MTV co-founder Tom Freston recounted the evolution of the groundbreaking television station yesterday. He focused on the 1980s media environment into which music videos were thrust and analyzed the network's move away from airing music videos.
Freston's speech, part of the semesterly Richard E. Snyder President's Lecture Series, highlighted the innovative ideas that MTV's original staff put forward and described the way in which the station both influenced and was shaped by the media world of the time. He also responded to criticisms of MTV's current programming and played video clips from the station's early days.
"If MTV was a person," he said, "it would be older than probably any of you in the audience. It would be out of college — assuming it ever got into college, which is doubtful."
Freston served as the chief executive officer of MTV Networks beginning in 1987, later becoming the CEO of Viacom, MTV's parent company. He resigned from that position in 2006 and now works as a consultant.
"I've sort of lost touch with [MTV] in the last few years, but I did know it in its early days … and that was when it played nothing but music," he said, recalling that people "referred to it as the biggest radio station on the planet."
He added, "It was a revolutionary thing when it first came out [in 1981]. It made quite a splash."
Freston detailed the progression of media since the popularization of television in the 1940s. He highlighted the introduction of the FM radio in the 1960s, the "media revolution" that followed cable television's launch in the 1970s, and cable's growth in the 1980s.
He explained how he became involved with MTV after running a clothing business in Afghanistan and India in the 1970s and emphasized the significance of serendipity in choosing career paths.
After reading in a trade publication about the idea for a 24-hour-a-day music video television station, he found a job working for the fledgling MTV project.
The station was owned by Warner Communications, Inc. — the precursor to Time Warner — and American Express, but Freston said that the early staff strove to challenge the existing television establishment by pushing for "narrow casting," or the splicing of different interests into narrowly-focused television stations.
"Even though we were owned by two big companies, we wanted to be subversive and non-corporate," he said.
In order to popularize itself, MTV went over the heads of risk-averse cable companies, calling on its viewers to demand the station in their home markets. The successful campaign led music-loving viewers to help MTV convince record companies and advertisers to climb on board, Freston said. The rising economy helped, too, as did the popularity the station gained from controversies it attracted, and MTV was first able to turn a profit in 1984, he added.
Freston then changed his focus to the amorphous meaning of the term "new media." For most of the latter half of the 20th century, he explained, it meant anything that would improve or surpass existing technology. Now the moniker refers to interactive and digitally produced and distributed content, he said.
"The MTV that we put on air back in the early 1980s is very different from the one that is there now," he said.
During a question-and-answer session, Freston disagreed with the accusation that MTV had destroyed music by putting more of a focus on visual elements and had transformed into a station that works against its founders' early antiestablishment goals.
"It's hard to be hot and cool and on the cutting edge for a long time … but they're still at it — they're still on the air," Freston said. "It's a big business, it's a different thing … It's hard to create big innovation in what is now a big company," especially in an industry for which the barriers for entry are now so low, he continued.
Assistant Professor of Sociology Sarah Sobieraj said that about 20 students, or about one-third, of her "Media and Society" class attended the lecture.
"MTV is certainly a station that has been through many transitions since it was created," she said, adding that Freston's emphasis on "the way they had to work so aggressively to press for something new, to press for innovation" was particularly relevant to her class.
The Snyder Lecture Series brings to campus "people who have succeeded in a variety of realms because of their willingness to challenge conventional wisdom," University President Lawrence Bacow told the audience before Freston spoke. Richard Snyder (A '55), who gave the endowed gift that funds the series, attended the Balch Arena Theater lecture, which was entitled "The Birth of MTV: New Media in the 1980s."
