Tom Freston on building MTV during cable’s wild west years
The Business
KCRW
4.5 • 697 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Kim sits down with former Viacom CEO and MTV co-founder Tom Freston to discuss his memoir, Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu. From his vagabond youth to the birth of MTV and his years working under billionaire mogul Sumner Redstone, Freston reflects on a career spent shaping modern media, and weighs in on the Warner Bros. succession fight, arguing that Netflix may be the legacy studio’s best-fit suitor.
Speaking of the streamer, Masters and Matt Belloni break down Netflix’s stock stumble despite reported subscriber growth, as Co-CEO Ted Sarandos reiterates the company’s commitment to honoring theatrical windows for Warners. To wrap things up, the banter partners dig into CNN’s potential spin-off value within Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable portfolio, pushing back on claims that the asset is worthless amid intensifying merger scrutiny.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is the business. |
| 0:05.8 | Former Viacom CEO and MTV |
| 0:12.2 | Tom Freston packs a lot of travel adventure and corporate war stories into his memoir, |
| 0:23.4 | unplugged, from MTV to Timbuktu. |
| 0:29.1 | The biggest collision loomed when his beloved cable music channel was bought by a man intent on building an empire. |
| 0:30.6 | Being the CEO of MTV Networks was for me the perfect job in the world. It had all the things |
| 0:36.0 | I loved. I was good at it. We had this amazing |
| 0:38.7 | performance, this incredible team of people. And I was loving going to work every day. This was |
| 0:43.9 | going to be a whole different thing, working for Sumner-Redstone, a man who really couldn't be |
| 0:47.4 | satisfied. When Freston gets to the part when that battle is truly joined, you will laugh out loud |
| 0:53.1 | or your money back. |
| 0:54.7 | Fresden shares stories from his vagabond youth to the creation of MTV to the final Redstone |
| 1:00.1 | Showdown. Plus, he weighs in on the ongoing fight for Warner's and explains why he thinks Netflix |
| 1:05.5 | is the better suitor for the legacy studio. But first we banter. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW. |
| 1:15.1 | I am joined by my partner in banter, Matt Bell. And hello, Matt. Hi there. So, the saga |
| 1:21.3 | continues. Netflix reported even more subscribers and the stock dropped anyway. Meanwhile, Ted Serendos is out there |
| 1:31.1 | trying to make sure that everybody believes him. Yes, we really, really are going to honor |
| 1:36.7 | theatrical windows. And you had a really interesting take on that, which I'm going to circle |
| 1:40.9 | back to in a second, actually. I would say, you know, Netflix knows something about why it's making such a serious play for this |
| 1:47.3 | and why it needs these franchises. |
| 1:50.0 | And maybe the shareholders don't see it right now, but clearly Netflix is in it to win it. |
| 1:54.4 | I was interested in the thing you wrote for Puck where you called up the head of one of the theater chains |
... |
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