage on us, convinced Ted Turner, start the cable music channel to compete with MTV. And so they come out with the cable music channel. Remember I had learned on the movie channel when HBO came out with Cinemax? I learned what a fighting brand was. I only had to learn that one time. So when Turner came out with the cable music channel, I started the H1. And instead of him being able to compete with cable music channel versus MTV, I want it to be the cable music channel versus VH1.

47:23And if it had a QVH1 fine, who cares? It keeps MTV out of the fight. So Turner said, well, we're free to the cable industry. I go VH1's free too. And then it goes, okay, well, we're going to sell spots cheaper to the advertisers. There's going to be $90 instead of the $300 you charge. I was going to be $80. So whatever they did, we just undercut. And after 34 days, he shuts down. 34 days, 34 days, it shuts down the cable music channel, VH1, which we just did. I mean, they cost us $5 million. Yeah. incremental. That's the whole cost of doing VH1. It's $5 million. Yeah. We literally had a closet where we had some VJs and a closet with a fixed focus camera and a three quarter inch machine, just cheap, cheap stuff.

48:09But we said, you know, let's keep it going. And as you know, VH1 continued on. and forgetting the cost of making the content for the channel, how hard was it to get access on a cable channel? How many channels are there? It was hard back then. It was really hard. And we didn't get MTV on in Manhattan for about the first three years on Manhattan. Wow, that's a long time. And it was more rural America where we had cable, so then drifting up to the big center. Which is interesting also, because it was a very cutting -edge programming. right right which was modern programming which was not scared scared yes cable operators when VH1 came I go okay I have no money how am I going to get a distribution I hire all the famous disc jockeys in New York Scott Shannon Don I must frankly crocker all around VH1 and I go I'm going to get on in New York Don I must goes on the air we were going to launch I think it was January He's on the air saying, well, Jack Galt, the guy who ran, man, that cable's gonna put us on, said, we're gonna be right there, VH1.

49:16Jack Galt calls me and goes, what the hell are you doing? He said, we're not putting you on. And I go, do you want me to tell Don that? And he goes, no, no, don't tell him that. And we launched Unbenthack cable. Unbelievable. So it was not I want my MTV, but it was another sort of pressure tactic to get these guys to carry us. Amazing. And then how big did MTV grow? Well, you know, you know what, TV. And when did you leave? I left. We tried to do a management buyout. American Express decided they wanted to get out of the Warner MX adventure. And there was a shotgun by cell with Warner. So it was up for grabs.

49:58So David Horowitz, who had been the president of Warner's, had come down to MTV to be the CEO when we went public. like because they said I was too young. So it's the first time you went public with something? But it was. And how was that experience? It was great. I mean, I didn't know what I didn't know. Yeah. And by the way, the day we were pricing the public offering, yes, it's the day Ted Turner announced he was starting a competing service. So the stock goes, we almost didn't come out, but Sherson Lehman was taking us public owned by American Express, they don't have of us. So we got out public.

50:31But we were under the cloud of, oh my God, Ted Turner, he'll kill you. He's Mr. Cable. One of these kids, no, how can they beat Ted? 34 days. Yeah, right. They're killing. So we got out public. And then obviously after Turner went out, why the stock goes up. And so David Horowitz, he come down to be the CEO because they said I was too young to be the CEO of a public company. And they said, well, we'll let you be CEO in two years, but David's gonna come down for two years. So David and I are very close. He had been Steve's president of Warner's. And David and I set about to manage my out. We interview a bunch of people, with Forzeman Little, who was very big at the time, Teddy Forzeman, Nick Forzeman, Brian Little.

51:13They command, we put together an offer. And Steve had decided that what he was gonna do is sell half of everything to Viacom. And that's the way he was gonna buy out American Express. He called me and said, look, I want you to go with this new thing and we're gonna do the blah blah. So we'll Steve, I'll do it, but only if you'll meet with Teddy Forstman first and hear us. And it goes okay, I'll do that. And Teddy gave him a big pitch, a lot of money for MTV, more than he ever thought he could make. And so he decides he'll sell it to us. And so we're going by Godfats City, I'm gonna own the company, we're gonna be it, we're, and Teddy was a tough character.

51:52Steve was a constant negotiator. We had an agreement in the state kept retraining, and retraining and retraining. And finally, Teddy tells the investment banker, you can tell Steve, he can go fuck himself. And by the way, no investment banker should ever go tell the client someone said that. And the investment banker told Steve that. And so Steve was a reliant. So he sends word over to Viacom. Viacom comes in with a competing offer. And they wound up buying MTV. This was 1985. I sort of lost my dream, but I had one percent of MTV. And that was more money. I didn't have any money. Suddenly, I've got like millions of dollars.

52:36Yeah. But today's standards, I got screwed. Yeah. But I saw I was like, well, maybe not just such a bad thing that we got it. I signed a new five year deal with BioCom. But as things go on, obviously people are now coming to me saying, hey, you want to come here or do whatever. And I just bothered me that somebody had my company. Yeah. I left in 87, I went to MCA, came to me with a deal. Lewin Sid came and offered me a deal that Irving actually set up who was running the music company in MCA at the time that they would finance a 50 -50 joint venture. I could go do whatever I wanted to do. And I go, great.

53:13And so I left. And I made sure, Preston, who was my deputy at the time and a good friend, got the shot to be the president. Do you think if MTV continued with its original format of showing videos and having VJs, it may still be relevant today? We took great question. Probably, I mean, we did some shows as sort of spice and some lower anchors, but I would probably have never have done the narrative form on MTV. It felt like instead of being MTV, they were being regular television. But they were had the youth audience, they had the attitude and they wound up being wildly successful for a window of time for a period of time And I as I say I wouldn't have had the guts to do it because I had a vision and so I could not see the other thing And I think you know as crapman's with businesses, you know the other group came in and said okay, we still be music Slowly but surely became more and more programs because it didn't start out instantly it was no, but there was a time when if you turned on MTV, you were not going to see music most of the time.

54:23Right. You know what's interesting? I think when Tom and Judy were really running it. Yeah. They kept their hand in music enough to hang on to all of that imagery and that audience and they put out enough music shows. I think when Tom left, Judy left, Philippe Demollon running it, I think they just turned it into it's just a network. and it lost its mojo. What made MTV so popular was the attitude. It just like, it was just cool. And we do shit to just make us seem cool. And it felt like counter -programming and didn't feel like everything else. It really was. It was everything and there was MTV.

55:03The original name that we wanted for MTV, my concept was TV1. And we're going to do TV a different way. And this is TV1. We couldn't clear TV1. So then we figured out we could clear TVM. So it was going to be TVM. And actually one of the Steve Case who was the driest sort of most analytical guy in the bunch who was the music director which is the analytical job. In a meeting, it very dry says, don't you think MTV sounds better than TVM? Well, yeah, that's okay. And that's like that. It became MTV. Just like that. No study, no, you know, it was just like, yeah, okay, it was going to be MTV. Tell me more about Steve Ross.

55:43Steve Ross is an amazing guy. Steve was a guy who I often talk about in business is math and magic that you need. The podcast called math and magic. To me it's always been my thing. By the way, Buzzzie Bennett said that. I thought it was the greatest program ever. Yeah. It's the analytics, but it's also got to have the magic. I can do all this survey to add and tell you what people want, that to make it exciting. I now have to have the magic to make it exciting. And I believe that's true with every business, every project is the bad magic. So Steve Ross had an interesting blend of that. He had unbelievable financial skills, just saw deals and numbers and understood it, but he also really appreciated the magic.

56:26And although he may not have been able to create it, he loved the people who could and supported it and supported it and worshipped it. And those were stars to have not people to be tolerated, but those were people to be worshipped. And I learned so much from Steve. Steve was the first guy I'd ever heard say something like this. He'd say, you know, Bob, you're never going to be fired here for making a mistake. You're going to be fired here for not making a mistake. Because even not making a mistake tells me you're not trying to do anything new. And whatever we've given you in a magic, you're going to wilt away under your management.

56:58And he didn't say this, but I've added to it. and I'm sure he implied it, is that mistakes for the byproduct of innovation. If we're gonna try new shit, at least half of us not gonna work. Absolutely. And when we get ready to try something, I go, guys, don't get too carried away. 50 -50 chance, it works. So, let's just eat for a higher. Right, nothing changes. The corollary that goes with that is you have to buy us toward quick decision making. Because when it invariably is wrong, changing. Yeah, change it quickly. But don't sit there and study for days. Yeah, it's quick, quick, quick, quick, quick move.

57:33And I learned that from Steve. And I learned to be bold. It's just like who cares what people think. And Steve was an outsider. I mean, he was this group of guys sort of, you know, out of Brooklyn who were parking up business. Parking lot, you know, office management, cleaning services. And Steve had started with his father -in -law's two funeral homes. And it was a funeral director. and just had an entrepreneurial line. He goes, what are we doing with all these limousines at night? Nothing, let's start renting them out. So they rented out the greater limousine service. And then they go, well, where are we parking them?

58:10That parking rush? Why do we buy the parking rush? And then that would be better. And then he goes, wait a minute, we got a parking rush. And at this time, the rental car business was beginning to be developed. He said, let's start a rental car company. And they can park in any of the parking lots in New York for free. And that would be our special thing. And you can rent them at the parking lots. And so he just kept seeing one thing after another and then he did a study about what business he should be in and the entertainment business came up high. So he said we're going to get the entertainment business.

58:40He bought Ashley famous, the talent agency, Ted Ashley, Spencer Harrison, and David Gaffin who had been working there as the music guy. And then he had an opportunity by this bankrupt company called Warner 7 Arts. And they had to get rid of the talent agency because of the consent decrees about what the studios could own and they wound up with Warner's. And he bought it with the thought of the movie company, but they discovered that all the money was being made with the record companies. And they had a billion little independent distributors. One of the great ideas was create, we have one distribution organization, get extra cloud.

59:20And you know Ahmed was running Atlantic, yeah, those running Warner's. and Joe Smith was working with him as the president of Warner's. And I think David was running a lecture asylum at the time. So that was off at when. And but I just loved Steve because Steve would just encourage you to go take a big chance. Go, go, I love what you're doing. You know, it's not like, not critical. And but he was a deal guy and just understood it. And if you weren't bothered by sort of the Brooklyn culture, like rough and tough. I mean, I was in a meeting in my then boss who had been at CBS, a very straight lace guy and very sort of CBS proper, said something in a meeting and Steve looked at him and goes, what do you have a death wish?

1:00:08Saying, that's a stupid idea. He was so offended. He couldn't even finish the conversation. You know, he took it as a threat. And Steve didn't mean it. It's just like the way they talk. And so I sort of learned that way. And that's okay. I mean, I'm sort of even keel. And it's fine. That's like everybody's bantering back and forth. And Steve always says, in search of the break to the idea. Yeah. How much time do you get to spend with him a lot? Tell me. You know, I would do Steve would call me a lot and say, hey, we're going to meeting with someone so come on up. He would call me at the end. For things that were not part of your...

1:00:44No, I think he would call the reason he had a deal guy named Adib booty, who he worked closely with and he would call me in like four or five o 'clock and get a call from it. So I'll say Mr. Ross was to see you and I go up and say, I'm thinking about doing this. He was always like I'm thinking about some idea and I'd start iterating, ideating with him and he loved that and then he'd say, get a booty, call a booty, get him in here and you know, this dates before cell phones or anything and I was supposed to have dinner with my wife. It's like eight o 'clock. I like, say, excuse me minutes, I'm not coming to dinner and I'd be there at 11 o 'clock with Steve brain storming and thinking and I sort of turned out to be Sort of a sounding board for it and when we sold the company to buy a comm He said look you got to go with the company.

1:01:29You know you're part of the deal and blah blah blah And when I left to go to MCA he calls me though. What do you do it? Why didn't you come back here and I go I thought I was part of the deal and he goes And so for two years he kept trying to get me to come back and finally I thought my way out of the MCAD I went back to Warner, went back to Steve. We were just doing the time Warner merger. He hired me, didn't tell me merging at time. I agree I'm coming. He said, okay, now I gotta tell you something. We're gonna merge with time. And once you agreed to come back, he said, he tells you that's the place.

1:02:02And he said, what I want you to do. What were you thoughts about that? I was sort of game for anything. And what? The way you pitch me was he goes, listen Bob, I need a successor. I want you to come back and be my successor, which like very handy stuff for me. I'm in my 30s. And I will see at the time, would you say? Steve must have been late 50s, early 60s and I was like, wow, what are you being in? So then when we were going to merge the companies, I was going to come back to Warner and be in the office of the president. We were going to have three of us that were the office of the president under him, which I'm pretty great because he never had one president like three guys.

1:02:36And I was going to be in that. Then he said, okay, well, you would be part of everything. right. And so then it goes, okay, we're gonna merge with time, but we're gonna keep it separate. So we're still gonna have it off to the president of Warner's and then the time assets. And then he calls me, it's okay, we're not gonna do that. And so I go find him. And so I wound up with being the head of basically new business, time Warner enterprises. And I had wanted to buy six -line steam parks, which was really sort of my burning desire when I came back. Why did you want to do that? I don't know. When I was at MCA and we could buy companies, it was the whole idea.

1:03:12We tried to buy an ad agency, tried to buy Jay Walter Thompson, wound up with about 5 % of the equity of Jay Walter Thompson. We were going to make a hostile bid. Then a guy named Martin Sorrel shows up to also make a hostile bid. We briefly talked about doing something together. Martin knew they had Tokyo real estate. I didn't know that. It's worth about half the value of Jay Walter Thompson. Wow. And so he bit more than we were willing to do. But the stock had gone up so much. I mean, a quick win. I mean, we bought five percent of the company and suddenly we tripled our money and you know, the MCA guys go, they, I like you.

1:03:46So I'm going out saying what other companies can we look at? And I found six flags. It's owned by West Ray Capital, sort of a busted LBO. We did the original owners? No, they were. They bought it. Yeah. And how many were there? How many six legs. There were only seven at the time, only in big cities, big, big parks. And I go to the MC, I said, I want to buy this. They go, we already have thing parks. I got about it. I thought my deal was I can buy anything. Yeah. And they go, but not that. And so I'm talking to Steve, who was calling me pretty regularly saying, Hey, we should come back and blah, blah, blah.

1:04:18And I tell him about six flags. He said, if you come back, I'll let you buy six flags. So this was sort of, sort of the deal. So when I, when we were sort of divvying up response, but I said, look, let me buy six flags. I'll run that and I'll run all the other new business. We'll go find new businesses and put everything there. And we're trying to pretty exciting to me. And so we kind of like what you would have done at MCA if you do whatever you want. Really? Well, what's interesting and this is again, luck. As luck would turn out, you know this in companies back then that pay you great money, but you didn't get any equity.

1:04:49So when we got ready to do the deal, in the time and Warner deal, they had to borrow a lot of money, heavily loaded up on debt. And Steve goes, look, I can give you 50 million to buy it, but you gotta go find somebody else with the L100 million of equity. And oh, by the way, cap them so they can earn more than a 30 % IRR, and we gotta be able to buy them back. And I'm like, all these conditions. And I go, okay. And I wound up getting blackstone. Steve Swarzman, the time Henry Silverman was running the, and Roger Altman was there. and I got in through Roger who I knew, and we were sort of the first corporate deal.

1:05:27And it was got named Jimmy Lee at Chemical Bank. I think I'm not sure they were yet chased. And Jimmy was gonna put up the financing. But Jimmy and Henry Silverman called the guys at time morning and they go, everybody who runs our companies has to own equity. And they go, well, you know what guys? Here we pay them well, they go, nope, gotta get equity. So I wound up a 4 % of 6 lakhs, which, you know, mind you, I made a lot of money on MTV. I thought I'd made a lot of money for a kid, but that's luck would have it. I wound up a 4 % of 6 flags. We bought it for 600 million. We eventually sold 51 % for about a billion, and then they sold the rest of it and wound up with 2 billion out of the value of 6 flags.

1:06:11And so that was the first real money I made. It was that, and it just sort of luck. And again, I had a plan for... How long was the period that you bought? five years. Five years. And did you build more six flags in those five years? No, I think we bought one in San Antonio, the eighth one, just as I was leaving from USA. But I had a whole plan about six flags. I had this idea that we were going to try and do sort of take what Hertz had done in Avis. We're Avis, we're number two, we try harder. Right now, there's one thing, part Disney and everybody else. So we wanted to become the sort of the worst in the category with Disney instead of the best in the category without Disney.

1:06:54All of our parks were really big. They were actually bigger than the Disney land. So we had a line bigger than the Disney land closer to home. Great. Because we really marked the podium up. They're destination trips. Yes. ours were day trips. Yeah. If people someone said six likes not as good as Disney, I won because they thought of me in the category. Yeah. If they said you're bigger than the dinner if you're in the conversation you won. It's what Pepsi did. Pepsi did the Pepsi challenge not to compete with Coke, but to get away from all the other soft drinks. And it became Coke Pepsi, they won.

1:07:23Did the parks change at all or no? Yeah, we did a complete redo. And I'm a creative guy. They didn't have a designer. They just outsourced it to people draw stuff. I hired a designer. His office was next to mine. And we said, we're going to turn these things back into theme parks. And by the way, when I do a ride, I'm not doing a roller coaster. I'm doing Batman the ride. I'm doing stuff that's all a fantasy. And so we redid the parks and and attendance went from about it had been stuck at about 17 million for years and years and years and we got it up to about 25 million by the time I we sold the company and then we sold and then that company sold it to a small theme park company that put the six flags brand and lots of other small parks but so it's nowhere near the same six flags as well as running it.

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1:09:48Tell me about the difference between a local anything radio versus when it becomes either syndicated or goes national. What's different? Well, you know, it's interesting. I think ultimately everything is local and the more local you can make it the better. You know, with radio stations, what makes them so popular is it's very local. If you're listening to your station, it's your station. And we're talking about stuff in LA. We're talking about stuff in New York. We're talking about stuff in Memphis. We're talking about stuff in Minneapolis. It's relevant to you. It feels like your next door neighbor, because we're talking about the same stuff your next door neighbor would be chatting with you if you're riding to work with you every day.

1:10:27And so I think everything you can make local makes it so much better. And I think it's the secret of it all. Technology has allowed us to do so much more localization because in the past, if we wanted to station to sound local, we had to hire people and put them in that market so that they would know what was going on in the market so they could talk about it. Well, you know how good they were finding out what was going on in the market? Not really good. They didn't know much. The internet wasn't around. When the internet came, you go, wow, I had perfect knowledge of everything going on this town.

1:10:59But now, actually, I didn't, I don't need you to live in the town anymore because it used to cost us tons of money to broadcast from another town. It wasn't anymore. So by the way, where do you want to live? Wherever you want to live, you can live. I just need you to be on the air in this town. And I need you to study this town of all the information so you are really relevant. and it has made our stations smaller markets so much better. A large market, we could already have four great talent and they were there. But occasionally, you have people who want to be in multiple places. Like Ryan Seacrest is on 100 of our radio stations, Charlemagne, the gods on 100 radio stations.

1:11:41So we're able to project and use these really superstar talent in markets. They're able to go in and do local breaks. So they're doing stuff that's very relevant for the Mocha. Sometimes they have a local person on their desk for that market That also does a lot of local stuff as well. We're able to get high value talent and make it very very local. When did you go to Clear Channel? I went in 2010 when I left after AOL time Warner. I was trying to retire before we did the time Warner merger because I had always told myself that I was gonna quit work by the time I was 50 if I made enough money.

1:12:23And when I went to AOL, I originally thought I'd made enough money because of six flags, and then I did Century 21 real estate, briefly for a year, made a lot of money off that one. And as part of Century 21, I went to AOL, and said, I want to be a real estate section. Steve Kay says, yes, yes, why don't you be on my board? I go, well, that might be fun. And then Steve, you know, AOL was in a transition period, losing a lot of money, stock market wasn't great. And Steve said, why don't you come down and help me and originally run the AOL service and then became sort of the chief operating officer.

1:12:59We got rid of a couple of other businesses. But come down and help me run it. I've been on the board, stay on the board. So Steve and I were the two guys on the board. And I go, well that sounds like fun. And I've done a year at Century 21, which is all I promised. Ten weeks so I'm going to run the company I would do. And that fixed it up and we'd take in the profit up 10X. It's like, that's pretty good. I did what I was supposed to do. And he'd bless things, okay, go do it. And for once I didn't need money. So I said, just pay me what I'm going to pay me. And I don't need a contract. And just give me whatever stock he'd give me.

1:13:32And it was the least thought out thing I've ever done. And obviously, you know, things turn out. I made the most money there, made by a long shop. So it sort of was this interesting moment of the world was opening up and I had a front row seat. So when I decided to leave, I mean, we were just been on a tear by the time I think 1999 comes around, we're the 10th most valuable company in America, worked at that time, a lot of money, 250 billion. So big company back then. and Steve had an idea that he always wanted to merge with time Warner. And I thought there was zero chance, Jerry would ever do that, having come from time Warner.

1:14:12We would already been at time Warner and now you're at AOL. I'm sure he wants to merge. I've been at Warner, then time Warner. And now he wants to merge with, I don't think so. I mean, you know, it's like good, knock yourself out, have all the conversations you want. Yeah. He came back from Chinese on some trip, spent some time with Jerry and said, I think we merge. And I'm still very skeptical. Thank you. was no way. And I'm working on a deal to buy eBay from Meg Whitman and we're working heavily in making great progress and Steve goes, it's going to happen. We're going to do it. I go, really?

1:14:42And literally it's like the week he's convinced his base really going to happen. But another one of these stories. And so we that weekend we get the boards together, they all approve it and we do it. But I said I was going to retire by the end. I go, okay, Steve said, look, I need to just stick around for this. I go, okay, I'll stick around for this. and so it's exciting too. And so Steve became the chairman of M .O .S .S .S. the CEO, Parsons and our co -COOs, and sort of split up in the operating groups. So we began that and I kept thinking, I gotta have my moment to leave, because I got, I got, I worked since I was 15.

1:15:17And everybody else said, man, I was backpacked around Europe. I didn't done any of that. I mean, a long vacation, where for me it was, all I did was from 15. All I did was work and I was a little bitter. I was like a little mad. 2002, I finally say, Dick, I'm leaving. And I leave, thinking I'm gonna do nothing. I'm a pilot, and I love the fly. And by the end, I have a pretty big airplane. So I go, I'm gonna see the world, my plane. And we're just gonna do it. And I got two young kids, then addition, my older son. I'm just gonna load them up. We're gonna go for six, seven weeks. We do the good to Asia for six or seven weeks.

1:15:50I throw different kinds of clothes in the back. We live out of the plane. But after about six months, I'd actually done most of them. what I thought I wanted to do. And I go, now what? So I did some investing. I raised small private equity fund and wasn't really working full time, but if I was working, I worked on that. And 2008 came along. 2009 with that market crash, which scared the hell out of me. I go, wait a minute, you can lose money in private equity. And I go, when I came out of it, we survived and were okay. I go, man, I'm never doing another fund. That's, lose my money. It's one thing that, lose my friends' money, it's just untenable.

1:16:24So I decided I'd just do some investing myself. Rich Breastler was at THL at the time, and he said, hey, look, CEO of Clear Channel Stepping Down, I know you don't want to work again. You said you never do a CEO, yeah, but would you just take a look at it? And I looked at it and go, wait a minute. Do you know what you guys have? I didn't realize how big radio still was. I didn't realize these guys reached everybody in America with a radio station. They were at 90 % rate. I would not have guessed that. I still wouldn't guess it. Oh, by the way, more people listen to radio today than did 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

1:16:57It's unbelievable. It is just like it is a part of people's lives, just the routine. It's like the power. Yeah. And so when I started looking at this, I go, man, you don't know what you've got. And it goes, well, that's sort of why I want you to look at it. And so I made an investment. And then they talked me into being the chairman of like the radio group. And just, it's a not full time, not help. Yeah. And then realized they needed a digital product for the service so that people could get the station and other places. And I realized very quickly they had no what they were doing. So I go, look, I came out of Iowa.

1:17:29I know how to run this process and we'll figure this out. And so I sort of got hands on and took over. So we're going to build which we have the I heart radio app. And in the process they go, you know, said you wouldn't be the CEO because you don't work too hard anymore. You're not working hard, aren't you? Be the CEO. And I go, you know what? Let me get this thing launched. And I had this whole plan that we're going to do this, launch it with what I called live aid, you know, like a festival in Vegas for two days, just highlight I heart and that's going to be yet. Did you change the name of the company from Clear Channel to I heart?

1:18:01Yeah. Yeah. That was the game was I got there and then I said, look, let me get through it. We launched and I said, okay, I'll be the CEO. Thinking I'll do it for a couple of years and I'm 15 years later. Yeah. How many stations does it have? We have about 850 stations. Is that similar to what it had when you bought in? Yeah, and we are the number one podcast publisher by mile. We have the number one digital radio app. Obviously, our events, all those tent poles are huge, whether it's Jingle Ball or Festival or the award show or the country festival or the alter ego show are all in their own right major events.

1:18:36So we really expanded what the company is. We've really gotten into data and began to use that built out the ad tech. You know, ironically, the advertising that works the best by far is broadcast radio advertising. Really? What all the advertisers want is all the digital stuff, which is ironic since the digital reaches so much less. Yeah. I mean, you know, ad supported Spotify or ad supported Pandora reach about 20 % of America. We reach 90%. So no matter how good your message is, only 20 % are here again. And so what makes radio work so well is one, everybody takes us to work with them every day, they listen to us at work, they listen to us in the way home, they listen to us in the morning when they're getting dressed at home in radio and just clobberts it.

1:19:21But it's the hardest advertising to sell because all the agencies go, I want digital advertising. I'm set up, I want a company to buy digital advertising. You're out of the mainstream here, it's harder for me to buy it. And I go, shouldn't you want the best stuff? The answer's no, you should want the stuff that fits your process. So we re -engineered how you can sell broadcast radio. So it looks like digital. We have to get the data. We have to get the, you know, the same information available and the technology. So, you know, hands -on keyboards can buy instead of phone calls and boxes. Yeah.

1:19:52When do you follow data and when do you go against data? Research is not policymaking. It just answers questions for you. And then you have to make a gut decision. So the only difference between looking at data And no data is I have something in condition, my thinking, my gut a little bit. I still have to make a gut decision. Research never tells you what to do. And I think that's a misconception about it. And I always look at research. I want to know everything I can know before I make a decision. And still going to be wrong. A lot of times. We did a study two years ago with Malcolm Gladwell.

1:20:28It was looking at real America versus marketers. Because my problem is marketers go, everybody says, you don't know what you're talking about. So we did a study just to highlight. And at that time, succession was the big show on TV for all of our friends, 100 % of marketers had heard of succession. Two -thirds of real Americans had never heard of succession. Two -thirds of Americans had never heard of an Apple Spritz. A third had never heard of a Shakudari board. The number one and two sports, participatory sports are not pickable and gov. It's cornhole and bowling. And by the way, hunting and fishing is in the top five.

1:21:01And it's just people are so out of touch with what real America's looking at. And by the way, there are two things that real America really is important to them that marketers are afraid of. The military and religion. 80 % of Americans still are of faith. Go to church. Yeah. Maybe not all the time. 80 %. 80%. But you know, if I had been in a meeting and I say, well, let's show somebody in church. Let's get the pastor there. What are you crazy? You can't touch that. That's so controversial. Actually turns out it's not real America. And we did the study not to say to market your idiots, but to say, don't trust your instinct.

1:21:40Look at your data. Now make a gut decision. You know, math and magic. Look at the math. Now put the magic in. And you got to do something creative with it. And it's usually not the obvious thing. The obvious thing is usually the worst thing to do. the most creativeist sort of out of the blue. But still is geared toward that. You said your dad was a minister. Yeah. Tell me what it's like growing up with a minister dad. Essentially my dad was, I say he's minister and people contrap these ideas of fire and brum stone, but he actually was really well educated for Mississippi. Went to graduate school at Emory in Atlanta, which a very liberal school at the time, to Divinity School at a college degree.

1:22:18My mom had a college degree, which was, I think my brother told me, 2 % of households in Mississippi had two parents that were both college graduates, much less grad school. And my dad was a real thinker about stuff. Like when I was a kid and everybody's misbehaving, my dad was like, look, I can't tell you what to do. You're gonna make your own decisions. So the only thing I'm gonna ask you to do is just listen to me before you make your decision, and then I trust you'll make the right decision. So, and when I was, later in life, from somebody's doing something bad, I say, what do you think of that, Dad?

1:22:51He said, I believe in the redemptive power of love, about forgiveness, love, and no anger, no hate. In my household, the dirty word was hate. We couldn't say hate. My mother would say, honey, we don't hate anybody. We don't hate. If somebody was just a despicable human being, my mother would say, I wonder why they wanna be that way. So that was the household I grew up in. And my brother and I talk about how lucky we were to have that kind of household where there was just enormous amount of unconditional love. You had a lot of support. And in the church was, for me, I'm not a regular church goer.

1:23:31But I would say I'm, I have certainly faith or spirituality. You know, when you grow up in the household, you hear your dad tell too many conversations about so and so, and the congregations, once it's named after them or they want that That pew for them or they got to, you know, and just go, the politics, but what came through was really the power of service to others. I always loved the hard rock cafe, had that slogan, what was it? Love all, serval. And I go, you know, I like that love all serval. It's like, why wouldn't I help people? Mo Austin was, I just love Mo. Me too. And Mo was one of those guys that I don't want to contrast them to Walter yet in the cough.

1:24:09Walter yet in the cough. When something was going on, Walter would figure out how he had an angle to get you. Yes. When something was going to want great, Mo would call you, I'm saying, what can I do to help? Yeah. And you know who got the most benefit from that? Mo. Because when Walls are trying to screw me or get something, you know, you say, I'm not gonna get that guy, anything or any power I don't have to. Mo, you go, I wanna do everything for Mo. Look at Mo's always helping me. And he did favors for people every time he could do it. Only because he could do the favor. Yeah. Not because he expected anything in return.

1:24:39No. And I love people in business like that. And I think some of that probably came from my dad, my mom, and my childhood, and where and how I grew up. Would you see your dad speak in church? Oh, yeah. My dad was like, tell me about this. It was just the preacher, but you know, it was funny in those days. I guess still now, this sermon was always trying to be relevant. Yeah. Like what's going on in the news? What is Alan movie or the TV show or something to make these values relevant? Because what is the sermon about? Is how do we get through life? You know, how do we cope? What should we do? What's the right thing?

1:25:11How many people would be in church? Mm. In those days, there were a lot of people, but maybe 250. So a lot. Yeah. Would you be proud of them when you see them? Yeah, I don't think you do. You know, we kids and parents, you don't sort of have that emotion. Later in life, I'm very proud of it. But at the time, that's just what my dad did. I see. And I was sort of the kid, preachers kids came in two colors. One that looked like preachers and the other that looked like, Oh, who's I can't? My brother was the first, I was the latter, and probably spent too much time trying to prove I wasn't a preacher.

1:25:47But my dad knew what was going on. It's interesting, my oldest son was having some teenage problems that I must have been bitching about it. And my dad says, you know what? There's nothing he does that's so bad that's worth losing your line of communication number. And my dad knew a lot more about what I was doing. Then he let on. He just revealed the secret. wisdom. And I repeated that to other people. Yeah. Kids going through it and go nothing is worth losing your line of communication over. Don't make too big a deal about it. Wow. They'll get through it. That's beautiful. Do you pray? You know, I think I pray a pray in a different way.

1:26:25I'm not sure who I'm praying to or what. But I feel absolutely connected to other consciousness. And I think it's ridiculous to think that there's not something else going on here. I've had sort of an interesting relationship with my mom who my mother always wanted a girl in the family. There haven't been a girl since the 1890s in the Pittman family and my daughter was finally born Lucy Pittman. My mother was alive. This was like the greatest thing in the world of the daughter. I talked to my mother on a Sunday night and I was down in Mexico. I said, I'll see you in a couple of weeks and we'll fly through Jackson see you the nanny comes down is up with the kids She comes out says I'll Lucy woke up in the night was screaming and Screaming for me down me down me calm and she said I walked toward the room and there was a light on the room I had to leave a light on the room and I said Lucy and the light went off and she said I went in the room And I go Lucy what's going on?

1:27:21She said there's somebody in the room and she says she looks where I go so there's no one in the room It's okay, and she said I talked her into going back to sleep and she finally went back to sleep an hour later my brother called and said mom died in her sleep last night and I go wow this is on her way out she comes to see Lucy. That is wild. So all of us in the family talked my mom and my daughter who you know barely remembers my mother. Praise to her. Tell me. Yes. Beautiful story. It's amazing the mystical experiences that we can have. If we're open and pay attention, there really is magic in the world.

1:28:04Completely convinced that you were all connected there. I sat with my dad when he died and held his hand, my brother and I, and sort of talked him through it. He was sort of struggling. We go, Dad, it's okay, you're right, you can go. And he left. But he was still breathing. The body was still breathing. The heart was still, and my brother and I both looked each other. He just left. He left this body. And the body goes on for a little while and then a couple hours later, it stops breathing and art stops. And my mother, I talked to her about stuff. And I think, I'm making this up. Am I just like, am I putting words up there and just, and I go, why would I be thinking that?

1:28:42I mean, where did it come from? And I do think we have that capability to connect. One of the awful things we do is we try and talk people out of intuition of just that And when I was a young kid in 2021, I went with my girlfriend in the sink called Silver Mind Control. And they, what they basically teach you is go down the level like you're meditating, go in a room, put a screen up and put up stuff you need the answers to or that you want to visualize to see happen. And at the last day, you go around the room, they're like 300 people in a bowl room somewhere. I don't know any of them. And they said, go to 10 different people.

1:29:19and they tell you someone's name and you tell them what's wrong with the person. And I hit 10 on 10. But when I hit them, I would say, I'm not sure anything, I'll cancer. And they go, right. And what they're teaching you is, why did you say cancer instead of diabetes? That's actually an answer. You don't trust it. Because it didn't like the home. It's like, but it just came to you. Yeah. Just say what comes to you. Yeah, it's subtle, but it's in us. And by the way, all of us who've done creative work, it is like the stuff that just comes to you is usually the bright answer. You know, this whole thing of don't overthink it.

1:29:54And usually it's not our idea, right? Do you know what I'm saying? It's not like you can't really take credit for it, even though it does come through you. Right. It's just there. It's just there. It's just there. And you just see it that way. And by the way, and the stuff I have done that's really great, the stuff that, like, a meteor hit me in the head. I didn't want to play out that. It wasn't worked out. It's just like it's the epiphany. And I, you know, at work, I preach the people that what really makes the difference in our business are the two or three epiphany you have, not the day -to -day process.

1:30:28That just sort of keeps the train running. What makes the difference are those epiphany where you go, I got it. Wait a minute. And we all have times of the day. We do that. Mine is, I wake up in the night with them sometimes. And I do it and I take a nice hot shower in the morning, sort of meditative shower. and the answer has come to me. If I just got a block, I can't write something. Suddenly, I got it all in my head. In the shower. I just, I'm rush out and write down a speech, a promo, a spot, or something that I've been struggling with. It just comes to me. And if you don't write it down, it might go away.

1:30:58It goes away. And it's interesting, because I've, you know, talked to people about this creative process. That, you know, it seems, the one I believe works, is when we load ourselves up with all the facts, and then forget about it. Yeah. And then one day in the most unexpected places, the answer comes to you. You're not thinking about it at all. It just blows. I got it. Now, somebody like David Eagleman, who's the great neuroscientist from Stanford, will say you're subconscious of working on it. He calls the conscious mind the broom closet in the mansion of your mind that most of us is the unconscious, the subconscious.

1:31:35And he said, the subconscious is working all the time. And when it's got something ready, it stands I don't know whether it's that or whether it's the cosmic we're all tied together. Maybe a little above. Well, good. And he uses this example. He said, you know, you are sitting in a busy restaurant. And he goes, I say your name? Well, they say my name. And he goes, how did you hear that? So actually, you're subconscious of listening to everything that hits your eardrums. It only makes you aware of something when it's relevant. Yeah. And it explains a lot. You've talked about making decisions very quickly and moving things fast, are there times not to move fast?

1:32:14Yeah, when you have a crisis. You gotta take a beat. Because your first reaction is gonna be hysteria. I see. And I just think you gotta take a beat, is trying to tax yourself a little bit and do it. But it's almost the opposite of what most people would do. Most people would take time ruminating over something where there's no time pressure associated. And then in an emergency, they deal in the moment. Yeah, and in an emergency say, okay, when do I have to have a decision? Well, we got to make an announcement about tomorrow morning. Okay, then we have until tomorrow morning. Yeah, let's let's think about it Yeah, let's sort of go through it and then ID aid a bit Our all businesses the same On one level.

1:32:57Yes You know, and if you love business, which I love I can be as excited about six like steam parks and century 21 on a real estate as I'm a mad American online or I hard. Business is an ultimate game. And with my kids, you know, you're trying explain them why am I working so hard? And I think the best answer I ever had, someone told me this, I forgot who told me, but it poised it right. Said don't tell your kids that you don't like work and you're sorry you're working because then they go, well, why the hell you leaving me if you don't like it? Tell them you love it. And so I tell my kids, you know, work for me is like a video game for you.

1:33:33I can't wait to get up in the morning and start playing. At the end of the day, I don't want to put it away. And I just love thinking about stuff. I love the sort of the chess pieces that move around. Like, oh, we can move this over here, this over here. By the time I go to bed, I'm working on this stuff and thinking about it, thinking about it in the night. I wake up sometimes, I have to make a couple of notes. But it just occupies my mind and keeps me stimulated. So on that level, all businesses say I could get excited about whether it's a business doing, you know, $100 ,000 a year business doing, you know, 40 billion in revenue.

1:34:06It's just the same. It's all the problem solving, really? I think it's, I'm sorry, it's also the creative. It's the math and the magic. Yeah. And I'm pretty good at math. I've got sort of a math mind. And I get really excited about the magic part. And I just love other people who have the magic part. I love the debates. I love the math people too. I do long debates with research people all the time. Well, I don't think it's showing it's that. I think it's showing it's this. How are we going to interpret that? And it's that, again, that camaraderie that comes from a process. And I think, look, you talked earlier about community.

1:34:38You threw it at a couple of times. I think it's about, we love our community. And business is my community. And the company I'm with is my community, my people, my team. And there's nothing I can't do for them. It's just like we're in it together. How much of your particular skill set do you think you learned in school? None. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I went to probably the worst public school in America for Kaven, Mississippi. There were a couple of teachers who were really great, sadly, in that era, if you were a woman, you didn't have many opportunities for jobs. So there were some brilliant women that were teachers that today would be investment bankers or lawyers or doctors or physicists or scientists or something.

1:35:22But back then, they were teachers. And I got a lot from them. And sort of, I was a good learner. I mean, I had really good grades, and I did really well on the standardized test. But I was always just looking for something that interest me. I think some of my success is I'm not well educated, smart, but not well educated. So I never learned the wrong way to do stuff. When I was 30, I went back to when there were, when I was at MTV and they were preparing me to be the CEO because I was too young, they were apoplectic that I wasn't college graduate. I'd only done three years of college, never done my senior year.

1:35:57And so they put me in this advanced management program at the Harvard Business School, 13 weeks and people who are sort of going to CEO next go do this. So I went and my first observation was, ah, now I know why people are asking me the wrong questions about my business. Yeah. They learned it in school. That wasn't coming out of their head. They were just repeating something. And I think not knowing allowed me to see things differently than others. I mean, we did him to be, I didn't know I was doing anything different. I was just doing what seemed like the logical thing to do. And so other people maybe say, oh my God, we're being disruptive.

1:36:33I did a lot of disruptive things in my career. I never once thought I was being disruptive. I thought I was just... You didn't know what you were disrupting. I was just like doing what seems to be, oh, we need to... There's the way you do it. Yeah. I didn't know I was disrupting it. I'm sorry, guys. I didn't know I was disrupting it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do technical innovations change existing business models? You know what, I think they open up opportunities. In my business career, I think there's only one rule that I always follow, the consumer wants convenience. And if I can find something they like doing and make it easier, I'll have a winning product.

1:37:09So I'm constantly in search of what makes this easier. And if people say, here's a new business And they go, well, you got to go two more steps. I go, that's not going to work. And they go, oh, you just push a button, it all happens, I go, that's going to work. So I have these sort of prisms I put it through, but put it through because I understand the consumer. And what I can't do, a B to B business, I wouldn't know what to do. But I know consumer business as well, because the consumer's the same consumer. Whether I'm trying to - I may have always been your whole life. Whether I'm selling them a house, it's essentially what it is.

1:37:40Whether I'm trying to get them to watch MTV, or trying to get them to listen to whatever, It's the same consumer. And so they behave in a very reliable way if you really study them and listen to them. What's the status of AM radio today? It's surprising. It's still there and still doing well. You know, it doesn't have the audience at once had. But what's interesting is in time of need, people go to the AM. There's the wildfire here. You know where they're going to KFI, KFI and KNX out here and the KFI's hours. And by the way, we are 24 hours. All the feeds during the fires came from KFI. People know AM is there and it's their safety.

1:38:21When a hurricane comes along, when a tornado comes, there's terrible disaster comms to go the AM station. AM stations also tend to be pretty battle hardened. So when this storm hit the Carolina's, remember that? Yeah. There were places where there was no cell service. There was no TV. There was nothing except a couple of AM stations. They got every bit of their information from the AM stations. When things are really terrible, they may have an AM radio in the house, they go into the car which has a battery, they turn it on, and listen to the AM radio. And we know our job by the way is, our job is to serve the community.

1:38:59Normally that's keep them entertained, keep them companionship. In a disaster, it changes. It is like stop what you're doing, do nothing but give these people critical information they need. You know, if there's a flood in Houston, you'll hear people on the air calling in, I'm on top of my house. Where are you? We're going to send a boat for you. We're connecting boats to people and getting people out of these problems. And that to me, you know, you always want a bigger sense of purpose in what you do in life. And I think for all of us who work in radio, the bigger sense of purpose is we know we serve the community.

1:39:34and those AM stations are an integral part of serving that community. Maybe we don't get a big audience, maybe we don't make so much money on them, but when you got to serve the community, give me my AM stations, because they allow me to do something that the FM's can't do. Could you imagine any additional use for AM considering how robust it is and how it covers the country that's not happening now? You know, it doesn't have a lot of spectrum with it. So you say, hey, I can repurpose it. You can't do a lot with that amount of spectrum. So I dial up modem kind of spectrum. But it is, I think the best thing we can do is, you start to say, what's the service of radio?

1:40:13Keep people company. What higher purpose is to keep people company? I mean, you and I have plenty of friends, who would probably make friends easily. A lot of people in America don't. And they're lonely. Was it 50 % of Americans talk about having bouts of loneliness? And young kids, I just saw some study that was like, there was four statements, which a predictor of depression. They were hanging at about the 20 % range until about 2015 and then they took off up to about 50%. And you go, these people need somebody to hang out with. They need somebody who's not judgmental. They need somebody who just sounds friendly and nice and gives them the information that they're looking for and sounds interested in them.

1:40:52And I just think, you know, when you sort of think about higher purpose, they add go back to my dad, that is the minister. What higher purpose than just to put your arm around somebody and say, it's gonna be okay. Yeah, give you a hug. How has social media impacted the media business? It's expanded it because before social media, Elvis Durand, Ryan Seeker, a Charlemagne to God, they would talk about things on the radio but would have no idea whether the listeners responding unless they happen to call the request line. And you only had so many lines and the private on very scientific. Today, if you watch them, they're all watching social as the show's going on.

1:41:31Ryan probably is the master of this. What's catching on? And if it's catching on, is it catching on the way, or is it going left or right? And they can now move. And so these shows stay extraordinarily relevant to people in real time. And what else is real time out there? Nothing has this audience. We reach more people in the month than Facebook does. We reach more people in a month than Google does. And so when you've got this kind of reach, it's like hideous stay relevant. and social allows us to stay in tune with that audience every minute. Coming about your media consumption habits. I probably live on social too much.

1:42:08I listen to radio a lot. Probably if I'm on TV, I'm just watching news. And then I'll watch the streaming services. My partner is in the movie and TV business. So she's always got something we should see. So she sort of keeps me relevant and watching interesting stuff. and I read every newspaper online. I read probably about six of them in the morning and check them hourly or through the day. I'm sort of a news junkie. As in love with flying, has you ever been? I have been, but I just stopped flying. I've gotten to the age where the insurance company basically says, you know, Mr. Pittman will ensure you, but not with the liability limits you've had.

1:42:49And I go, I can't fly. And the truth is probably my reflexes are not what they were. I used to ride motorcycles a lot in my early 60s. I go, my reflexes aren't quite as good, so I'm gonna give up motorcycles. And so now I'm riding the back. First time after 50 years. Yeah. I don't go to the cockpit. How's the feel? It feels a little weird, but in some ways, this is probably a statement about aging. Is I, you know how I say, young guy, used to love to learn to fly a new plane. I used to love to go to flight school every year. And I used to love all that stuff. And as I got older, it was a chore.

1:43:23You go like, ah, I gotta go to school again, I gotta go again this year. And so and sometimes when there's really a particularly rough night, the weather's bad. And I know what the God's going through out there, I go, ah, so nice to be back here. Yeah, I'm not sweating. Yeah, you're sweating. I mean, look, I've flown with those guys and I've flown the simulator with them, you know, and training with them in the past. So I know what they're going through and we know each other. So, you know, I have an appreciation of what goes on. But I still love airplanes and I flew helicopters and airplanes and just sort of stopped both.

1:43:56You know, if I weren't working, I would probably do the extra time to go, okay, let me go work with the insurance company and try and compensate them and do. But I go, you know, 50 years, that's good. How did the technology of planes change over your life? When I started to flew very small airplanes and piston engines and you know, those got a little more sophisticated. but at a certain point I could afford to fly a turbo prop and then did that and then I followed four to fly. What's different about a turbo prop? A turbo prop's got a jet engine spinning a propeller. I see. And a turbine. And then when you go to jets you've got a turbine that you don't have the propeller on it, although you got a turbo fan which is a hidden way propeller.

1:44:35Yes, so that changed and we learned a lot more about sort of the mechanics of it and that was great. But what really has changed is the avionics, the navigation, the radios, etc. And if you think about what changes on an airplane and makes an airplane dated, it's usually the avionics. And on my plane, I've had the one I have now for 10 or 12 years, I have ripped out twice the avionics and put it all into the stuff because it's just... It's a computerized adventure. And the technology's just changed so much that we need that. But it's not the engines or the wings or that stuff don't change that much.

1:45:14What do you attribute the interest in country music in our culture lately? I think country music has always been an interesting country music. And it sort of goes up and down and it goes in cycles. You know, remember urban cowboy and you know that moment. Oh, it's rhinestone cowboy. There are moments when it comes along. And I did this country music station back in 1974 in Chicago. knew nothing about country and it used to be Howdy Partner and what was different about our station was I made it sound like it was top 40 and I hired a lot of old top 40 disc jockeys from the top 40 station in town WLS and it we did giveaways we sounded cosmopolitan we was like except we were playing country music now people in country thought I was the devil because I was like changing it but we didn't play to type yeah we just played like it said we're normal people playing country music.

1:46:05And I think we're seeing the same thing here and I think you know the more people who sort of touch country it helps. There was a story a couple of months ago about the Mkv news library being erased. Did you hear that story? Yeah. Why would you erase anything? Why would you erase a library that you own? What's happening? I don't know. Is there any answer you can come up with why it could possibly happen? Well, because of my says oh you know how much money costs us to store of that stuff and we have to have an archivist and we get rid of that job. It's only possible reason I can think of. I once did a show called the Morton Downey Jr.

1:46:40Show. And when we finished the show, it was a great show by the way. I mean, he broke all them. It was a great show. He was a crazy guy. And at the end, it was still a show where the producer cancels their own show. But it was, he did so many breakthroughs in that show, but we finished with it and then we've got all these tapes and we're say, what are we going to do with them? And people I'll say, well, no, but storm white. And I go, well, we can't throw it. To this day, I pay Iron Mountain to store those tapes. They're probably sawdust by now or dust that does, but I can't bring myself to be the one to say I'm gonna erase anything that's ever existed.

1:47:16I'm glad you're not erasing them. It is crazy, huh? Yeah. All those tonight shows shows that were erased way back then. That was like, why? Why? How much money could you possibly be saving? And by the way, if you look at the history, Every time you have something, you always make money on it in the future. There's another window. There's another use. It's unbelievable. It's crazy. Tell me about the podcast. Tell me about math and magic. When we first started getting into podcasting and began to be a pretty major publisher, I go, you know, I'd like to do one, but just for like marketers, because I talk to advertisers all the time and I go podcast not for the general public, but for them.

1:47:54And I'm going to start off with people I know pretty well, because I know a lot of stories about them others don't, but I want them trying to drag out of them or those lessons that you could use insights. And so it's fun to do. And I really surprisingly enjoyed it, although I get lazy. And we'll go, ah, this maybe I'm vacation time six months before I do another season. We do great research and that people help. But I do, I write the whole thing. And I, and the hardest thing is to go, what's an angle? I can talk about on this person that others don't know. What do I know about this person or what have I see here and you know what's I've got that you know writing the questions so I'll get pretty easy but it's trying to get that construct right but I love it and I'd say great way for me to stay current and you know even though I know people I mean old friends I do the research and I go I didn't know that but it's also you know I'm it's it's a great way for me with friends to bring up stories to about you know what contributions like Fred cyber to MTV you You know, Fred's the guy, did the on -air look.

1:48:57And, you know, it's great to sort of give him the kudos and to put it down on an archive that, you know, he did so many people want to tell the story of things I've done who weren't even in the room. I don't even know them. How can they possibly know? Yeah, they know. And so it's interesting. I mean, the people did these documentaries on MTV and I, they go, what are they talking to? And actually I did a math and magic. I've interviewed all the people who founded MTV with me. And I added it together, the real story of MTV. Great. And just took the pieces and just go, let's just tell, let's tell a story because we were all in the room.

1:49:31Yeah, and it's the only way you'll ever really know. Yeah, it's an archive. I think there's a value in it. So, I'm sure. Some of the podcasts I love doing for people is I want them to have a record of what they did. Yes. And so, what I'm trying to do in 45 minutes is give the story of who this person is. And it's like Walter Isaacs. I had Walter and when I set Walter from time down to be the CEO of CNM. And when we had 9 -11 happened and all the news was about 9 -11, you couldn't get any other news. So Walter had this idea to put the scroll at the bottom that every news channel does today. He did it so he could put the other news there even though they were covering 9 -11.

1:50:13That's when it started. And that was Walter who did that. And I know when it ever gave him a Walter the credit for it. So we had our podcast with great sales. Walter, we're putting it on the record. You know, you're the guy that did that.

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