Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Larry Namer - E! Founder | The Cable Splicer Who Launched Howard Stern & The Kardashians

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Larry Namer - E! Founder | The Cable Splicer Who Launched Howard Stern & The Kardashians · Success Story with Scott Clary

0:00
We literally climbed over the fence.
0:02
We snuck we're on the red carpet with our little beat up cameras.
0:06
And when we started showing that, people would like,
0:08
it looks like we were watching something we're not supposed to.
0:11
And that's really what started the whole red carpet.
0:13
Some people dream of building an empire while others actually do it.
0:16
Larry Namer wasn't supposed to become a media mogul,
0:19
a kid from Brooklyn who started as a cable repairman
0:21
ended up creating one of the most influential entertainment brands in history.
0:25
We had over a hundred rejections,
0:27
one which even at the meeting, the guy literally threw the business plan on my head.
0:31
At that time, starting a TV network was somewhere close to $100 million.
0:35
The worst thing you could do is say to people,
0:38
just imagine you've lost them. They can't imagine.
0:41
This is Larry Namer, co-founder of E Entertainment Television,
0:44
a pioneer who redefined how the world consumes media
0:47
and a relentless entrepreneur who's never stopped building.
0:49
This isn't just a story about television,
0:51
it's about vision, resilience, and the courage to bet on yourself when no one else will.
0:55
Once, Chad JBT became ubiquitous,
0:58
now I'm getting done in one hour.
1:00
What used to take me five days.
1:02
As human beings, we all have a finite amount of time on this planet.
1:05
The best thing we could do is use it efficiently or effectively.
1:09
Find something you're good at, work your butt off, and become great at it.
1:12
And then that will become your passion.
1:14
So Larry, you went from splicing cables in Manhattan sewers for 90 bucks a week
1:31
to building a $7 billion entertainment empire that spans 142 countries.
1:36
You've had the number one TV show in Russia.
1:39
You're the only American allowed to run media in China,
1:43
and you created the Kardashian phenomenon.
1:46
You've literally lived through the entire evolution of television.
1:50
But what I found the most interesting,
1:52
because I was listening to some of the shows that you've been on before,
1:55
was that your real passion wasn't originally entertainment.
1:59
So talk to me about this accidental discovery of entertainment
2:05
and how you actually got into this game.
2:08
Sure, I was the first kid in the family to ever go to college.
2:12
I got a degree in economics.
2:15
And I thought I would either become an economist or a teacher.
2:19
And then I quickly found out that there weren't really jobs for either of those.
2:23
So I had a friend whose dad was in the electrician's union is in New York City.
2:32
And they said, oh, we just organized this thing.
2:34
It's called cable TV.
2:36
I'm not really sure what it is.
2:37
But here's the name of the shop steward.
2:42
Go see him, tell him the union sent you,
2:44
and I'll give you some temporary job.
2:49
So I did that and they gave me a job literally under the streets of Manhattan.
2:54
So I was an assistant underground splicer for $90 a week.
2:59
And so I thought I'd be there for a few months
3:04
until I figured out what you'd do with this degree.
3:07
But I started to like it and stuff.
3:09
And very quickly, people were coming to me and saying,
3:14
how did you learn how to use the equipment so quick?
3:16
You know, usually takes people a year and you're doing it after a week.
3:21
And it was very simple.
3:23
I'm like, well, I read the instruction booklet.
3:26
It wasn't rocket science.
3:28
But I, you know, I went from assistant splicer to splicer.
3:32
And then, you know, kind of moved up the ranks of the operation side.
3:36
So being a construction guy, then an installer, then a service guy.
3:44
And then what happened was time incorporated,
3:46
which at that point was still a publishing company.
3:50
They had made a decision that over 10 years,
3:53
they were going to become a media company.
3:56
This is pre-time Warner, way before time Warner.
3:59
And so they bought Manhattan Cable.
4:02
That was the company I worked for.
4:06
So somebody in HR said, hey, you know, trying to figure out what it is these guys do.
4:15
You know, they go on to the streets every day.
4:17
They had all the Harvard and Yellies on one side.
4:20
And then you had us on the other.
4:22
And somebody in HR said, wait a second.
4:25
There's a guy, you know, who does that, who's got an economics degree.
4:30
Maybe.
4:31
So I kind of became the translator between those two worlds,
4:34
between that tech world building it and, you know, the Harvard and Yellies.
4:39
And then after a while,
4:43
guy that's a timing put it in his president, he got named Nick Nicholas,
4:46
who later went on to become the chairman of time Warner after the merger.
4:52
You know, he kept trying to get me to come into management.
4:55
And then finally he convinced me.
4:57
So I ended up, it was like really crazy.
5:00
I was 25 years old.
5:03
And I risen through the ranks of management becoming the director of operations
5:09
of Manhattan Cable, which is because cable system in the country.
5:13
And so I did that.
5:17
And then kind of like 1980, all the big cities began to realize that cable was more than a
5:27
more than the vehicle for good reception.
5:31
And a lot of the big cities started issuing franchises to be built.
5:36
And, but the one caveat that most of the big cities had was they didn't want the the wires
5:42
to go on telephone poles because it was incredibly unsightly.
5:46
They all wanted them to go underground.
5:48
Well, you know, there's only one underground system built in the US
5:52
then that was from Manhattan Cable.
5:53
And I was the guy who was running operations.
5:56
So I ended up getting recruited by a, it was actually a Canadian company,
6:02
one the franchise for Los Angeles, to build the first 61 channel two way
6:08
interactive cable system there was, but all on the ground.
6:13
So I got recruited by that company.
6:15
You know, they made me the proverbial offer you couldn't refuse literally paying me like
6:20
four times what I was making in New York and rented me a house with a swimming pool and
6:25
all of that stuff.
6:27
And, you know, but you're, so we built that and I started.
6:32
Now I had programming and marketing and finance reporting to me as long as all those other things.
6:39
And, you know, you're a New York kid and all your neighbors in L.A.
6:45
going to parties and premieres and hanging out with celebrities and stuff.
6:49
And I'm like, hey, that looks really cool.
6:51
I want to do that.
6:52
And, you know, I called the studios and they go, no, no, no, you're a utility.
6:56
You like the gas company and, you know, we're not putting you on the party list.
7:01
So finally, I met a, somebody in marketing at one of the studios and I said, you know,
7:08
I really don't understand this.
7:10
The most effective marketing vehicle you have for a movie is the movie trailer.
7:14
That two-minute thing that they always show before, you know, the movie.
7:19
They said, but the only time I ever see the movie trailers when I'm already in the movies,
7:23
I said, wouldn't you want me to see that while I'm at home to make me want to go to the movies?
7:28
And they said, yeah, but, you know, it's too expensive to buy two minutes of TV time.
7:34
So, you know, we don't do it.
7:36
I said, great, you give me those trailers.
7:39
I'll put them on TV for free and you put me on the list for, you know,
7:43
all these movie screenings and stuff and they went, sure.
7:46
So, you know, we did that and I hired a kid and literally we just looped them together for
7:52
you. We did like an hour real of the movie trailers.
7:55
But when we started doing market studies of the audience,
7:59
you said, what's your favorite channel?
8:01
And they go, oh, I love, you know, ESPN.
8:03
I love CNN. I love that trailer channel.
8:06
I'm going, wait a second.
8:07
I'm getting the best two minutes of a $50 million movie.
8:10
Then movies are only 50.
8:12
And I get that for free and people telling me it's one of their favorite channels.
8:17
And I kind of filed that in the back of my head.
8:19
And then the company that I work for, the Canadian company,
8:22
they had actually sold and they went back to Toronto.
8:26
And they were like, okay, Larry, when are you coming up to Toronto?
8:29
And I'm like, no, no, no.
8:30
I said, I didn't go from New York to LA to go to Toronto.
8:34
I said, I'm done with cold. I'm not doing that.
8:38
So, a friend of mine, my friend Alan Marofka, who also from the East Coast,
8:43
you know, we were talking and he was out there on, you know,
8:46
project done.
8:48
He had something to do with Francis Ford Coppola's studio.
8:52
But he was more on the real estate side.
8:54
And we said, you know, really like LA, let's think of something
8:59
that will keep us out here.
9:01
And he goes, yeah, I've been playing with this idea, you know, like
9:04
entertainment tonight, 24 hours a day.
9:07
And I went, wait a second.
9:09
I said, you know, this is the time when MTV was actually showing music videos.
9:14
And I said, you know, you have MTV puts a host in front of a green screen and they
9:19
point to the screen and go and Madonna has a new video.
9:22
I said, I could get all these movie trailers for free and people love it.
9:26
And we'll send a host in front of a green screen and go in towards the
9:29
mega has a new movie.
9:31
So, we, you know, so basically we turned the idea to MTV of the movies.
9:36
And, you know, we wrote a business plan.
9:40
We thought we were really smart.
9:43
And, you know, then it was before you actually did all this stuff digitally.
9:48
So you actually had a business plan.
9:49
It was like 200 pages and stuff.
9:52
But we were a little naive at that point.
9:56
Nobody, there's never been people, regular people that have actually ever started a TV network.
10:02
You only big media companies do that.
10:05
And that's kind of what we got.
10:06
You know, people are going, you know what Larry, it's a good idea.
10:09
But you're not Rupert Murdoch, you're not Time Warner and you're not Fox or Universal.
10:15
You can't just start a TV network, you know.
10:20
We weren't smart enough to listen.
10:23
So we just kept going.
10:24
But three and a half years later, we finally, we met this guy that was just took over
10:32
investment banking for what was a bond house on Wall Street.
10:37
And somebody we knew introduced us.
10:39
Somebody of his time, we were beaten up.
10:41
You know, we had over a hundred rejections.
10:44
One was even at the meeting, the guy literally threw the business plan on my head
10:49
and said, how dare you insult me with such a piece of junk.
10:56
And we finally, we met this guy and we go in his office.
11:00
And he's got movie posters on the wall.
11:04
And he says, you know, he goes, I really love this.
11:08
I want to do it.
11:09
And I'm like, at that time, starting a TV network with somewhere close to
11:12
a hundred million dollars, kind of low in with 60.
11:16
But it's still very expensive.
11:18
Yeah.
11:18
And we, you know, because he had to rent satellites and all studio equipment was expensive.
11:24
And we, he goes, I really want to do it.
11:29
I said, well, great.
11:30
Could you give us more like the hundred million.
11:32
So we can do everything that we know we need to do.
11:35
And he was like, no, no, no.
11:37
He goes, I'm only a lot of sign for two and a half.
11:40
And I'm like, what is that going to do?
11:42
I said, you know, I can't even buy the cameras for two and a half million dollars.
11:46
And he goes, well, let's all have my lot of sign for.
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And you know, Alan and I just said, you know what?
11:52
Chances are nobody's hoping to give us 60 or a hundred million dollars.
11:56
So we'll take the two and a half.
11:58
And I had a, I had a friend who was teaching radio,
12:02
television and film at a university of Texas in Austin.
12:05
And I called him off and said, Brian, you know,
12:07
do you have kids that need intern jobs?
12:09
And he goes, yeah, we had a lot of trouble placing kids.
12:11
And here I went, send them, send everyone you got.
12:15
And, yeah, and people don't realize that, you know,
12:19
because he is in 142 countries and valuation is, you know, crazy.
12:24
Seven billion.
12:25
And yeah, arguably he is now the number one influencer
12:29
of pop culture in the world by far.
12:31
And so we, so people assume that it's started with a big company.
12:38
But it really started with me and Alan,
12:42
11 employees and including us.
12:44
So nine employees plus me and Alan and 31 interns that University of Texas.
12:50
As soon as we got on the air,
12:53
everybody who came to us and said, oh my god,
12:56
that's what you wanted to do.
12:57
We were given you the money three years ago.
12:59
And so, you know, we were an overnight success.
13:04
And I think in the first year, we ended up expanding the 14 countries.
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And my friend Brian wanted to kill me because half of the kids,
13:14
they started out as interns at the beginning of the summer.
13:17
And by the end of the summer, half of them were vice presidents.
13:21
We just grew so big, so quickly.
13:23
And so it took off fast.
13:25
It took off very fast when you got back to that.
13:28
But it really taught me this lesson that when you're pitching something that people have never
13:34
really seen or experienced or something to really compare it to,
13:38
that the worst thing you could do is say to people, you know,
13:42
you give them what's in your head by saying, well, just imagine,
13:46
and that's it, you've lost them.
13:47
They can't imagine.
13:49
So it really gave us both really good lessons on learning how you pitch stuff
13:55
and how you had to explain it because what we were thinking in our head
14:00
clearly wasn't getting across to people until they saw it.
14:05
So that was a good life lesson, actually.
14:07
When you think about what made it so popular,
14:11
what was the kind of programming that you figured out just hit
14:15
that blew up, because I mean, like that, you blew up fast at the beginning,
14:18
but then if you look at your other wins, I mean, talk soup,
14:22
the Kardashians, Howard Stern.
14:23
So you have an eye for this.
14:24
I'm sure there's a lot that didn't work,
14:26
but we can talk about the ones that did.
14:29
What was the difference?
14:30
Well, you know, we, well, first of all,
14:34
the whole thing of celebrity reporting was incredibly stiff.
14:39
It was things like entertainment tonight.
14:41
So if you had a new movie,
14:45
you would fight, forget 20 seconds on entertainment tonight.
14:48
So it wasn't really in-depth coverage.
14:50
And everything was done by big studios,
14:54
the paramons and the Disney's and stuff.
14:57
And it was very stiff and very corporate looking and very polished,
15:01
because they could afford the $100 million.
15:05
Or as because we didn't have a lot of money,
15:07
we had to be very inventive.
15:09
We didn't even have professional broadcast equipment
15:11
we ended up finding some company that had like old equipment
15:15
that they're using to make sales training tapes.
15:18
So we bought that.
15:19
But what happened was,
15:22
and again, because Helen and I didn't come out of that Hollywood world.
15:26
So we looked at a lot of stuff and go,
15:28
well, Hollywood is funny stuff.
15:30
Let's not make believe it's rocket science.
15:32
So a lot of stuff looked very pirate,
15:36
because again, we didn't have a lot of money.
15:37
And you know, we didn't have the fancy cameras that he affects
15:41
or the editing equipment and all that.
15:43
And people would watch it and go, oh my god,
15:47
I never thought I would see like a half-hour
15:51
interview with my favorite director.
15:54
Or now I learned about movie music,
15:57
because we would do a,
15:59
we would take these movie trailers and slice and dice them in like 20 different ways.
16:03
So, you know, we would have movie music,
16:06
we would have foreign film, we would have indie film.
16:08
You know, we literally had every
16:12
different kind of film and film-related person.
16:16
And about again, it looked very pirate.
16:19
But you know, one of the things that really I think broke us through
16:24
was the first year we applied for credentials to go to the Academy Awards.
16:31
And they rejected us.
16:33
They basically said, well, you know,
16:35
you're not really interesting to us.
16:37
You're more like a utility.
16:39
You like the gas company or the phone company.
16:42
And they wouldn't give us credentials.
16:44
And what happened was we literally, me and the crew,
16:49
climbed over the fence.
16:50
We snuck in, we were on the red carpet.
16:54
And you know, then everybody was still doing the same old,
16:58
so Mr. Cruz, tell us about your next movie.
17:01
And you know, we were there like,
17:03
we were like, well, we snuck in, we can't believe it.
17:05
You know, hey, Tom, those are great shoes.
17:07
Where'd you get those?
17:09
So we were just asking the questions that really interested us.
17:13
And, you know, and again, with our little beat-up cameras and stuff like that.
17:18
And when we started showing that, people would like send us information,
17:22
like letters and calls and go, wow, it looks like, you know,
17:26
we were watching, we were flying the wall,
17:28
watching something we're not supposed to.
17:30
Well, the fact is they were, you know, we got caught and thrown out.
17:36
But, you know, we had enough footage that we made good shows
17:39
and people loved that.
17:40
And that's really what started the whole red carpet, you know, thing.
17:44
I mean, the way the carpet gets covered changed dramatically because of us.
17:50
You know, and that led to things like Joan Rivers doing talk,
17:53
you know, fashion police and stuff like that.
17:57
And then we, you know, we kind of did that.
18:02
And then when we started getting a little bit of traction
18:05
and we started getting a little bit of money,
18:07
we went from just showing movie trailers.
18:10
And, but again, we didn't have a lot.
18:12
So we had to be very creative and inventive.
18:15
You know, the, you know, I went to the team and said,
18:18
hey, I have this idea.
18:19
I wanted to do a TV show that makes fun of TV shows.
18:22
And they were like, lot, they go, that doesn't make any sense.
18:26
Nobody else let you do that.
18:28
You know, and that show was talk soup.
18:31
And, you know, that was the first breakthrough,
18:34
more traditional 30-minute TV show.
18:38
And talk soup just, and Greg Keneer blew up.
18:40
And you look at all those people that have followed on talk soup
18:44
that have become famous from it.
18:46
I think we counted 17 people who are talk soup hosts
18:49
that ended up getting jobs on like, we call them real TV.
18:53
And, you know, so that, that show,
18:57
while it started out as people thinking,
18:59
Alan and I were out of our mind,
19:01
I think ran 26 years, you know, is something.
19:06
And then the next one, you know,
19:07
we met this tall guy in an elevator in New York
19:12
and he was telling us about he's a radio host.
19:14
And we were like, yeah, okay, great.
19:16
You know, as a guy, if you haven't realized,
19:18
radio has been dead for like 40 years.
19:21
And he's going, no, you got to come and see the show.
19:23
And we went and watched this radio show, you know,
19:26
because I think we were living in the same building.
19:29
And, you know, so we said, oh, we're going to run into this guy
19:32
or be kind of rude if we didn't go and see a show.
19:35
And, you know, then we just loved it.
19:37
And we went back to the crew and said, hey,
19:40
we want to put cameras in this guy's radio studio.
19:42
And they were like, Larry, when you wanted to do,
19:45
you know, talk soup, we thought you're out of your mind.
19:48
They go, radio's dead.
19:49
Why wouldn't anybody watch a radio show?
19:52
And I said, you know what, you don't understand.
19:54
They used to be a TV show, a sitcom called WKRP and Cincinnati.
19:59
And it was about a radio crew and ensemble crew,
20:02
but it was a comedy.
20:04
I said, this is a reality TV version of that show.
20:08
And, you know, because it was an ensemble comedy.
20:11
I mean, now it wasn't just Howard.
20:12
It was that old, on the entourage that he had,
20:16
you know, and then Howard broke, you know,
20:18
broke out and then that we grew in the first year,
20:22
I think 14 countries and because we realized
20:26
that a lot of people weren't paying attention
20:29
that, you know, for US cable networks,
20:31
if you're doing something like the weather channel,
20:34
yeah, it's a great utility.
20:35
You know, instead of having to watch TV at 1130 every day
20:40
at night to find out what the weather would be tomorrow,
20:42
you had a channel that would let you see the weather
20:45
anytime you wanted.
20:46
But that was very local.
20:48
If you didn't live in that city, you know,
20:51
or in that country, you couldn't care
20:53
about what the weather is in London or anything like that.
20:57
But we said celebrity and celebrity culture
21:00
of popular all over the world.
21:02
And that turned out to be very, very true.
21:05
So, but you go back to the origins of the idea.
21:11
At that time, we looked at cable and said,
21:13
you know what, it's like an electronic newspaper.
21:15
Yet CNN is the headlining ESPN as the sports
21:19
and QVC is a home shopping network as the ads.
21:23
But what was missing?
21:25
So obvious to Alan and I was the second most red section
21:29
of any Sunday newspaper, which was the entertainment pages.
21:32
So, you know, we went from, you know,
21:35
MTV of the movies to, you know,
21:38
the entertainment pages of the Hollywood newspaper,
21:41
you know, it's what America wants to know about Hollywood.
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23:53
You know, it's very interesting because you keep coming up
23:56
with all these ideas that have never been done before.
23:58
Everything in your life is doing things
24:01
that really have never been done before.
24:03
Not listening to everybody who's telling you
24:06
that it can't be done and what I find really interesting.
24:08
So I read your book and if anybody wants to get this
24:11
called off script and your real passion is cooking.
24:15
Now, I find that interesting because that means
24:18
that you built your entire career and all of
24:22
E on something that you're not actually that
24:25
passionate about. You're not passionate about entertainment.
24:27
Cooking was the passion.
24:29
So when you're going up against the grain,
24:33
when you're doing all these things that have never
24:35
been done before, when you're not even inherently
24:37
that passionate about the thing that you're doing,
24:40
what is the advice to keep going when you get told no,
24:45
when it's not working out, when you're doing something
24:48
that is completely blue ocean never done before,
24:51
because that's a skill set in and of itself.
24:53
Yeah, well, you know, I was cooking since I'm 12,
24:57
because both my parents worked and my choice was,
25:01
you learn how to cook or eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
25:03
for dinner every night.
25:05
And but, you know, I liked it and I was good at it.
25:08
And I just kept reading cookbooks and learning more
25:12
and more and diversifying.
25:15
But what I say to people, you know, a lot of times
25:20
people get confused between what their passion is
25:24
and what their hobby is.
25:25
And we all have the same realities of life.
25:29
We got to make enough money so we could pay the rent
25:31
and eat and educate our kids or pay our college loans
25:35
or whatever it is.
25:37
So what I tell people, I said, find something you're good at.
25:41
In my case, you know, I obviously was pretty good
25:44
at the television stuff.
25:46
I said, then just work your butt off and become great at it.
25:50
And then what happens is that becomes your passion
25:53
and then you could use that to make enough money
25:56
to be able to pursue your hobbies.
25:58
And that's what cooking, you know, the whole cooking was for me is,
26:01
you know, look, TV was obviously pretty lucrative.
26:05
I was pretty good at it and I still am pretty good at it.
26:09
And but it gives you the ability to, you know,
26:15
then focus on your hobby whenever you feel
26:18
like focusing on your hobby.
26:21
Without knowing like, oh my God,
26:22
I'm gonna be able to pay the rent next month.
26:25
I think that's wise advice.
26:26
I think, and I'm also very curious what you think about,
26:31
all about new media and content creators
26:35
and everyone trying to become their own media channel
26:38
and media station.
26:39
And I feel like a lot of it is just copying the other creator.
26:43
You know, my podcast is probably a copy of, you know,
26:46
15 other podcasts and that TikTok channel's a copy.
26:51
What would your advice be coming from an entertainment TV
26:55
background for somebody that wants to create something unique?
26:58
How do you look at the world?
26:59
How do you create something that's never been done
27:00
before the way you did it?
27:02
Well, I mean, I embrace new technology.
27:05
I mean, a lot of people like, like, oh my God,
27:08
we're never gonna allow that AI stuff to happen.
27:12
And you know, I say, look, look at the music industry
27:15
when digital music came around.
27:18
You know, I said, now they bitch and moan that,
27:21
oh my God, iTunes has so much power.
27:23
Spotify has so much power.
27:25
I said, but you as an industry, music,
27:28
spent 10 years fighting it.
27:30
As opposed to embracing it, you would have owned it.
27:34
You know, now you're complaining that, you know,
27:36
somebody who's had the brain power and the wherewithal
27:40
to go after it while you were rejecting it.
27:42
The same thing with AI.
27:44
There are certain things that, yeah,
27:46
there are a lot of things that can go wrong with it.
27:47
We need rules and regulations.
27:49
And we need ways to keep it orderly.
27:53
You know, right now there's no deterrence for bad people,
27:56
you know, to do bad things with it.
27:58
But the fact of the matter is it's a great tool.
28:01
And it's gonna exist whether you like it or not,
28:04
you know, screen actors, guild or writers guild
28:07
and stuff like that.
28:08
So, you know, you better learn how to prompt
28:10
and learn how to do this stuff.
28:12
Of course, it's not going away.
28:14
And, but storytelling is an art
28:20
and it's practiced really well only by humans and stuff.
28:25
So, I've been using AI and stuff for the longest time
28:30
from even before it became, you know, world known.
28:36
If I have a new idea for a TV network or TV series
28:42
and stuff and I want to write like do a little bit
28:45
of market study and research and do budgets and stuff.
28:48
But you should take me five days to come up
28:51
with a basic idea.
28:54
You know, once Chad JBT became ubiquitous,
28:59
it takes me 30 seconds to plug it in.
29:02
It takes me an hour to clean it up
29:04
because it's never a hundred percent.
29:06
So, but now I'm getting done in one hour.
29:10
What used to take me five days.
29:13
And, you know, I say to people,
29:14
I go, how do you not love that?
29:15
I mean, as human beings, we all have a finite amount
29:19
of time on this planet.
29:21
And, you know, the best thing we could do
29:24
is use it efficiently or effectively.
29:26
I said, so now in one hour I get done
29:30
what you stack me five days.
29:31
I could either do more of them and make more money
29:34
or, you know, now I got a little grand baby.
29:36
I can spend time with my little grand kid.
29:39
I could learn how to speak Spanish.
29:41
I could go on a cruise.
29:42
And, I mean, I reclaimed the most valuable thing
29:45
that all of us as human beings have.
29:47
And that's our time.
29:49
So, you gotta embrace it.
29:51
You gotta make sure that, you know,
29:53
again, you need rules and regulations.
29:55
You can, and I always give the example
29:58
of like driving a car.
30:01
That 12 year old kid can't say, hey, give me the keys.
30:03
I feel like driving.
30:05
You know, you gotta be a certain age.
30:07
You gotta take a class.
30:09
You gotta take a test.
30:10
And then there are rules of the road.
30:13
And if you don't obey the rules of the road,
30:14
there are penalties for that.
30:16
With AI and stuff, there's a rules and regulations
30:21
need to catch up.
30:22
And that's kind of, you know, where that's at.
30:26
But like I say, when you come up with something new
30:30
and it's in your head, you gotta,
30:33
I self-assess every night.
30:35
I come up, I wake up in the morning.
30:36
I have 10 new ideas, but time I go to sleep,
30:38
I realize most of them would dopey.
30:40
But I'm very honest with myself.
30:42
I could, I'll sit down and go, okay,
30:45
sounded like a good idea this morning, but no.
30:48
You know, and again, I'm fricking the timeframe.
30:51
But technology chains, people, taste changes,
30:55
the economic environment changes.
30:57
Just learn to be honest and go, you know what?
30:59
Sound like a good idea, but now I realize
31:01
it's not what's next.
31:03
And just move quickly onto the next thing.
31:06
Of course, again, we're back to that issue
31:08
of maximizing the value of your time.
31:11
I love it.
31:12
And you're right, like with AI, you can,
31:15
you can adopt new ideas quickly.
31:17
You can brainstorm new stuff quickly.
31:19
You can, you can realize it.
31:21
It's a bad idea quickly and move on.
31:23
But also to your point, everybody in any media,
31:28
sort of legacy media, anyone in film TV,
31:33
if they don't learn how to use AI,
31:34
the people that work in those industries
31:36
will also get replaced.
31:37
So whether or not you're a content creator
31:38
or you're working in those industries,
31:40
you gotta adopt it.
31:42
Yeah, it's an incredibly valuable tool.
31:44
I mean, a good example, you know,
31:47
after I got in those 20 years of people,
31:50
you know, telling me I got to write a book,
31:51
I got to write a book, I finally did it.
31:54
And the book went best seller in four days.
31:59
And people are going, what did you do, you cheated, you know,
32:04
well, it's impossible.
32:06
You're best seller in four different categories in four days.
32:09
And the fact of the matter is,
32:12
is I used, actually I was still in the chat, GBT days.
32:17
I used GBT design a marketing plan for the book.
32:20
And I followed the marketing plan.
32:22
And, you know, the AI understood how to use the algorithms
32:26
much better than my human brain could.
32:29
And literally by following the plan done by AI,
32:32
we became the best seller in four days.
32:34
You know, when people are going,
32:35
no, it usually takes months.
32:37
How did you do it?
32:37
Well, that's how I did it.
32:39
I love it.
32:41
Talk to me about, talk to me about the Kardashians
32:44
because you built out, I mean, we spoke about
32:48
talk soup, Howard Stern.
32:50
Kardashians is a cultural phenomenon.
32:54
How did you discover it?
32:55
How did you know that it was going to be good?
32:57
Or did you?
32:58
Well, at the beginning though, we were,
33:00
I, Alan and I were friends with Bruce and Chris.
33:07
And it's a whole long story.
33:09
And I think it's in the book.
33:11
At one point, we were going to do another TV network
33:14
called FXTV, Fitness and Exercise Television.
33:19
And our partners were Bruce and Kris Jenner.
33:22
And Kareem Abdul-Jabar,
33:28
a bunch of other folks.
33:29
But also one of our partners was OJ Simpson.
33:33
And obviously that didn't turn out well.
33:37
But, you know, so I was friendly with Bruce and Kris.
33:40
And you know, Kris was always like,
33:43
oh, we got to think of something to do with the girls.
33:45
The girls are so good and whatever.
33:47
And you know, Bruce and Kris, between them,
33:48
I mean, they were like 10 kids.
33:50
Yeah, because they all came from other marriages.
33:52
And, but the kids were underage when we first met them.
33:59
And, you know, again, we didn't have a lot of money,
34:01
so we had to be really careful.
34:03
So we couldn't afford to do the things
34:05
that were needed to have young kids on the set.
34:09
I mean, you needed to have tutors
34:11
and you don't need to do a certain number of hours a day
34:15
or a week.
34:17
So we just said, you know, hey, the kids are great,
34:19
but you got to wait till they turn, you know, adult age.
34:24
So we don't have to deal with those restrictions.
34:27
And, but, you know, look, he gave them the platform.
34:32
But quite honestly, you know, and I say to people,
34:36
the mom, Kris, she's the brains behind it all.
34:40
She, those girls and guys just learn what they did
34:45
from their mom who was a great driver
34:47
and stuff like that.
34:49
And then, you know, so yes, we did give them the platform
34:53
and they probably couldn't have become what they became
34:55
without that platform.
34:57
But the real driver of that family was the mom, Kris.
35:01
Like in 2025, are there any people or trends
35:06
or ideas that you're excited about
35:08
that could be as big as the Kardashians?
35:12
Yeah, I think that kind of stuff is cyclical.
35:15
I mean, look, the Kardashians have done amazingly well.
35:19
But, you know, I get people all the time saying,
35:22
I want a TV show, I want to be there, so I want to be else.
35:25
I mean, you know, the one we haven't talked about
35:27
is Ryan Seacrest, you know, which that's where Ryan
35:30
got to start.
35:32
But, you know, you and I actually have this mutual friend,
35:37
Natasha Gratiano.
35:39
And I must get a hundred people a year who come to me
35:44
wanting to be a TV host.
35:46
And you need several components.
35:49
The main ones being, you need to have the personality.
35:53
But then you have to have the work ethic.
35:55
And a lot of times, I mean, people with personalities
35:59
are great, but then you get to the issue of work ethic.
36:02
And, you know, they go, okay, you want to be a TV host
36:06
in daytime, so that means you're going to be up
36:09
at three o'clock in the morning.
36:11
You're going to go with the hair and makeup till five.
36:13
You're going to shoot till 11, you're going to go home,
36:16
you're going to have lunch, you're going to go to sleep,
36:18
and you're going to do it 50 weeks a year.
36:20
And they're like, oh, no, no, I spend the summers
36:23
in the Bezo, or I spend the summers in the Hamptons.
36:25
I can't do that.
36:27
And so you realize they have one of the other,
36:30
but very rarely be a fine part of people
36:33
who have both of those traits.
36:37
But then I met Natasha and several things.
36:42
Number one, she's not from the U.S.,
36:45
which I thought was a plus.
36:47
But, you know, she had this great backstory.
36:49
You know, single mom living in London, literally homeless,
36:54
you know, cut to now.
36:56
Years later, she's living in Bel Air
36:58
and life coaching will I am and Steve Ioki and all of that.
37:02
But she's motivational, inspirational,
37:05
as opposed to promotional.
37:07
And for me, that was important.
37:08
Because I said, you know, you got all these guys
37:11
in late night TV here.
37:12
We have no women in late night TV in America.
37:17
And they all do the same show.
37:19
It's a guy sitting behind a desk
37:21
and he's got a couch and, you know,
37:23
it's the same.
37:24
So Mr. Cruz tell me about the next mission impossible.
37:27
And I said, particularly after COVID,
37:31
we need, I want to go to sleep with a smile on my face.
37:33
I want to think the more is going to be better
37:35
than today was.
37:37
And so she's, you know, had the motivational, inspirational.
37:41
But then I would test her, you know, I'd be like in China.
37:44
And I would intentionally call her,
37:46
knowing it's three o'clock in the morning, good time.
37:48
And she would actually pick up the phone
37:50
and stay on the phone with me for hours.
37:53
And I said, okay, got the personality.
37:56
She's the motivational and the work ethic clearly is there.
38:00
So we created this talk show, late night talk show,
38:05
which is going to go on this winter on national TV,
38:10
called Natasha after dark.
38:12
And, you know, and that, you know,
38:18
that's just a great example of how you could take something.
38:20
And again, we couldn't go and pitch it
38:23
and explain it to people.
38:26
So we had to shoot a pilot and cut a sizzle
38:29
and then show them how different this show was
38:31
from anything else that was on.
38:34
I love it.
38:35
And that's, I mean, if anybody's listening,
38:38
like the traits that you just described
38:39
that like make a successful talk show host anchor,
38:44
just successful person in general, the work ethic,
38:46
the personality, the showing up.
38:47
I mean, if you just, I mean, like those traits
38:49
in any industry, you're probably going to be pretty well off.
38:52
I think that those traits are,
38:54
those are the prerequisites to build anything meaningful,
38:58
whether or not it's a career in TV or career in anything, really.
39:03
One of my favorite ideas that you discuss
39:06
is that you reinvent yourself every few years, every,
39:10
I think when I listened to this,
39:12
it was every seven years.
39:13
A lot of people really struggled to reinvent themselves ever.
39:17
And they're the same person at 70
39:20
as when they started their career when they were 25, 2025.
39:25
Talk to me about reinvention.
39:27
Why is it so important?
39:28
Yeah, people go, why did you stop doing
39:31
the running of your show?
39:32
I stayed on the board, but quite honestly, I got bored.
39:38
We became huge and it was this great thing.
39:44
But when you get to the issue of it,
39:47
and it's kind of like when somebody
39:48
convinced me to write the book that I really
39:50
began to focus on this, I said, you know what?
39:53
I do have like all these kind of seven year periods
39:58
where I'm a totally different person.
40:00
Yeah, so I have my Brooklyn years
40:02
and my Manhattan cable years and my Valley cable years
40:06
and my E years, my Russia years, my Chinese years,
40:09
my post-COVID years and stuff,
40:11
where just entirely different and stuff.
40:17
I got to admit, China does keep my interest
40:19
because it's just so huge
40:21
and there's so much different opportunity there.
40:25
But it's basically saying fresh and stuff
40:29
and saying up with new technology.
40:30
I mean, I'm really keen on making sure
40:33
that whatever the new technologies are
40:36
that are coming down the road,
40:37
that I'm there before the big companies get there
40:41
because it takes them so much time to, you know,
40:44
they study, they write plans, they have board meetings
40:47
and you know, they get the stuff
40:50
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42:47
You know, you mentioned China.
42:48
What are the things that, first of all,
42:50
why are you excited about China?
42:52
What are the things that we could learn
42:55
about how they do media?
42:56
Because I think that you predicted linear TV's death
43:01
a while back.
43:03
I know that China's always sort of cutting edge
43:05
in terms of media and social media
43:07
and a lot of different things.
43:09
So what's China doing?
43:11
What gets you excited?
43:12
What's stuff that we should maybe try and emulate?
43:16
First of all, you know, two different things there.
43:18
So there was no legacy media there, you know,
43:21
to speak of, you know, everything was government controlled.
43:25
So cellular and digital and stuff were all new there.
43:32
So you didn't have to spend a lot of time
43:36
taking away all the habits.
43:38
You just had to spend them on creating the new habits
43:42
and then much more open to stuff.
43:44
And plus a very simple thing because here,
43:48
big media is controlled by public companies.
43:51
So they're very slow to adapt
43:53
because it really means writing off old date.
43:56
You got to write off the old before you could get to the new.
43:59
I mean, I talk to like people at chairman of like
44:02
TV networks and I'm going like,
44:04
why are you still doing linear TV?
44:07
I mean, it makes no sense.
44:09
And they're like, well, you know,
44:11
it would be like a $7 billion write off
44:13
and I'm going to retire in two years
44:15
and I'm not walking into a boardroom
44:17
or, you know, share all this meeting,
44:19
saying I'm writing that $7 billion.
44:22
They go, I'll retire, let the next guy deal with that.
44:25
So it has nothing to really do with what's right
44:28
or what you should do or reality,
44:29
but there are these other things in play
44:32
that, you know, kind of restrict us.
44:34
But in China, we do TV, film, internet content,
44:39
we do immersive, we do all kinds of stuff there.
44:42
And you, people who watch our TV shows,
44:47
well, first of all, was successful in China
44:49
because we make stuff in China, in Mandarin language,
44:56
specifically for the audiences in China.
44:58
So we don't take what we do on Australia
45:01
and you go here, you know,
45:03
well, subtitle in English for you and go with it.
45:06
China's three or four times bigger than the United States.
45:09
And people in China are very proud
45:11
and happy to be Chinese.
45:13
And, you know, what people have said to me early on,
45:16
they go, look, if you don't really want to do something
45:18
in here in our language for our people, you're in the wrong place.
45:21
And I think Rubik Murdoch learned that pretty early on
45:24
because he got bounced out pretty quickly.
45:28
So, but you just take the TV shows we do there
45:33
and 70%, 70, it's probably a little more now.
45:37
I'm going back a year.
45:40
And people who watch our shows,
45:41
watch them on a five-inch screen, watch them on a cell phone.
45:45
And so we've had to learn to adopt production
45:51
and editing and stuff,
45:53
noting that, you know, if we're going to shoot a wide shot,
45:56
you know, which looks great on a 55-inch TV,
45:59
it's going to look horrible when you put it on a cell phone.
46:02
So a lot of stuff we shoot, you know,
46:04
is a lot more close-ups and headshots and so do it.
46:09
And which really, you know, that whole phenomenon
46:11
led to the whole thing going on now with vertical.
46:15
Vertical programming is now beginning to take care
46:18
in short film, two-minute movies and things like that.
46:21
We've been doing that stuff in China for years.
46:24
So I think there's almost 800 million people in China
46:29
with a smartphone now.
46:31
So, you know, it's a pretty good base to experiment against.
46:36
I think that, I think that, you know,
46:38
I look at some of the other stuff coming out of China
46:40
and there's like e-commerce trends
46:42
that are coming out of China and the way people shop
46:44
and the way people buy,
46:46
the way people consume content for sure.
46:49
I think that's going to be, I always think that
46:51
a lot of the things that we see coming out of China
46:53
in terms of just behaviors,
46:55
they're going to make their way to the US eventually.
46:57
So just a matter of time.
46:59
Just a matter, so use it, 70 plus percent of people consume
47:02
just on phones, not surprising.
47:04
You are also doing something really interesting in China
47:07
where you create movies broken down into two-minute segments
47:11
and then audiences buy them piece by piece.
47:15
I don't think that's made it to the US,
47:17
but that's another form of like short content
47:20
that I think you could see in the US too.
47:22
So again, that's like short content, vertical,
47:27
and this is something that creators should pay attention to,
47:28
like, okay, what am I seeing in China?
47:30
How can I adapt my content to that?
47:32
Because that's what's going to be coming down the pipeline.
47:35
Yeah, well, all you got to do is just go to the app store
47:40
and you'll find that there are a bunch of things,
47:43
you don't need a market, they need to catch up,
47:45
but that has become, that's come over here already.
47:49
And the interesting, most of them are actually owned
47:51
by Chinese companies.
47:52
But the theory, and again, we come at stuff
47:56
from a different place, we look at whatever we create
47:59
for as a media play, has to be financially sustainable.
48:03
We don't do it because we think it's wild,
48:05
we're so creative, or we love it.
48:08
But if you can't sustain it financially, don't do it.
48:11
Of course, eventually, you know,
48:12
like I say, the reality is a life takeover.
48:16
But with short films, you take
48:21
or serialized film, you make a 90-minute movie.
48:27
Yeah, most of them now are like rom-coms,
48:30
very inexpensive, $300, $400,000 for a movie.
48:34
But you use a folks who are really good at soap opera writing
48:39
because soap opera writers learn to write in two-minute arcs
48:42
because then if you watch the pattern
48:44
of storytelling in a soap opera,
48:46
they literally are broken down into two minutes
48:49
and a little cliffhanger and a two minutes
48:51
and a little cliffhanger.
48:52
So you make a 90-minute movie,
48:54
you divide it up into 45-2-minute segments,
48:57
more or less, two minutes.
48:58
You don't have to time them out.
49:00
And you give people the first 10 episodes for free,
49:07
but then episode 11 is like the equivalent of a dollar.
49:11
Yeah, it's not a big deal.
49:12
I like that it was good.
49:13
I want to know what happened.
49:14
You know, there's Janie Killham.
49:16
You know, okay, if for a dollar,
49:18
you'll find out if Janie Killham and, you know,
49:20
then on and on and on.
49:22
But you look at the financial model there.
49:25
So you then have 35 segments that you're getting a dollar for.
49:29
So on a 300 or 400 million, you know, a million movie,
49:35
you're getting a $35 ticket price.
49:38
Yet look at Marvel spending 200 million on a movie
49:42
and getting a $19 ticket price.
49:44
Who's got the better model?
49:45
Do you think that, I mean, at one point,
49:49
you had 142 plus country broadcasts.
49:52
Now we have all these individual creators,
49:54
these podcasters, these YouTube channels.
49:57
Do you think we're moving towards infinite,
50:01
like a fragmentation of media?
50:03
Or do you think that we'll ever see,
50:05
like unifying media sort of taking hold?
50:09
Because I see all these individual podcasters
50:11
is sort of like an media channels as the new age.
50:15
Like the Joe Rogan's the, I mean, pick a,
50:18
pick a YouTube channel, the Mr. Beast.
50:20
It seems like infinite fragmentation of media.
50:22
Yeah, you'll see, you know, whenever new media comes out,
50:25
and I hate to say that I've been involved in probably
50:29
new media seven or eight times in my 50 years.
50:32
When it first comes out, people are very forgiving
50:37
of quality and content.
50:41
But over time, right now there's like some crazy number
50:45
of podcasters.
50:46
Everybody thinks I'd buy a camera for $40
50:49
and stick it on my laptop and I put a lamp over my head
50:52
and I'm a TV star.
50:54
Well, it doesn't exactly work like that.
50:58
But then you get to the audience,
51:00
and at the beginning of any new technology,
51:02
people are very forgiving of poor quality.
51:05
It is a great example.
51:06
We forgave us for, you know, using industrial equipment.
51:11
But over time, the eye and the brain
51:14
begins to expect more and more and more.
51:17
So we actually dove into the podcast world this year.
51:21
Of course, in post-COVID,
51:22
I started doing a lot more in the US again.
51:25
And, you know, we just have, we know where it's going.
51:28
We know that people are gonna want better
51:32
and better quality out of their podcasts
51:34
and their podcasters.
51:38
So rather than start at the low end,
51:39
we decided that our podcast got to start at the higher end.
51:43
So we actually shoot.
51:45
We do a lot of women empowerment related stuff.
51:48
Of course, we thought that was a niche
51:49
that really could be, you know, developed well.
51:54
But we shoot our podcast in 4K.
51:57
We shoot it with four cameras.
51:58
We switch live, we edit.
52:01
We audio engineer design the audio
52:04
and lighting guide design that and stuff.
52:07
So when you watch it, it really looks like television.
52:10
I mean, the first one we did is called stall talk.
52:13
And, you know, it looks like a younger hippocooler version
52:16
of the view and stuff.
52:19
So, you know, more and more, we love podcasting.
52:23
Because there are no barriers to entry.
52:25
There's no gatekeepers.
52:27
But you got, at the end of the day, you gotta be good.
52:31
And, you know, we think there'll be a huge shake out
52:33
and, you know, a lot of the stuff that's going on now.
52:37
I mean, for several reasons, you know,
52:38
the economics are just not there.
52:42
Big advertisers need masks.
52:44
They can't afford to keep buying audiences
52:47
of a few hundred people and stuff like that.
52:50
So you gotta build them up and you gotta get sponsors
52:53
to keep themselves sustainable and stuff like that.
52:57
But it's not this or that.
53:00
I mean, a lot of times I need stuff quick.
53:03
Give it to me, I'm a big TikTok fan.
53:05
I love TikTok, you know.
53:08
But it's during the day, you know, I'm in the car.
53:13
I'm in the bus or the train.
53:15
And I just give it to me in two minute bites
53:18
and I'm good or 40 second bites and I'm good.
53:20
But then I come home and, you know,
53:22
what I want to lump out on the couch and have a beer.
53:25
And so I want those, I want those half hour shows.
53:29
I want the Spielbergs of the world to tell me their stories
53:33
because they do them better than, you know,
53:35
my college roommate did.
53:38
So it's not this or that.
53:39
It's really both and they both fill in the unit
53:42
at different times and people's daily routine or their life.
53:45
Yeah.
53:46
And so I think that, you know, really the answer is,
53:49
maybe we're over-fragmented,
53:51
but eventually we're gonna consolidate,
53:53
like the best podcasts or the best TikTok channels
53:56
or the best YouTube channels.
53:57
That's what's gonna sort of be like the go-to's.
54:00
And I think you're already starting to see it now.
54:03
You're watching the big guys, you know,
54:05
jump in and force the consolidation.
54:08
I think serious radio just did a big deal with Tribune
54:12
to, you know, to really push simple cast
54:15
and stuff like that.
54:17
And there, it'll be consolidation.
54:21
We look at it, I mean, our podcast stuff.
54:24
We're building this women's block
54:26
because we said, okay, with one podcast,
54:28
maybe we get 10,000, which means you could only go
54:31
to what kind of local advertisers.
54:33
But if I do five and I get the same demo, of course, five,
54:37
I now have 50,000, I can now go to Lori Al or, you know,
54:41
PNG with it.
54:42
Larry, where do people connect with you?
54:44
Where do people get your book?
54:46
I'm assuming you can get your book wherever you get book.
54:51
Amazon, what not.
54:52
But what's the socials?
54:53
What's the website you want to send people to?
54:54
Well, you could go to the name of the book is called OffScript.
54:59
And so you could either go to OffScript podcast
55:04
or off scriptbook.com and find it or, you know,
55:08
people eat my email that I actually get myself.
55:12
And I do answer all my email.
55:14
Myself is LJN at LJNmedia.com.
55:19
But yeah, the book is available.
55:21
Amazon, Barnes, Ingram, all the usual places.
55:29
I'll link everything below.
55:31
Last last questions just to pull out a couple final thoughts
55:35
from you.
55:36
You've had an incredible career.
55:39
If you had to, you know, look at not what you've learned,
55:45
but what you had to unlearn to be successful.
55:50
The thing that you think held you back the most,
55:52
what would that thing be?
55:54
Well, you know, I grew up in I grew up in a very poor neighborhood.
55:59
I grew up in Brooklyn, but before it was trendy Brooklyn.
56:02
So I grew up in an area called Coney Island, which is still the hood.
56:05
I mean, you go through there today and it's still a war zone,
56:10
you know, burnt out buildings and stuff like that.
56:12
It's beginning to gentrify.
56:14
But you know, my parents came from, you know, immigrant mentality.
56:17
And there, you know, wishes for their kids
56:21
where get a civil service job and be able to retire at 65.
56:25
And, you know, so I spent a lot of time having to listen
56:30
to other people's design for my life as opposed to what was going
56:35
to what I knew was going to make me happy.
56:37
And so I guess the greatest thing I learned is just, you know,
56:41
follow your heart, follow your gut.
56:45
And again, so in second, you say to people, just imagine you've lost them.
56:51
Just if it feels right to you and you got to be honest, you got to evaluate.
56:55
I'd like to say, I come up with 10 new ideas every day.
56:59
And by the time I go to sleep, I realize most of them would dope it.
57:02
But I'm honest enough about myself to go out, oh, stupid ideal.
57:07
I was thinking, what's next?
57:09
Just don't waste your time on stuff.
57:12
I love it.
57:12
And if, but if you do believe in it, like you have to commit to it, you got it.
57:18
Like I say, you know, find something you're, you're good at and work your
57:23
butt off and become great at it.
57:25
And then that will become your passion.
57:27
The last thing that I wanted to ask you, you give it over a lot of wisdom.
57:32
And you, and maybe just go with a level deeper on this thought because say you
57:38
could only pass on one life lesson to your kids because it was the most important
57:42
life lesson that you've ever learned.
57:44
You've given over a few.
57:46
But what would be those final words of wisdom that you'd pass over to your kids?
57:49
Well, I think, you know, where we're all on this planet for finite amount of time.
57:55
And I think our purpose here is we're here to leave this place better than we found
58:03
it in every way from people to the planet to animals and stuff.
58:09
And the, to me, the object in life, and I've always had this conversation with my
58:14
mom when my daughter would be dating, my mother would say, well, is it serious?
58:20
And you know, made me start to think, well, what does that mean?
58:23
She goes, well, are they going to get married?
58:25
And I'm going, you know what?
58:26
My wish for my daughter and my all my kids is to be happy.
58:30
The wish for myself is to be happy.
58:32
It's not to be rich or whatever, but it, it really, that's, that's the object.
58:38
It's find your happy place.