Kevin Reilly got to the top of the TV heap. Now he's in AI.

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Business News, News, Tv & Film, Technology

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you watched something on TV that you liked in the past few decades, there’s a good chance Kevin Reilly was involved: at various times he’s held top jobs at FX, Fox, NBC, Turner and HBO Max. But that run ended in 2020, and now Reilly is running Kartel, an AI company that… well, I’m still not entirely sure what it does. (To be fair, as Reilly notes in our chat, it’s a young company that’s still figuring it out itself.) But I really wanted to talk to Reilly to get his POV on TV, which more or less peaked when he was working in the industry. Now, of course, it is in what appears to be permanent decline, while its remaining participants try to merge their way to safety. Why did TV flourish in its not-that-long ago Golden Age? And why didn’t its leaders see — or act on — the threat that streaming/digital/internet tech would have on their industry? You probably have some ideas yourself. Now you get to hear it directly from a guy who was there, at the top. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.6	slash Vox. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Vox. Vanta.com slash Vox. Support for this show comes from Vanta. Vanta.com slash box.
0:40.0	Support for this show comes from Vanta.
0:44.0	Vanta uses AI and automation to get you compliant fast,
0:47.2	simplify your audit process, and unblocked deals,
0:51.0	so you can prove to customers that you take security seriously.
0:56.3	You can think of Vanta as you're always on AI-powered security expert, who scales with you.
1:02.2	That's why top startups like Cursor, Linear, and Replit use Vanta to get and stay secure. Get started at Vanta.com slash Vox.
1:05.9	That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Vox.
1:10.0	Vanta.com slash Vox. Vanta.com slash Vox.
1:18.4	From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is channels with Peter Kafka.
1:22.9	That is me.
1:24.0	I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider.
1:29.5	Two of the themes we've been covering this year are AI, for obvious reasons, and the last gasps of the TV business, also for obvious reasons.
1:37.8	And today we're talking to someone who can tie both of those ideas together. That's Kevin Riley,
1:42.8	who used to make some of your favorite TV and is now
1:45.4	trying a second career as an AI CEO. As we discussed in this conversation, Riley spent
1:52.0	basically his entire career in TV and has run programming just about everywhere. Fox, FX,
	...

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