Latest / Linen Suit & Plastic Tie / What Is Cable's Legacy (Part II)? ft. a fmr. Cable TV Executive (Doug Herzog)

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What Is Cable's Legacy (Part II)? ft. a fmr. Cable TV Executive (Doug Herzog) · Linen Suit & Plastic Tie

0:03
Welcome Welcome to the Linen Suit and Plastic Tie Podcast.
0:08
This is the podcast where we work to disset and analyze the
0:11
epic, the amazing, the incredible power of storytelling
0:15
and learn how to harness that power in our daily lives.
0:18
I'm GURV. And I'm Kevin.
0:21
Welcome to part two of our really interesting and epic
0:24
conversation with media exec Ex Jordan and author of the basic
0:29
podcast about the history of cable television, Doug Herzog.
0:34
I'm really excited to dive into the second-half.
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But before you do, Kevin, I was watching this video on YouTube
0:40
the other day of Denzel Washington doing this famous
0:43
scene from Fences. It's a scene where his son asked
0:47
him, how come you ain't never liked me, right?
0:51
It's a very famous scene. You've probably seen the clip
0:53
before. If you haven't seen the movie.
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In this scene, in the movie, it's a very serious scene, but
0:59
he did it on stage as well. And on stage it's a little bit
1:03
more comedic. The way he's acting, the way
1:05
he's playing. The audience is laughing.
1:07
And I remember going through the comments on that video and
1:09
seeing all these people so mad at the audience, like, why are
1:13
they laughing? Like, because they've seen the
1:15
movie. And I don't know if they've seen
1:16
the play, but they're like, why are they laughing?
1:18
Oh, this is the problem with stage acting?
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Like kind of wearing a stage acting.
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Look at the movie. Look how serious the scene is,
1:23
why they're acting. I'm like, because it's being
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played more comedic on stage like that.
1:28
It's bigger and grander because that's how stage acting works,
1:31
right? Because they're hugely different
1:33
mediums. But here's the thing.
1:35
Here's the crust of my kind of frustration with these comment
1:38
sections, the comments that you almost act like the audience was
1:42
ruining the show, like the audience was doing something
1:45
wrong. No, there are different mediums,
1:47
the stories being told different ways, and you're having
1:49
different reactions to it, even if the words are the same.
1:52
And it comes down to this, and it's a strong belief that I've
1:54
been thinking about a lot. And but as we do this show, your
1:58
audience has absolutely no responsibility to you.
2:03
And I think this is hugely important.
2:05
I I think a lot of creators, a lot of people forget this.
2:08
They think, oh, this is a masterpiece.
2:10
An audience has to love it. Oh, they have to react in this
2:12
way. They don't.
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And this example of the scene from Fences where the audience
2:16
are laughing at the stage, I think about how different it
2:19
would be if people watch the stage first and then watch the
2:22
movie, like, oh, why is it so serious?
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I saw it on stage. It's funny, right?
2:25
Or vice versa. It is your responsibility as a
2:29
storyteller to tell a story in a way that's going to connect to
2:32
the audience. Your audience is absolutely no
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responsibility to you. If you want them to react to a
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certain way, you have to build your story around that.
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And I think this is hugely important and I think it's
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something that we we discussed on the show.
2:45
And so then we're going to discuss more with Doug today.
2:48
Yeah, well, according to the comments section, everybody's
2:51
doing everything wrong. But that's right with part two
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of our conversation with Doug, we're going to finish up.
2:59
By discussing more about how creators connect with their
3:03
audience on cable, the distinction between nighttime,
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daytime primetime, how advertisement and creative
3:12
content feed into each other on cable TV, and the legacy of
3:17
cable. So let's dive back in.
3:23
The idea of, you know, like late night as a date part and a
3:26
destination, I think it's going away.
3:29
I mean, you know, it's not going to win tomorrow.
3:31
You know, Jimmy Kimmel's going to be doing his things as long
3:33
as he wants to do it and Jimmy Fallon, and, you know, as long
3:35
as they're making money and they are not making the same kind of
3:38
money they made ten years ago. But I here's what I would say.
3:42
When Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon leave late night, and
3:47
that's not going to be tomorrow. It's going to be a couple of
3:49
years from now. I'd be curious to see if
3:51
there'll be anybody that actually replaces them or those
3:53
shows go away. Yeah, I mean, they left such a
3:56
lasting legacy though. I think 1 show that is done it
3:59
really well now is Last Week Tonight.
4:01
Obviously, John Oliver has figured out that streaming that
4:04
streaming. Well, also, he's not doing it
4:06
every night though. Yeah, he's doing it once a week.
4:08
It's a different animal, you know, So, you know, the every
4:12
night thing is very different than once a week.
4:15
And they, you know, the Emmys lump them all into one category,
4:18
which I always thought was unfair.
4:19
And certainly Bill Maher did. But you know, it's a it's a it's
4:23
a different vibe and a different energy and a different approach.
4:25
You know that every night thing, that four or five nights a week,
4:28
it's a grind. You're there every night.
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People expect you to be there every night.
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And yeah, so it's, I think, I think it's a little different.
4:35
Yeah, kind of going along this topic of late night a little bit
4:39
more, I wonder what your how you would interpret the difference
4:45
between? Late night programming versus
4:49
daytime. And I'm more specifically I I'm
4:52
thinking about Ellen because I I think a lot of times, you know,
4:56
when she would make a joke and sometimes her guest would say,
5:01
you know, this is a daytime TV show.
5:03
Well, daytime, daytime is, you know, there, you know, there are
5:05
different sort of standards. You know, daytime is for for
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women generally. Like that's who the audience for
5:11
that show is predominantly. You know, there's targeting
5:13
women at home. Right.
5:16
And there's a different prime time was reserved for family
5:20
viewing. And that's where cable really in
5:23
its storytelling. As it evolved, particularly with
5:27
both comedies like on Comedy Central and scripted fare on
5:32
places like FX and USA Network and TNT, etc, they started doing
5:37
edgier stuff, stuff that the networks wouldn't do.
5:41
Now that was for two reasons. There was an opportunity because
5:43
the networks weren't doing it and people, you know, wanted it.
5:46
And also they were not governed by the FCC, right.
5:49
So, you know, the FCC has standards of things you can and
5:52
cannot do for full hours of the day.
5:55
Cable is not part of the FCC. They are not governed by the
6:00
FCC. So we actually could do whatever
6:01
we wanted. We could have done even what
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Showtime and HBO were doing in terms of pay TV and like, really
6:08
over the top in terms of graphic violence, nudity.
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The difference is we were ad supported.
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So the truth is in basic cable, we could do whatever we wanted
6:16
and whatever we felt comfortable with as long as we could sell
6:20
it, right. So if the advertisers wouldn't
6:23
buy it, then we couldn't sell it so.
6:27
You know, so there was a line that we weren't going to cross
6:30
because advertisers were not going to buy nudity.
6:32
They weren't going to buy still not, you know, graphic violence.
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They're not, you know, etcetera, etcetera.
6:36
So you know, South Park is a great example.
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You know, South Park very edgy, maybe the, you know, at the
6:40
time, certainly when it came on Comedy Central, you know, this
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is, I tell people back then the edgiest things on television
6:48
were maybe The Simpsons or sitcom name, married with
6:52
children or Beavis and Butthead. That was it.
6:56
So South Park was, you know, broke down so many walls and and
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started doing things that nobody had ever done.
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And a lot of advertisers did not want to be a part of that.
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But there were advertisers that did because they knew it was
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reaching a very specific audience, young men.
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And those advertisers, sneaker companies, soft drink companies,
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the movie studios, they would pay 3 * 4 times what it took to
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get into the show. So that's how that worked.
7:23
Interesting. And with that?
7:25
In mind, the idea that the content has to be shown in
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collaboration with the ads, how would ad or the, I guess plan of
7:35
getting certain types of ad? Would that affect the process of
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actually creating the? Source.
7:40
Yeah, still does. And you know, MTV start as a
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music channel and then we very much, you know, I'd say kind of
7:47
evolved in what I would call lifestyle channel, right, which
7:49
was a channel for young people with a music foundation.
7:53
But you know, as I used to say, you know, there was that time
7:56
when MTV was just raging where I said all roads used to come
7:59
through MTV. Everybody wanted to be on MTV,
8:01
politicians, Bill Clinton, George Bush, you know,
8:05
supermodels, athletes, just everybody wanted part of that
8:09
heat and wanted, wanted part of the platform.
8:12
So you know at some point our at our sales guys came to us and
8:15
said you know we could really you know if we could do
8:18
something like sports oriented, we could really sell that with a
8:20
lot of advertisers looking for sports.
8:23
So we started MTV Sports and MTV Rock and Jock and all that
8:25
stuff. And we had advertisers coming to
8:27
us going, hey, we would like, you know, apparel companies,
8:30
like if you guys would do something with fashion, we'd be
8:32
really excited about that. So we created a House of style.
8:35
So yeah, so those were born out of, you know, kind of commercial
8:41
aspirations. But we always went a long way to
8:44
make sure if we were doing it, it felt like MTV and it felt
8:47
appropriate for MTV and we weren't faking it and we weren't
8:50
giving the audience something they didn't want.
8:51
And I think, you know, for the most part we did a good job.
8:54
Well, I mean that goes back to the importance of brand building
8:56
in this area, right? Because if you lose the trust of
8:59
your audience, that's it that when you put.
9:01
Your That's exactly right. That was #1.
9:04
And that was the most important thing to us, was to meet the
9:07
audience's expectations, to exceed their expectations, to
9:09
make them feel like we were the place for them and not that we
9:11
were. We tried not to talk down to
9:15
them. We tried to talk with them, not
9:17
at them, and make them feel like they were part of it.
9:22
Did you have any issues with audiences?
9:25
I think aging. Did you have people pretty much
9:28
age in and out of MTV or were you well?
9:30
That was, yeah, that was, yeah, we we decided early on that we
9:33
weren't going to be Rolling Stone.
9:35
Rolling Stone magazine made a decision early on to grow old
9:38
with their audience. Right.
9:39
They kept on putting those sixties, 70's rock stars on the
9:42
cover and you know, they stayed with that audience.
9:45
It was getting older that that had first picked up, you know,
9:47
Rolling Stone in the late 60s as a 19 or 20 or 21 year old and
9:51
then you know, 20 years later in the 80s, they were still reading
9:55
it. We made the decision that we,
9:57
we, we wanted to stay focused on a young audience.
10:00
Now that's changed. They're no longer focused on
10:02
that. I think the average age of the
10:03
MTV viewer is like probably over 40.
10:05
But you know in the heyday, you know from 1981 when it launched
10:09
certainly through the early 2000s for sure, it was all
10:13
about, you know, staying focused.
10:15
And so if something was on MTV for five, 6-7 years that was
10:19
long and you know at a certain point it came time to turn that
10:22
over and and because the audience was turning over all
10:24
the time. You know, the Real World stayed
10:26
on MTV for 20 plus years because they changed the cast every
10:31
year, every season. So it always changed.
10:33
It always stayed relevant, it always stayed in step with, you
10:35
know, the young audience. But you know music comes and
10:39
goes. You know, grunge comes and goes.
10:42
You know, heavy metal comes and goes, hip hop comes and goes.
10:46
So, you know, you learn to kind of evolve, roll the punches and
10:49
keep looking forward. How did you, how did you
10:52
approach that? Because that's a very conscious
10:53
decision, but it's also very difficult to maintain.
10:56
I we see this with platforms like I think Instagram's having
10:58
this issue where it's aging with its audience of aging out.
11:01
How do you, how did you maintain?
11:04
That well, it's it's hard. And at some point you know, we
11:07
ran out of steam, right. And what what really took the
11:10
wind out of our of MTV sales was ultimately the Internet, right.
11:13
And the idea that, you know there was there, there started
11:16
to be new places for the audience to go and find things
11:18
to do and. If that's not necessarily MTV's
11:22
fault, that's, you know, that's the way the world, you know,
11:24
like I said, nothing lasts forever.
11:26
But for a very long time, you know, we just stayed very
11:29
focused on it and till the point where, you know, the world kind
11:33
of changed on us and it became much harder.
11:35
I think, you know, your generation, MTV does not have
11:39
this. You know, you look at MTV in a
11:41
very different way. It's almost like a legend versus
11:43
a real thing, you know, Whereas you know I'm, you know, if
11:47
you're if you're over 45. You look at MDBA very different
11:51
way. You know, that's something you
11:52
grew up with. That was something that was a
11:53
big part of your life. It's where you spent a lot of
11:55
time, but you probably don't watch it.
11:58
Anymore throughout these four decades where you've worked in
12:02
cable, you know from the 1980s well over to 2020, do you notice
12:09
kind of distinct themes across each decade or or you know it
12:13
can be decade or clear cut off points where the focus of this
12:17
medium in general? Becomes different.
12:21
You know, the 80s were the go, go, grow years, right?
12:24
You know, the 90s were the, you know, finding your footing and
12:28
and and really stepping on the gas years.
12:32
You know, the early 2000s was the Internet starting to hover
12:36
and and make its, you know, way into the ecosystem.
12:40
And then, you know, the 2000 Tens was all about the the
12:43
advent of streaming and that was the, you know, the biggest
12:46
change to come in the face of cable.
12:49
And something they didn't really know how to deal with.
12:51
And you know, look, I find it interesting and one of the
12:53
reasons I did the podcast movies are still here.
12:55
It's changed a lot. The movies are still here,
12:57
television's still here, never going away, right.
12:59
How we watch it And that's all continues to evolve.
13:03
But you know, sort of TV style programming, radio still hanging
13:07
on somehow, you know, podcasting's helped, but still
13:11
here, right? Cable, I think is going away.
13:17
You guys are never going to be cable subscribers.
13:18
You never have been, I'm assuming maybe, maybe not, but
13:23
if you are, you're rare for young people.
13:27
Cable penetration drops every year.
13:31
I forget where we are now, but we're way down.
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They they, you know, I think they're under 50 million homes
13:35
at this point. And you know, it's hard to see
13:39
what now happens to what used to be cable television.
13:41
You know, I also think these brands are withering, right?
13:45
MTV's Withering, Comedy Central's Withering,
13:47
Nickelodeon's Withering USA, TNTT, all those great cable
13:51
brands. ESPN is trying to figure out who
13:53
they're going to be, like maybe get spun off.
13:55
Same with CNN. Now those, you know, those
13:57
networks are coming up the world a little different because it's
13:59
news and sports, which is slightly different category.
14:02
CNN was, you know, if you'd asked me eight years ago, 10
14:06
years ago, what's the future of CNN, I would have said maybe
14:09
dead by now, because at the time.
14:12
Cable is starting to slide. Their viewership start, you
14:15
know, the the the penetration was going like this, the age of
14:19
the viewer was going like this. And then Donald Trump came along
14:23
and he basically reinvented cable television and they got a
14:28
lifeline, you know, through him in the 2016 election.
14:31
And you know, they're as strong as they've been in quite some
14:34
time. So we'll see what happens.
14:36
Does that do you think that stays consistent or eventually
14:39
that's going to wear off again where politics isn't going to be
14:43
as exciting and interesting and fun almost to watch and people
14:47
are going to start cutting away? You know, Donald Trump will.
14:50
At some point Donald Trump will go away.
14:53
But I think he is now ushered in this era of sort of performative
14:57
politics. Donald Trump brought like a
15:00
wrestling mentality to politics. You know, he's playing the heel.
15:04
You know the bad guy, depending on how you feel about him.
15:07
And we're not talking about the issues anymore.
15:09
We're talking about all this performative stuff and woke and,
15:13
you know, just stuff that I think the American people, you
15:16
know, they want to talk about and scream about all day, But,
15:18
you know, they're no longer talk about the issues, which is the,
15:20
you know, sort of more less interesting, boring stuff.
15:23
And so now you have, you know, you have a lot of candidates who
15:28
are trying to be Trump and use Trump tactics to get attention,
15:32
because by drawing attention to yourself and doing something
15:35
goofy. You know, we know this from MTV
15:38
and spring break, you know, the cameras will turn to you.
15:41
And so I don't know. I think there's, you know, we'll
15:44
see where it goes once the Trump era ends, but we'll see.
15:49
We'll see. They seem to like this stuff.
15:50
The American public apparently can't get enough of it, and they
15:54
like these performative politics.
15:55
We'll see how see where that goes in the next 10 years.
15:58
You know, it's it's funny too because that's one of the things
16:00
as Paul just comes from performative.
16:02
And it's not just these cable news that's become more
16:05
entertaining. Had the heyday.
16:06
Political comedy has had an amazing last few years, right?
16:10
And it's really this idea with giving a gravitas and giving it
16:13
a lot more intrigue recently because of this kind of
16:17
hilarious world. Well, it's, you know, political,
16:20
political comedies. You know what I used to think
16:23
was the problem with political comedy is like not everybody got
16:25
the joke. Because not everybody paid that
16:27
much attention. But that's changed.
16:28
You know, like now you just can't avoid it.
16:30
It's everywhere. And so the references are
16:34
pretty, you know, pretty global and pretty broad.
16:38
And so you can go on and, you know, make jokes about, you
16:41
know, whoever. And people are going to
16:42
understand what you're talking about, which is not necessarily
16:45
how the world worked, you know, 20 years ago.
16:48
There is one TV show or one cable show that.
16:53
I continuously pay attention to and I know you really like it,
16:56
so I love to get kind of your read on it.
16:59
Inside the NBA on TNT. That's my favorite show.
17:02
Yeah, I didn't even watch the NBA a lot at this point, but I
17:06
watched that show. A part of me watching the MBA is
17:08
because I want to keep up with that show.
17:11
From your perspective, why does this show work?
17:14
What? What makes it?
17:15
That's magic. That's really, you know, that's
17:18
you know you've got 4. Really talented personalities
17:23
for knowledgeable personalities, for guys who have, for whatever
17:28
reason, a tremendous chemistry with each other.
17:31
Four guys with a sense of humor. And it just, you know, it's it's
17:37
so hard to recreate and it's so hard to build and there's a lot
17:40
of luck in all this, but my God, they are fun to watch and it's
17:45
just fun. It's like being, you know, in a
17:48
private club, you know, or a bar or a.
17:51
You know, listen to your some of the funniest guys talk about
17:54
something you're interested in and you know it's like I said
17:56
that's that's, you know, that's magic.
17:58
Like you can't draw that up. No AI program can spit that out.
18:03
No, no amount of data and analytics can tell you to put
18:07
those four guys together. That's luck and instinct and
18:11
some people being smart. Well, yeah, on that point.
18:15
And I'm sure that you even then had to deal with this.
18:18
And as it grew too, what was it like kind of having to balance
18:21
that creative business and data elements when programming these
18:26
channels? I like I, you know, I left
18:31
formally, like I said into 16 early, 17.
18:33
So the data that the cable networks, the broadcast
18:37
networks, now it's evolved since then was not terribly
18:39
sophisticated, you know, And I paid attention to the research.
18:46
I paid attention to whatever data I can get my hands on.
18:47
It was a very, very useful tool. But I just grew up in a
18:51
different era. My I made my bones.
18:53
I made my career on instinct and just following my instincts for
18:58
better or for worse. And I was allowed to do that.
19:01
People put that trust in me and I was lucky enough to have X
19:07
number of successes, you know, that I'm associated with.
19:09
But, you know, it's like hitting the baseball, right?
19:10
So for every South Park and Daily Show and Real World or
19:13
whatever it is, you know, there's like 20 that didn't
19:16
work. You know, it's like hitting the
19:18
baseball. You know, if you can do it, you
19:20
know three times out of 10 you're going to the Hall of
19:22
Fame. You know, I was I'm more like a,
19:25
you know, I was like a 265 hitter with a couple of
19:28
memorable hits and got to got to hang around.
19:32
But it's not just luck but there's a lot of luck involved.
19:36
I would, I'll tell anybody, unless you're Michael Jordan or
19:41
Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey. Or Beyoncé.
19:46
Or somebody so enormously talented, driven, that they're
19:49
going to get there anyway. Most of us, we need to do all
19:54
the things everybody tells. You gotta be smart, gotta work
19:57
hard. You know, you gotta do all, you
19:58
know, everything your teachers and your parents and your bosses
20:01
tell you to do. That all counts.
20:03
But at the end of the day, you also need to be a little lucky,
20:06
because luck plays a plays a part.
20:08
It just does. And you know you're talking the
20:10
one of the luckiest guys you'll ever meet.
20:12
I could not have told you that any of you know that South Park
20:14
was going to run for 25 years and be this cultural iconic
20:20
thing. I didn't know.
20:21
I just know I thought it was funny.
20:23
I thought it would work well on Comedy Central.
20:25
I thought it would get us some attention and I wanted to make
20:27
it. And and then we got a little
20:30
lucky. So before Kevin asked the last
20:33
question, because I know he's looking at the clock and he he's
20:35
my clock. What do you think?
20:39
Is the lasting legacy of cable. What stories really thrive there
20:44
and how did an impact story time going forward?
20:48
Well, I always like to say, you know, without cable there'd be
20:52
no reality television, there'd be no 24 hour news and there'd
20:57
be no Shark Week. I mean really, can we live
20:59
without any of those things? But the, you know, the lasting
21:04
legacy cable I think is choice. You know, viewers felt for the
21:08
first time, like, I think they had a choice, you know, where
21:12
everything was just kind of coming at them and they really
21:14
didn't have a choice. And so, look, that's led to a
21:18
world where the viewer is now, you know, you know, people like
21:23
me, you know, who are gatekeepers and deciding what
21:25
you saw, you know, that's something that's, you know, I
21:28
mean, it still exists, not in the way it does because you
21:31
don't need to talk to a guy like me anymore to make a TV show or
21:34
make a movie or have people see it.
21:36
The whole world's turned upside down.
21:38
But yeah, I think cable story was a story of choice and
21:42
differentiation. And Doug, we've learned so much
21:53
valuable inside some of the great stories from you today.
21:56
And for the closing segment of our show, we call it suspenders.
22:02
It's a segment where we ask you a fun, random question that's
22:06
unrelated to anything whatsoever and you give us a random answer,
22:09
if you like. Today though, I do have one
22:13
question that's a little specific to you that I've been
22:16
just been really curious about. All right.
22:18
I know that the one proudest creation, entertainment,
22:22
creation you have. It's not anything from your
22:26
cable days. It's a reggae show that you
22:28
started back in ever since college.
22:30
That lasted for 35 years. So tell us about that.
22:33
How did you start it? What made it work?
22:35
What made it last? Wow, you've been doing.
22:37
You did some research. I'm a big music fan, always was,
22:41
even as a kid. Make a Long story short.
22:43
I got the opportunity as a 16 year old to see Bob Marley
22:49
perform in Kingston, Jamaica. And you know, reggae was
22:54
something I barely knew anything about.
22:55
It wasn't really that much of a thing and I just was transfixed
23:00
by him and by the music and I got obsessed with it and you
23:04
know, went to college and wanted to be on the radio station and
23:08
it was pretty competitive to get on the radio station.
23:10
And I was like, well, they had, they had these weekend shows,
23:14
you know, that were sort of specialty shows.
23:16
I was like maybe I should try and do a reggae show.
23:18
No one's doing that again, trying to find that white space,
23:21
go someplace where nobody else is, right.
23:23
And it was also the right time. Reggae was, you know, starting
23:25
to gain some momentum and steam in Boston, where I went to
23:28
school, was a great market for it, like college kids, which is
23:30
really the market for reggae, big West Indian and Jamaican
23:33
community there. And I got the show on and it
23:37
kind of took off and, you know, became a thing and it was great.
23:41
And I say that, you know, sort of in a glib way, you know,
23:45
Daily Show, South Park, real world, whatever it is.
23:48
You know, I can, I can claim a part of that success, but I
23:52
can't say I did it. Whereas on this little reggae
23:55
show, it's like I did that. You know, nobody, nobody helped
23:57
me. I did it.
23:58
So it's the one thing I can claim is my own.
24:01
And I was, yeah. And I loved it and I was very
24:02
proud of it. And I love the fact that it ran
24:04
for a really long time. Amazing.
24:06
Well, thank you so much for taking the time.
24:09
This was such an amazing conversation.
24:11
We learned so much, so we really appreciate you allowing us to
24:14
pick your brain. Great to meet you guys.
24:16
Thanks for having me. Welcome back to Top Hat.
24:27
This is the part of the episode where we dissect and analyze
24:30
from the key and exciting learnings we got from this
24:33
week's Expert Storyteller. And this week we had the amazing
24:38
Doug Hazog who. Was one of the essential leaders
24:44
in the development of cable, including iconic brands like
24:48
Comedy Central, like MTV, working on shows like The Daily
24:53
Show in the Real World in South Park.
24:56
This man was influential in the rise of cable, and he's now
25:00
hosts a podcast called Basic where he discusses the
25:03
unofficial history of cable. And we got to dive in and talk
25:06
about the storytelling behind cable.
25:09
The things that cable unlocked, Kev, What did you think of Doug?
25:13
I mean, there's a reason we're making this A2 parter for our
25:17
season, and it takes someone who is truly knowledgeable in the
25:22
history of cable to be producing a podcast that documents the
25:27
histories of cable. We definitely learned so much
25:29
from Doug. So let's get into that.
25:32
Yeah, I think the first insight is something we've talked a lot
25:35
on this show is this idea of knowing your audience and
25:38
building a brand around them. We talked about this with brand
25:41
psychologists. We talked about this when we
25:43
talked about Apple and Nike or what have you.
25:45
This idea that Cable unlocked was finding an audience that was
25:50
kind of just taking the products they had, finding an audience
25:53
that was watching ABC Family because that was just what was
25:57
on, and creating a channel and a brand around them.
26:01
The reason that is so important is because you're taking an
26:04
audience that's okay with what they have and finding a way to
26:07
connect with them deeper. For example of MTV, they created
26:10
this club around this age group and said you could be watching
26:14
ABC but watch MTV, be a part of this.
26:17
And because this was before DVR, before recording, before
26:21
streaming, what have you, if you missed that night of MTV
26:25
content, you're not going to be able to talk about around the
26:28
water cooler with the other people around your age?
26:31
So by building this brand around this age group, they created
26:34
this club and this kind of must see TV mentality.
26:37
So when you went to school the next day with that age group,
26:40
they all talk about MTV. So it kind of pulls you into
26:43
watching it. So one, it connects with you
26:44
because it's type of your issues, your problems, your
26:47
things, you know that audience intimately.
26:50
But two, it also creates this club that you have to be a part
26:53
of. So that was really key about all
26:57
storytelling and all brand development, knowing your
26:59
audience. Creating a brand around them and
27:02
then doing whatever you can to super serve them, to know them
27:06
so intimately that you give them stuff that's built for them that
27:10
wouldn't work on any other network.
27:12
It's not about grading the best TV show, it's about creating the
27:14
MTV show. And what was really great and be
27:17
ahead of the time with this was this allowed advertisers to
27:21
connect with these audiences because they know these are the
27:24
kids watching it so they can create advertisements.
27:27
And products and things around those people and connect
27:30
directly with them instead of putting it on a BC and hoping
27:33
they see it. And we've seen this evolve so
27:36
much as technology changes with TikTok, Meta, Google, Instagram,
27:42
YouTube, all doing the same thing where they are serving you
27:47
ads that feel like they're tailor made for you.
27:49
Like I just bought something on TikTok this week and I'm like,
27:52
wow, this is so me. Because these ads allow
27:56
advertisers to target people exactly right you and sell to
27:59
you. And that really was heavily done
28:02
in cable because we were able to create these brands, these
28:05
channels around the Pacific audience.
28:07
Now we're able to target interest based on what you see.
28:11
So cable did this amazing thing about knowing your brand,
28:16
creating audiences around them, super serving them, and then
28:18
giving advertisers the opportunity to connect with that
28:21
brand. To connect with the exact same
28:23
people and deploy their money more fluidly.
28:26
So it's extremely exciting to go back and look at the birth place
28:32
of this kind of targeting mentality.
28:35
Definitely. And this was before the age of
28:39
Internet and social media. We now take targeted digital
28:45
marketing for granted, but back then this dynamic of.
28:49
Created content and advertisement working together
28:53
has definitely fueled the success of MTV and Comedy
28:57
Central, but it also provided a great template for business
29:03
models in the upcoming decades. And it was really important with
29:07
him too, because they're super serving the audience while so
29:10
many types of shows and things were built to sell ads because
29:13
they're like we have this audience captivated.
29:16
They remembered and understood that the only reason only way
29:19
they keep that audience captivated is to be intentional.
29:23
So they have to do that balancing ads, right.
29:25
It's not just about selling the ads, selling the products,
29:27
because if you take that cheap out.
29:29
You can lose the trust of that audience.
29:31
And when your channel is built around 1 audience, when your
29:35
brand is built to one one team, one audience, losing that trust
29:39
is very dangerous because once you lose that trust, they could
29:43
go somewhere else, they may never come back.
29:45
So the importance of being intentional about that audience,
29:48
super serving them, making sure you create content for them and
29:52
then using that audience to sell ads is a hugely important tool
29:56
because if you take advantage of that audience.
29:59
And focus on the merchandising and the ads.
30:01
You're going to lose that line and then you have no value to
30:03
sell back to the advertisers. I mean, I think a good example
30:06
of this is what happened Robin Hood.
30:08
Robin Hood hit a huge problem when they lost the trust of
30:11
their retail investors because their brand was around their
30:14
retail investors. And I'm not sure they've ever
30:16
fully recovered from that. This is just one example of the
30:19
modern day. But if you lose your trust and
30:21
brands because you're too focused on the business model,
30:24
you'll have nothing to sell for the business model.
30:26
So the importance of putting your audience first.
30:29
Is a key lesson of cable because while shows were created to sell
30:33
ads, they put the audience first, and they found a way to
30:35
be intentional about that. Yeah, and what I find
30:38
interesting in the case of Comedy Central is when it came
30:42
to South Park. Advertisement actually kind of
30:46
gives back and enabled the content itself because it it was
30:51
a very risky thing to put a cartoon show that talks about
30:56
much edgier topics than normal onto a cable TV channel.
31:00
But there were advertisers who are willing to associate
31:05
themselves with that Brennan with that audience, and that
31:08
gave South Park or gave Comedy Central the green light to.
31:12
Bring South Park over to the channel.
31:15
Honestly, that turned out to be a pretty successful show and
31:19
pretty successful brand for a very long time.
31:22
Yeah, and we see this nowadays even with shows like
31:24
Yellowstone. Yellowstone is a hugely
31:26
successful show. And what that show did was it
31:30
found an audience that wasn't being served.
31:33
It found an audience that didn't have content made for them and
31:36
they were taking the other content.
31:38
And that's the hugely important thing for any form of
31:41
storytelling, any form of product building.
31:43
Look for the audiences that aren't being served, that are
31:46
taking the stuff that companies are putting out for mass and
31:50
just taking it because that's all they have available.
31:53
If you can give quality storytelling to an audience
31:55
that's big enough, that's being underserved, that's your niche,
31:58
That's how you build storytelling, that's how you
32:00
build brands. You give them something they
32:02
haven't seen before. And that's ultimately.
32:06
The unique quality of cable as a storytelling medium and the
32:11
legacy it leaves to entertainment and storytelling
32:14
is that it provides people with options.
32:19
Options to a more diverse range of topics, more diverse content
32:26
that may speak to them better. Cable channels have the freedom
32:29
to create their unique characters to not.
32:33
Become just another generic brand that appeals to everybody
32:37
and that ultimately serves the audience better.
32:41
They have a more diverse stream of content that they can
32:45
consume. Yeah.
32:47
The legacy of cable was choice. And I think when you think about
32:52
that, you've seen that in so many of industries.
32:55
You see this in social media with all the different apps that
32:57
are available. You see this in retail now that
33:00
there's so many direct to consumer brands.
33:02
It's not just you go to 1. Walmart and you buy everything.
33:05
Now there's twelve different places just to get your mattress
33:08
right. And you see how this idea, this
33:11
legacy of cable, this idea of choice, and finding your niche
33:14
audience and superserving that audience has allowed platforms
33:18
like TikTok to give advertisers a chance to target just the the
33:23
people they want. So you can have 12 mattress
33:26
brands because they can target just people who need mattresses,
33:28
right? But I think.
33:30
No matter how personalized and how specific and specialized the
33:33
world gets, there's a reason they are still blockbuster
33:37
movies. And there's a reason they are
33:38
still blockbuster shows, even though we all have immense
33:42
access to content and just the things we love.
33:45
There's a reason why a show like Succession connects to so many
33:48
people, or why Marvel is huge in the box office.
33:53
It's because there are still universal truths for story time.
33:57
There's still abilities to create stories for mass people.
34:01
There's abilities to create a very specific show like Shits
34:06
Creek, but still have an appeal to mass mount people because of
34:09
the universal truth to storytelling.
34:11
And this is something we talked about a lot, that storytelling
34:14
is a medium as old as time, right?
34:16
It's something that's been passed down for generation,
34:18
generation. There are still ways to connect
34:22
with a mass amount of people. With simple stories even told in
34:27
different ways. And we talked about this a lot
34:28
with John Booker. About how societies that grew
34:32
and evolved to be independent to each other had similar stories
34:35
like the Cinderella story, like the Going home story.
34:38
It's because as humans, we all go through the human experience
34:43
and that gives us access to stories that are related to us,
34:47
no matter how different we are. So I think.
34:50
As we get excited about personalization, as we get
34:53
excited about choice, as we get excited about all these new
34:55
technologies, it's important to remember the basics of
34:58
storytelling, and that's understanding the human
35:00
experience and creating something that's going to
35:02
connect with the audience. And this has been another great
35:07
episode of the Learning Suit and Plastic Tie podcast.
35:11
If you like our content, make sure to subscribe and follow
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35:21
Follow us on Instagram TikTok at Lsptpod, LinkedIn linen suit and
35:28
plastic tie. Thank you all for listening.
35:30
We're here to help you become better storytellers and we
35:33
appreciate your time cuz we know there's so much content out
35:37
there. We love you.
35:38
Have an amazing day. Talk soon.