Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production. I heart radio.
Speaker 1: I actually kept a notebook of what I would not
Speaker 1: do when I got to be the boss. When you
Speaker 1: gave me the opportunity, you kind of looked at me
Speaker 1: and said, I don't know what you can do, but
Speaker 1: let's see. Oh my god, nothing could be better than that.
Speaker 1: Just straight on challenge. We needed to be a rebellion.
Speaker 1: We were taking back Nickelodeon for kids. I am Bob Pittman,
Speaker 1: and welcome to this episode of Math and Magic Stories
Speaker 1: from the Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore the combination
Speaker 1: of analytics and creativity, Math and magic that's at the
Speaker 1: heart of so many marketing and business successes. Today. We
Speaker 1: have someone who led the birth of and transformed a
Speaker 1: number of major TV networks. She was also one of
Speaker 1: the first women to break through the men barrier in
Speaker 1: the entertainment media business. Jerry Leiborne. Her mom was a creative,
Speaker 1: her dad was in business. She clearly inherited both skills.
Speaker 1: She started out on a track and architecture, moved education,
Speaker 1: then advocacy for responsible TV for kids, produced kids TV
Speaker 1: program and then joined Nickelodeon at its birth to do
Speaker 1: the pro social Kids TV when it was a non
Speaker 1: commercial service for preschoolers. Later, as the head of the network,
Speaker 1: she transformed it to the first tweens TV network, added
Speaker 1: advertising and changed American culture. She went on too Disney,
Speaker 1: starting new networks, and finally started her own network, Oxygen.
Speaker 1: She's been on corporate boards, served as a mentor to
Speaker 1: countless women and executives. She lived through some to Redstones, takeover, Viacom,
Speaker 1: Michael Ovit's short tenure at Disney, and partner with Oprah,
Speaker 1: and her well known smile never left her face ever. Jerry, Welcome, Bob.
Speaker 1: It's so great to be here. You and I are
Speaker 1: old friends, so I know some stories even our best
Speaker 1: researchers can't find. But before we get into that, I
Speaker 1: want to do you in sixty seconds. Are you ready?
Speaker 1: Do you prefer Rugrats or Doug Doug, a silver bouncing
Speaker 1: ball or a green slime Green Slime cats or dogs
Speaker 1: Dogs Philly or New York New York Copper Cone Cone,
Speaker 1: The Dick Van Dyke Show, or Get Smart Dick Van Dyke,
Speaker 1: Texting or calling calling l A or tell your ride
Speaker 1: l A. Dennis the Menace or Mr Ed Mr Ed.
Speaker 1: Of course, cable TV or the Internet. Oh boy, that's
Speaker 1: a killer Internet Nickelodeon or Disney Channel Nickelodeon. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: about to get harder. What's your favorite city? Montreal? Secret talent?
Speaker 1: I can tie cherry stems in my mouth. I can
Speaker 1: tie a knot. We'll take your word for it. I
Speaker 1: can beat anybody at it except my daughter. Greatest motivator you.
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice. Thank you, smartest person you know. Danny
Speaker 1: hillis childhood hero Cat Moon, favorite novel, Plain Song by
Speaker 1: Kent har Roof. Who would play you in a movie?
Speaker 1: Lauren Mca? What would the title be of your memoir?
Speaker 1: Raised my Kids, Proudest professional achievement, the Global Mentors Walk?
Speaker 1: What did you want to be when you're growing up? Well?
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a doctor, and then I discovered
Speaker 1: that I have a condition that makes me faint if
Speaker 1: anybody tells me about an illness, and that kind of
Speaker 1: took that away. Okay, I promise we won't talk about
Speaker 1: any illness. Is thank you? If you could have one superpower,
Speaker 1: what would it be? World? Well, that's a good one. Okay.
Speaker 1: Let's jump back in time to us as young managers
Speaker 1: at what was then called wonder MX Satellite Entertainment Corporation,
Speaker 1: then in our day was MTV Networks and now it's Viacom.
Speaker 1: I had just moved up from the programming and marketing
Speaker 1: guy who led the product at MTV to be each
Speaker 1: chief operating officer of the company and turned my attention
Speaker 1: to Nickelodeon, a commercial, free, pro schoolers TV network where
Speaker 1: you were the key programmer. This was the mid eighties.
Speaker 1: We were just launching targeted or as we called it,
Speaker 1: the narrowcast TV networks, and you had a better idea
Speaker 1: for Nickelodeon. You wanted to go for tweens, older kids, preteens,
Speaker 1: and young teens. And by the way, one of my
Speaker 1: best executive decisions ever was to listen to you and
Speaker 1: invest in you and support that. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: about that vision and where it came from, Well, it
Speaker 1: came from being a teacher and a researcher with kids.
Speaker 1: I love kids, I'm a natural kid advocate, and I
Speaker 1: thought that television routinely looked down at kids and condescended
Speaker 1: to them and gave them subpar creators. And I felt
Speaker 1: like if you listened to kids and you treated them
Speaker 1: as if they were really smart, you could do some
Speaker 1: pretty interesting stuff. If you remember, we had no money
Speaker 1: that we couldn't do what anybody else did. But I
Speaker 1: would research everything that people said about kids TV, like
Speaker 1: program only two boys, girls will watch anything, kids will
Speaker 1: only watch animation. I'm such a contrarian. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if everybody else is going that direction, we're going to
Speaker 1: go this direction. So it was very much like MTV,
Speaker 1: because MTV was a contrarian network. Most of your shows
Speaker 1: were Canadian. They were cheap, but they were breakthrough. At
Speaker 1: one point, we had more Canadian content on Nickelodeon than
Speaker 1: any network in Canada except Windsor Ontario. Nickelodeon. You think
Speaker 1: of orange and green slime, Where did that green slime
Speaker 1: come from? It came out of you can't do that
Speaker 1: on television, which truly was I think the most important
Speaker 1: show ever produced kids because it took kids side and
Speaker 1: it used reverse psychology. It made kids feel better after
Speaker 1: watching it. But the premise of it was we had
Speaker 1: everyday kids and it was shot in Ottawa and so
Speaker 1: these were everyday Canadian kids. And the producer, Roger Price,
Speaker 1: wrote the show based on the personalities of the kids,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't making them be anything they weren't. He
Speaker 1: was just multiplying it, and they started to get kind
Speaker 1: of uppity and kind of like Hollywood kids. So he
Speaker 1: decided that he would start sliming. It was triggered by
Speaker 1: them saying, I don't know which he would write in
Speaker 1: the script for whoever needed to be put in their place.
Speaker 1: It ended up backfiring on him because they loved being slimmed.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been slimed? I was never slimed. I
Speaker 1: think I avoided the sliming. I got slimed in the
Speaker 1: office one day. It is wonderful. Well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take your word for that, because I'm not dying to
Speaker 1: be slimed. So if anybody look so good on you,
Speaker 1: don't slime me. So you were talking about MTV being contrarian.
Speaker 1: We had just introduced the idea of a network identity
Speaker 1: as opposed to a network delivering programs with the viewers
Speaker 1: affinity attached to just the program, and we decided that
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon could do the same thing. How did you define
Speaker 1: that and how did you make the big move from
Speaker 1: a somewhat corny silver bouncing ball for preschool or Nickelodeon
Speaker 1: to the cool new Nick you created. Well. First of all,
Speaker 1: I just have to say we never turned our back
Speaker 1: on preschoolers. We had the best preschool programming ever, but
Speaker 1: we had to be very careful to put it in
Speaker 1: its own buckets, so we called it Nick Jr. Our
Speaker 1: target was ten and tween, so that was a key
Speaker 1: thing because we were known for being a baby channel.
Speaker 1: I think you know the story of my son throwing
Speaker 1: his Nickelodeon hat in the closet when he was five, sobbing,
Speaker 1: and I said, what's the matter and he said, they say,
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon's a baby channel. Honestly, my inspiration for Nickelodeon was Sam.
Speaker 1: He was the coolest little five year old you ever saw,
Speaker 1: and we just grew up with them. But I'd also
Speaker 1: say that I was a student of what you were doing.
Speaker 1: I saw how right it was that if you focus
Speaker 1: on the audience and delight them and let the creative
Speaker 1: community do their best work without man handling or woman
Speaker 1: handling them, that you're going to get a really interesting result.
Speaker 1: That's what we did. We created, just like you did,
Speaker 1: a list of promises that we were the first network
Speaker 1: for kids. We were completely on their side. We were
Speaker 1: going to bring them the best creative we possibly could.
Speaker 1: Frett Cybert, who had done the original on airlook from
Speaker 1: TV and by the way, it has been on Math
Speaker 1: and Magic when he was on talk some about helping
Speaker 1: in that original creation of owning Orange. I remember when
Speaker 1: you guys presented it to me. My reaction was, Orange,
Speaker 1: that's it. From your vantage point, how did you get
Speaker 1: from that bouncing ball to this very cool image and
Speaker 1: attitude in that graphic look. Well, the bouncing ball was
Speaker 1: created by an outside agency that the guy before me
Speaker 1: had hired. It was very secretive. Nobody was a part
Speaker 1: of it. They had no relationship to kids, and they
Speaker 1: just thought, Okay, kids like this kind of stuff. No
Speaker 1: kid can attach themselves to a silver ball. It just
Speaker 1: isn't possible. And so Fred was incredibly collaborative, direct, honest.
Speaker 1: He would say you're wrong, and I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you why. And I didn't get upset by that. It
Speaker 1: was like, okay, tell me why. We learned together. I
Speaker 1: think Fred feels like he was my partner, which he was.
Speaker 1: We had a collaborative process. We had a wonderful guy
Speaker 1: named Tom Corey and Tom Papa Cello, who were true geniuses.
Speaker 1: We got delighted by anything. So creative agencies wanted to
Speaker 1: work with us be because we would say, give us
Speaker 1: ten ideas and we'll pick three, and we won't tell
Speaker 1: you how to change them. We just set rules the
Speaker 1: same way MTV. You were a container, you wanted people
Speaker 1: to connect with it. One of the things we did
Speaker 1: when we started taking advertising we would get buckets of mail.
Speaker 1: They would be decorated on the outside with kids own shapes.
Speaker 1: Because the idea behind Nickelodeon is it's like a kid's
Speaker 1: mind constantly transforming. We knew that if we took an
Speaker 1: envelope that was decorated on the outside, we could take
Speaker 1: it into a sales meeting and just let them open
Speaker 1: the letters. And it worked. It worked. But that was
Speaker 1: a lesson from MTV. Get identification that kids can make
Speaker 1: their wrong Before we get into the impact of Nickelodeon
Speaker 1: and your networks. After that, let's go further back to
Speaker 1: your childhood to get some perspective. Your mom had been
Speaker 1: a writer, actor, and producer of soap operas. Your dab
Speaker 1: was a stockbroker. Were they true to their stereotypes? Was
Speaker 1: that a creative in a business person? Absolutely? And what
Speaker 1: was the impact on you from having that range, there
Speaker 1: was a third element. My mother was an advocate for kids,
Speaker 1: so it was really like a trifecta. And also my
Speaker 1: mother broke every rule, including how to open a milk cart,
Speaker 1: so we had sloppy milk my entire childhood. She didn't
Speaker 1: like to go the same way twice. I was the
Speaker 1: middle daughter. My older sister was beautiful and perfect, my
Speaker 1: younger sister was brilliant and charismatic. And there's me, eighteen
Speaker 1: months apart, squeezed in and my dad when I was five,
Speaker 1: said you're going to be my business daughter, and he
Speaker 1: made me treasurer of the family. I took out bank
Speaker 1: accounts for my irresponsible siblings. I went to business meetings
Speaker 1: with my dad when I was eight nine. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in New Jersey. This was the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. Paint the picture of those times. What
Speaker 1: was the spot Cara? Schools were very science focused. I
Speaker 1: went to public school. I had thirteen hours of biology.
Speaker 1: As a freshman, I got the lowest grade in my class,
Speaker 1: seven sixteen on my college boards. One year, we had
Speaker 1: half session. I organized our clubhouse for the other half day.
Speaker 1: I made people do debates and plays, and I was
Speaker 1: so nerdy. I rode away to every foreign embassy and
Speaker 1: my hobby was alphabetizing. That is nerdy, wonderfully nerdy. You
Speaker 1: know it's da people don't realize. In those days we
Speaker 1: didn't have the internet. There's no kids TV programming on TV.
Speaker 1: I rode away to observatories and asked them for pictures
Speaker 1: of planets with letters and stamps, and I got a
Speaker 1: surprising number back. Did you pay much attention to TV
Speaker 1: inter youth? I did. There wasn't that much that was
Speaker 1: really oriented to kids. There were some local shows like
Speaker 1: the Herb Briner show, I Love Top Long Cassidy. When
Speaker 1: TV was installed, they had actually a guy who came
Speaker 1: in plugged in our TV, turned it on and my
Speaker 1: mother said, well, hello television, and the television said right
Speaker 1: back to her, hello out there in television land. So,
Speaker 1: as a three year old, I thought TV could see me.
Speaker 1: I would take a bath, get dressed up and sit
Speaker 1: in front of the television so hoppy could see me.
Speaker 1: In your high school era, were you a sixties radical
Speaker 1: or a mainstream suburban kid. I would say I was
Speaker 1: a suburban kid. I didn't get radicalized. Till later. You've
Speaker 1: been a long time and major supporter of Vassar. Why
Speaker 1: did you go to Vassar? Well, my sister was there.
Speaker 1: I was deciding between Cornell and Vassar, and ironically, I'd
Speaker 1: always had really great relationships with boys in high school
Speaker 1: and not that many close relationships with girls, and I
Speaker 1: thought that if I was going to be a good,
Speaker 1: effective human, I better learn how to have female friends.
Speaker 1: The other thing about Vasser that was appealing to me
Speaker 1: is Vasser is a contrarian place. Every student there is
Speaker 1: taught to question everything and go to the source and
Speaker 1: not to take other people's interpretations of things, and that
Speaker 1: was sort of made for me. What did you get
Speaker 1: out of that experience looking back all these years later, Well,
Speaker 1: they actually taught me how to run things. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that I was the best student in the world,
Speaker 1: but I really was dedicated to helping the administration and
Speaker 1: also the student body. They put me on the master
Speaker 1: Planning committee that was studying how to turn Vasser from
Speaker 1: a female college to a co ed college. And I
Speaker 1: got to run committee meetings and have architects and you know,
Speaker 1: it was just they took us seriously. What was the
Speaker 1: big issue that Vasser was facing and moving from all
Speaker 1: women to co ed well. At the time, the men's
Speaker 1: schools were jealous of Harvard because Harvard had Radcliffe right
Speaker 1: next door, so they felt to be competitive with Harvard,
Speaker 1: they have to have their own girls. It was really
Speaker 1: like Gale wanted to date us and marry us and
Speaker 1: barry us. That's too harsh, but harsh. They just wanted
Speaker 1: to be competitive in attracting the best and the brightest.
Speaker 1: So that was going on at Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, everywhere, Wesleyan, Williams,
Speaker 1: and for us to be successful, we had to go
Speaker 1: co educational. It's a very special place and it's always
Speaker 1: been about access. First it was access to women. Then
Speaker 1: it was access to men who wanted an equal co education.
Speaker 1: Now it's access to diverse economic populations. So you graduated,
Speaker 1: you worked briefly in an arctic actual firm, and then
Speaker 1: as a school teacher, you got your masters from the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania, pen and then you co founded the
Speaker 1: Media Center for Children in nineteen four. What was that about.
Speaker 1: It was about looking at kids and watching them look
Speaker 1: at very avant garde film. We tried all kinds of
Speaker 1: crazy National Film Board of Canada Short Films and we
Speaker 1: got into the independent creative community in that way, so
Speaker 1: Eli Noise and Drew Takahashi. We were just trying to
Speaker 1: see what is true about what kids would be interested
Speaker 1: in tolerate. We also worked with schools and libraries to
Speaker 1: get kids to be interactive with media, so it was
Speaker 1: really like the perfect background. Just hold on a second,
Speaker 1: because we've got so much more to talk about. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after a quick break. Welcome back to Math
Speaker 1: and Magic. We're here with Jerry Leborne. You left to
Speaker 1: join Nickelodeon in nine. What attracted you to Nickelodeon? In
Speaker 1: that mission, we had a grant. Our mission was to
Speaker 1: market the work of independent filmmakers to television, and Nickelodeon
Speaker 1: was our first client and we were the first producers
Speaker 1: that they ever hired. And we had this crazy show
Speaker 1: video dream Theater where we would animate kids into their
Speaker 1: own dreams using color, xerox or masks. Julie Tamar, who
Speaker 1: went on to do The Lion King and lots of everything,
Speaker 1: she was our maskmaker. It was just a really creative,
Speaker 1: fabulous thing. By the way, horrible television kids dream about abandonment,
Speaker 1: suffocation and it's just terrible, but I got hired. You
Speaker 1: had a boss at Nickelodeon before you were the boss.
Speaker 1: Where did you learn from that boss? Well, he was
Speaker 1: a very conventional, top down manager. I don't think we
Speaker 1: had a single team meeting the whole time he was
Speaker 1: vice president of Nickelodeon. I was the first president, thank you.
Speaker 1: He had low expectations. He sent all of our good
Speaker 1: creative problems to old crony friends outside, and he didn't
Speaker 1: encourage us to work together. I actually kept a notebook
Speaker 1: of what I would not do when I got to
Speaker 1: be the boss. So when you gave me the opportunity,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this, but you kind
Speaker 1: of looked at me and said, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you can do, but let's see. It wasn't like, okay,
Speaker 1: you're now the executive vice president of Nickelodeon. It was
Speaker 1: just I know enough not to get rid of you.
Speaker 1: Let's see what you can do. Oh my god, nothing
Speaker 1: could be better than that, Just a straight on challenge.
Speaker 1: I took the twenty people that were working for Nickelodeon
Speaker 1: off to a conference room and we put all the
Speaker 1: things we know about Nickelodeon here's what's not working, here's
Speaker 1: what's working. And at the end of the day I
Speaker 1: knew which people were going to be on the team
Speaker 1: and which we're not. I fired seven people. We needed
Speaker 1: to be a rebellion. We were taking back Nickelodeon for
Speaker 1: Kids after the switch to add support in the replaunch
Speaker 1: of Nickelodeon's The Twain Channel. You really struck gold. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about one what that felt
Speaker 1: like and to why you think Nickelodeon caught on like that? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, it helps to be the first, to
Speaker 1: have really no competition, and to be true to your audience.
Speaker 1: We literally did not put anything on the air that
Speaker 1: hadn't been tested with kids, and we were adventuresome. We
Speaker 1: had some big flops. I remember promising you The Moon
Speaker 1: with Turkey TV was going to be comedy clips like
Speaker 1: MTV for kids, and the day it arrived on Memorial
Speaker 1: Day weekend five, it was even worse than Video Dream Theater.
Speaker 1: My son, who at this point was ten, just started
Speaker 1: to sob. This is horrible. You will never work in
Speaker 1: TV again. I called everybody back to the office and
Speaker 1: we spent six days re editing everything. You know. You
Speaker 1: let me off the hook on that. Well, one thing
Speaker 1: we all know is you don't come close to getting
Speaker 1: it right. In fact, it's the big flops that we
Speaker 1: got to take the chances. And we worked for a
Speaker 1: guy named Steve Ross who ran Warner Communications and then
Speaker 1: Time Warner. And Steve used to say, you know, bomb
Speaker 1: around here, you a number of you fired for making
Speaker 1: a mistake. You'll be fired for not making a mistake.
Speaker 1: You're not making mistakes. Tells me you're not trying anything new.
Speaker 1: And that was our lifeblood. But it was just so
Speaker 1: much fun. And the other thing was if you were
Speaker 1: working at Nickelodeon, you really had to let kids. I
Speaker 1: had this trick question which I would ask any employee,
Speaker 1: probably illegal, what were you like as a kid, And
Speaker 1: they tell you everything, how they get along with their siblings,
Speaker 1: how they're going to work in a team, and what
Speaker 1: they care about. Let's talk a minute about how it
Speaker 1: was to be a woman in this very big job,
Speaker 1: in this very highly visible environment. Well, I had this boss,
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. The first day that I was invited into
Speaker 1: the executive suite, there were only four of us, Tom Preston, you,
Speaker 1: Bob Burgante and me. I made my husband quiz me
Speaker 1: for four hours about sports metaphors. It was terrifying to me.
Speaker 1: And I come in and the first sports metaphor that
Speaker 1: I could possibly come up with I came up with,
Speaker 1: and of course I used tennis metaphor in a basketball court.
Speaker 1: And you looked at me and said, you can skip that.
Speaker 1: We have you here for what you know, and I
Speaker 1: don't care about sports. We want you to be you.
Speaker 1: You have no idea how incredibly empowering that was, and
Speaker 1: if men would do that, they would get such better results.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't that hard for me. You wanted me
Speaker 1: to be the nerdy, caring, creative, loving head, and you
Speaker 1: encouraged me to make mistakes, and you didn't hold grudges.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you as a school teacher. We talked
Speaker 1: back then about how that helped you as both a
Speaker 1: programmer and as an executive, and by the way, was
Speaker 1: in a big influence on your management style. Talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. So I went to Penn during
Speaker 1: the days of open classrooms, which is a very short
Speaker 1: lived American experiment. Open classroom if it's done well, and
Speaker 1: it was done well in England is the greatest kind
Speaker 1: of education. For a kid because it's oriented towards individualized instructions.
Speaker 1: So your job as a teacher is to find out
Speaker 1: what's great about you lift that up. It's not remediation
Speaker 1: orient So that had huge impact on my management style.
Speaker 1: Just to illustrate the success you had there, One of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories, and I tell it often about you,
Speaker 1: is we tried to buy the company in the management
Speaker 1: buyout and the TV networks which included Nickelodeon and MTV,
Speaker 1: and it was sad and Viacom bought us, and this
Speaker 1: was pre sunder Redstone Viacom. They got us to do
Speaker 1: this for a rigorous five year plan each year, and
Speaker 1: I remember the last one I did five years later.
Speaker 1: I'm in my office. I get an envelope. Open up
Speaker 1: the envelope. It's a xerox copy of the fifth year
Speaker 1: of the Nick budget page and it was a handwritten
Speaker 1: note from you on it that said, what you didn't believe?
Speaker 1: That was it? Of course, the point was you had
Speaker 1: crushed the five your number. I still remember walking out
Speaker 1: of the office of my tail between my legs, being
Speaker 1: beaten up about how could I put that dream down there?
Speaker 1: It was on fire. You and Tom Preston actually were
Speaker 1: the reasons some the red Stone and Tom Dooley bought Viacom.
Speaker 1: I was instrumental in setting up a meeting with you
Speaker 1: and Tom for Sumner and you had a golden career there.
Speaker 1: You became vice chair of MTV Networks as well. You
Speaker 1: couldn't have been bigger, more important, and more successful. And
Speaker 1: then you left to go to Disney take over their
Speaker 1: cable networks and even fix up the Disney Channel, which
Speaker 1: have been your big competition, or at least they tried
Speaker 1: to be. Why did you leave? Well, I I could
Speaker 1: see some bad times ahead. I loved Nickelodeon. Leaving was
Speaker 1: probably the hardest thing. I felt like it was, am
Speaker 1: I going to be anybody tomorrow? When I'm not, I
Speaker 1: don't have Nickelodeon. And by the way, I think you
Speaker 1: and I shared that I had that fear of MTV.
Speaker 1: You had fear of Nickelodeon. It was so much us,
Speaker 1: We loved, the people we worked with was just the greatest, really,
Speaker 1: but the structure of Viacom and MTV Networks. By this point,
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon was making more money than MTV and there was
Speaker 1: lots of messy stuff around v H one, and I
Speaker 1: just felt like it was going to be hard for
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon to really do what I wanted it to do.
Speaker 1: The mission of Nickelodeon was to connect with kids and
Speaker 1: connect kids with their world through entertainment. Now if there
Speaker 1: isn't a better Internet mission statement, we wrote that I
Speaker 1: look back, if HEIGHT stayed, would we have been successful
Speaker 1: in doing that? But I like to grow, I like
Speaker 1: to try things, and I felt like I was starting
Speaker 1: to get resistance the Viacom management could not understand why
Speaker 1: I wanted to have a different kind of participation. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be participating in the growth of Nickelodeon because
Speaker 1: when we started, Nickelodeon was worth less than nothing, and
Speaker 1: when I left it was between eight and ten billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which is more than Viacom is today. And so it's
Speaker 1: a serious business concern. So you go to Disney, you
Speaker 1: sign a four year contract, you really do improve the
Speaker 1: product there, you bring in some great people, you really
Speaker 1: revamp it, and then you left. You left two years
Speaker 1: later to start Oxygen. Give me some insights there. I
Speaker 1: had been courted by Iger, Eisner and Ovits in their
Speaker 1: separate buckets, so when they all came together who do
Speaker 1: we want to get? Jerry Leborne. I'd only had really
Speaker 1: one big job, and it felt pretty good to want
Speaker 1: to be wanted, as opposed to the pushback that you
Speaker 1: get when you're highly successful in a company and their
Speaker 1: sibling rivalry. And I felt like if I didn't take
Speaker 1: a chance on myself. I always was comfortable taking a
Speaker 1: chance for Nickelodeon and my staff, but how about me.
Speaker 1: I didn't sign a long term contract that had no outs.
Speaker 1: I had the right to quit for no reason. I
Speaker 1: got to Disney. I met a lot of fabulous people.
Speaker 1: I made lifetime friendships. Danny hillis who is the smartest
Speaker 1: man in the world. We had the imagineers inventing telefusion
Speaker 1: and convergence, and it was exciting. But it wasn't my
Speaker 1: crusader kind of thing. They really wanted me to fix things,
Speaker 1: and they didn't really want to invest in the things
Speaker 1: they talked about, so I waited. I got two years
Speaker 1: worth of options. I went to Michael Eisner and said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to start at a new company. Do you
Speaker 1: want to be an investor? And he said yes, and
Speaker 1: I left. You joined Oprah and others. I want to
Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. But I want to
Speaker 1: stop down for just a few minutes here and download
Speaker 1: some of what you learned from all that, because that's
Speaker 1: a remarkable span of opportunities situations. First, talk about brands,
Speaker 1: What are they? How do you think about what a
Speaker 1: brand is and how do you build them? I believe
Speaker 1: you don't have a brand unless your audience tells you
Speaker 1: you have a brand. It's a relationship with your audience.
Speaker 1: When we took over the Disney Channel, I brought Ann
Speaker 1: Sweeney and and Rich Ross. We looked at what was
Speaker 1: happening with the Disney Channel. All it was was taking
Speaker 1: the equity of Disney. There was no equity around the
Speaker 1: Disney Channel. There was no relationship with the audience. All
Speaker 1: they wanted to do is a pay channel. All they
Speaker 1: wanted to do is make sure somebody bought it. Month
Speaker 1: after month in the seven pm slot, one they'd have
Speaker 1: an Eisenhower documentary and the next night they'd have Dumbo.
Speaker 1: But the kids were dying. That was a big, big moment,
Speaker 1: So we tried to create an identity for the Disney Channel.
Speaker 1: We took the old lessons and we created an identity
Speaker 1: and then ate Nickelodeon's lunch. Let's talk about building companies,
Speaker 1: building teams. What kind of culture do you need to
Speaker 1: have a building situation? Well, you need different thinkers at
Speaker 1: the table. You need people who are strategic, you need
Speaker 1: people who are creative, you need people who are technical,
Speaker 1: and you need to make sure that they feel comfortable
Speaker 1: giving voice to their point of view and that in fact,
Speaker 1: the team depends on them. Debbie BC was of the
Speaker 1: Fred Cyberg school. You're wrong, and I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you why that's the best thing for a dreamer like
Speaker 1: me to have. You couldn't have a better relationship up
Speaker 1: We all had this philosophy that our responsibility was to
Speaker 1: make sure everybody at the table was getting an a.
Speaker 1: We had a program called the PIT program Presidents in Training,
Speaker 1: So everybody at my executive team were presidents in training.
Speaker 1: And I promised them, if you come in here and
Speaker 1: look at our problems from up here, we will all
Speaker 1: learn to be presidents together, and you won't all be
Speaker 1: president of Nickelodeon, but you'll get to be president of something.
Speaker 1: And many of them did. They didn't let me get
Speaker 1: some personal insights here. One of your key relationships has
Speaker 1: been probably for I think all of your adult life
Speaker 1: has been your partnership with your husband kit wildly creative. Funny.
Speaker 1: You both worked sometimes together, certainly in related fields. How
Speaker 1: did you actually work like that and never get at
Speaker 1: each other's throats. We did get at each other's throats
Speaker 1: because it, you know, but it was around taxes or
Speaker 1: something like that. He wanted to do it thoroughly, and
Speaker 1: I had an attitude that it was worth four hours
Speaker 1: a year to do our taxes and not endlessly crossing
Speaker 1: teas and dotting eyes. So I took over the business
Speaker 1: aspects of our life, and he really was a creative force.
Speaker 1: He backed me up on most of the big creative choices,
Speaker 1: and I knew that I wasn't going to go wrong.
Speaker 1: We laugh a lot. Even when he worked on shows
Speaker 1: for Neck or Oxygen, he never worked for me. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons that we did so well with independent
Speaker 1: producers was because I slept with the one. He would
Speaker 1: keep reminding me how to not be a bad executive.
Speaker 1: Your two kids are in the business, is that a surprise? Honestly?
Speaker 1: Growing up in our house where every dinner conversation was
Speaker 1: about what should we name this show? Or does this work?
Speaker 1: We had a big house in Montclair, and in the
Speaker 1: early years, you know, we had no budgets. Most of
Speaker 1: Turkey TV was shot at our house in Montclair, so
Speaker 1: my kids had to do things like throw frogs out
Speaker 1: of the window and Sam would catch them. You know,
Speaker 1: it just was too much fun. How could you be
Speaker 1: a banker after that? That? So let's go back to Oxygen.
Speaker 1: You talked about Nickelodeon and how you fit into the
Speaker 1: Viacom world. You talked about Disney and these big names
Speaker 1: and big executives there, and you got Oxygen. Although it's
Speaker 1: your network, your partners were all world class creators, all
Speaker 1: had vision. All it worked hard. How did you harness that? Well?
Speaker 1: It probably was the hardest thing I ever did, But
Speaker 1: there was a lot of goodwill towards Oxygen. The first
Speaker 1: partner we had was Marcy Carcy and Carcy Werner. Marcy
Speaker 1: is just about the most fantastic creative person you can
Speaker 1: ever be a partner with. One day we thought, how
Speaker 1: could we make this better? Is there anybody who could
Speaker 1: bring us marketing magic? And we said Oprah. We both
Speaker 1: knew her. We called her up, we flew out, we
Speaker 1: had lunch. Oprah had me fly back and lie on
Speaker 1: a couch with her for seven hours, talking about my past.
Speaker 1: She asked me the same questions you're asking me now,
Speaker 1: and she decided she was gonna come in with us.
Speaker 1: She'd always wanted to have a cable network, but she
Speaker 1: had a staff that was very protective of her, so
Speaker 1: we didn't always get as much as we wanted. Everybody
Speaker 1: wants everything from Ope. She's truly a miraculous person. So
Speaker 1: you sold Oxygen to NBC in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: great timing, right before the Great Recession. I was not
Speaker 1: in favor of selling Oxygen. You know the world of
Speaker 1: bankers better than I do. But at first they told us,
Speaker 1: don't do any TV. It's all about the Internet. Then
Speaker 1: the bubble happened, com bust, the dot com bust, and
Speaker 1: so we had to trim down the Internet and focus
Speaker 1: all on TV. We started making that profitable, and my
Speaker 1: Christmas bonus the year we got profitable was that I
Speaker 1: could go back into the Internet. And so we figured
Speaker 1: out that women make all these visual decisions all the time.
Speaker 1: We wanted to recreate that experience of ripping out of
Speaker 1: a magazine, and we created this whole collage system that
Speaker 1: was just genius called Ripped dot com and it was
Speaker 1: the precursor to Pinterest. So when we sold Oxygen, not
Speaker 1: on my brilliant timing, but on the pressure of our investors.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the prescience to take Ripped with me.
Speaker 1: That's one of your few regrets. Yeah, you've been on
Speaker 1: the board of a number of companies, including Electronic Arts,
Speaker 1: video game. I took your seat, you took my seat,
Speaker 1: and you're on J. C. Penny the retailer, and a
Speaker 1: lot in between. What do you add as a board member? Well,
Speaker 1: I add the relationship piece, and I have a marketing orientation,
Speaker 1: and I also question why we do something the way
Speaker 1: we do it. Also just being a woman with a
Speaker 1: different way of thinking. Okay, time to get judge. What
Speaker 1: do you think of the state of children's TV today?
Speaker 1: It's very scary to me. I'm thrilled that Brian Robbins
Speaker 1: has been appointed the head of Nickelodeon because he's a producer.
Speaker 1: He produced all that for us. He's got a creative core,
Speaker 1: which I think is what really differentiated us at MTV Networks.
Speaker 1: We worshiped creative. We were not just trying to trim
Speaker 1: every cost. We were trying to get the best out
Speaker 1: of people. Well, in a matter of fact, we often
Speaker 1: talked about that if the consumers love it, we'll figure
Speaker 1: out how to make money on it, right exactly, don't
Speaker 1: reverse that order. Right. The thing that concerns me the
Speaker 1: most right now is that YouTube has become the number
Speaker 1: one kids brand and there's absolutely no concern on the
Speaker 1: part of people who are putting YouTube on the air
Speaker 1: for kids. What do you think about cell phones always
Speaker 1: on media, social, etcetera, and impact on kids. I think
Speaker 1: it's awful. I often get asked by groups of women
Speaker 1: what can we do, and I said, well, the first
Speaker 1: thing you can do is when you get home, put
Speaker 1: your phone in your purse and zipp it and never
Speaker 1: take it out in front of your kids. But I
Speaker 1: have a small tech company that's creating a mind craft
Speaker 1: like game called Chicken c h k N that is
Speaker 1: about getting kids to create creatures out of little blocks
Speaker 1: that have artificial intelligence. It's very fresh and original, but
Speaker 1: it's engaging. How do we get kids to be creative
Speaker 1: and share their creativity? So I think there are things
Speaker 1: that can be done. I mean, it's a completely turned
Speaker 1: upside down marketplace. I think podcasting could be great for kids.
Speaker 1: I would love to get into that business. Well, you're
Speaker 1: at the right place, and you're on the podcast. Let's
Speaker 1: get judge you a little bit about the state of
Speaker 1: the cable networks and TV networks. How do you view it.
Speaker 1: I don't think we ever dreamed that the programmers would
Speaker 1: have so much clout that they would be able to
Speaker 1: basically ruin the industry by charging too much. If you
Speaker 1: talk to cable operators, all their growth comes from broadband
Speaker 1: and supplying small businesses with high speed internet video is
Speaker 1: a pain in the neck. Very different when you and
Speaker 1: I were there and we worshiped at the feet of
Speaker 1: the cable lover right what we did for providing choice
Speaker 1: and a reasonable economics. We were never greedy. We all flourished,
Speaker 1: and then everybody got greedy. It feels to me like
Speaker 1: this over the top of stuff is toppling the formula
Speaker 1: we had talk about just a second on sort of
Speaker 1: state of the Internet. You were very early in the Internet,
Speaker 1: and you were right when you started Oxygen. TV networks
Speaker 1: are saying Internet, who needs that? And you were saying,
Speaker 1: I'm embracing the Internet. Did it turn out the way
Speaker 1: expected it too? I didn't know what I expected because
Speaker 1: I knew it was an order of magnitude of something
Speaker 1: that I had never seen. But I think if I
Speaker 1: pull out old pitches for old ideas, we might be
Speaker 1: pretty close to where it went the downfall of retail.
Speaker 1: I didn't really see that this happening so fast. So
Speaker 1: time for some advice. What advice would you give to
Speaker 1: someone trying to follow in your footsteps that wants to
Speaker 1: be the next Jerry Laborn? I'd say, be serious in
Speaker 1: learning and fun in working. What advice would you give
Speaker 1: your twenty one year old self if you could go
Speaker 1: back and do that study how to do management buyout effectively?
Speaker 1: We end each episode where we begin Math and Magic
Speaker 1: with a shout out to the standouts and the analytical
Speaker 1: side of marketing and business, the math people, and also
Speaker 1: those from the creative side, which we call the magicians.
Speaker 1: Who would be your choice for the mathematician Danny Hillis.
Speaker 1: For the magician, I would say, Steve Jobs. Jerry, you
Speaker 1: have bridged that math and magic world very well for
Speaker 1: your whole career. You've helped so many people along the way.
Speaker 1: You've spent so much time giving to others, and you
Speaker 1: still do. You're one of the greats of media. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being here. What a pleasure. There are a few
Speaker 1: things I picked up in my conversation with Jerry. One.
Speaker 1: To build a successful team like Jerry did at Nickelodeon,
Speaker 1: you need people with differing talents who aren't afraid to
Speaker 1: share their unique insights or defend their point of view
Speaker 1: for the rest of the team, who like creatives to
Speaker 1: be creative. If you give people the room to make
Speaker 1: mistakes like Jerry did throughout her career, sooner or later,
Speaker 1: they'll make something terrific. Three. Ask your audience's opinion and
Speaker 1: trust their answers, even if your audience is your own family.
Speaker 1: When Jerry's young son didn't like a Nickelodeon show, she
Speaker 1: would often rework him, sometimes KILLO. Thanks for listening. I'm
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening to Math and Magic, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent,
Speaker 1: which is no small feat. Nikki Eatore for pulling research,
Speaker 1: Bill Plaux, and Michael Asar for their recording help. Our
Speaker 1: editor Ryan Murdoch and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel,
Speaker 1: Noel Mango and everyone who helped bring this show to
Speaker 1: your ears. Until next time,