Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson, On the Record

Squawk Pod

CNBC

Business News, Investing, Business, News

4 • 494 Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson speaks out, addressing numerous reports of mistruths that have led to his company’s demise. Confronted with misleading claims in his own company’s pitch deck and a review of texting exchanges between himself and Andrew Ross Sorkin, Watson defends the company’s history and discusses his own leadership. He addresses the allegations of inflated viewer metrics, his COO’s impersonation of a YouTube executive on an investor call with Goldman Sachs, and suggestions that his staff was misled about their work’s exposure and impact. In a lively interview, Watson assures Joe, Becky, and Andrew that Ozy Media will continue operations, and takes on the NYT media reporter who broke the story first, Ben Smith. In this episode: Carlos Watson, @carloswatson Joe Kernen, @JoeSquawk Becky Quick, @BeckyQuick Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Bring in show music please.
0:03.0	This is Squawk Pod.
0:06.0	I'm C. NBC producer Katie Kramer.
0:08.0	Today on our podcast, you do not want to miss this interview.
0:12.0	Carlos Watson, CEO of the now infamous Ozzy Media, speaks out.
0:16.8	We have a real business. We have tried to market these very different franchises, about 25
0:21.5	at all. We've tried very hard to market them well. I would tell you
0:25.0	that one of the mistakes we made is that sometimes we were too aggressive in marketing.
0:29.0	Unpacking the mistakes and mistruths that led to the company's spiral.
0:33.6	The producer actually said to you specifically that you were lying to the staff about the fact
0:39.2	that this show was supposed to be on A&E and then apparently lied again when you said it was going to be a
0:44.6	YouTube original. I disagree I don't think that's true. But why did they believe that it
0:48.0	was a YouTube original? Why were they telling me by the way that it was a YouTube
0:51.0	original? Did Carlos Watson fool investors, the media,
0:54.7	and his own staff?
0:56.0	The things that you say you own, because you were the leader,
0:58.8	you own it because people under you were doing things
1:01.3	you didn't know about, or people under you were doing things you didn't know about or people under you were doing
1:03.3	things that you did know about.
1:04.6	Becky that's such a broad question.
1:06.4	No I'm trying to be specific I mean it's right for a leader to say it happened on my
1:09.7	watch it's my fault but is it your fault because you didn't know or your fault because you did
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CNBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CNBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.