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Listen to Colbert and NY Media Exec's Roast Tom Freston

October 27, 2006

New York media executives are still howling over Wednesday’s roast of Tom Freston. The ex-CEO of Viacom — honored by New York’s Center for Communications – was mercilessly ripped into by friends and talent including Comedy Central’s Steven Colbert. Freston was fired by Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, angry in part that News Corp. bought MySpace and Viacom did not. The roast included lot of referencs to drugs and Freston’s years importing clothing from Afghanistan and India in the 1970s. "Were those smokable clothes?" Colbert asked.

We offer some audio recordings – not the highest quality — of the event. Freston goes through a lenthy riff on his new MySpace page, which has a lot of visual schtick but he’s funny enough you’ll get most of the jokes.

–News Corp. president Peter Chernin:"How bad it must feel for Tom to be screwed over by a man so old that he needed a little blue pill to do it," said to a big laugh.

–Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert  called Frestong "one of the secular, uber-tolerant, liberal, anything-goes, me-first, who-cares-what-my-country-wants, I-want-my-MTV-istas who are tearing America apart."

Freston: "I've been using these last few weeks of unplanned vacation I've had to develop my own, personal digital strategy. The first thing I did when I got canned was to go out and buy a computer. I'd been meaning to do it, but thought, I work in global media, who needs a computer?

Posted by Caroline Palmer on October 27, 2006 | Comments (2)

1/20/2013 9:48:38 AM EST
In response to: Listen to Colbert and NY Media Exec's Roast Tom Freston
Roopa commented:

Great post, Jon. This article does ienedd highlight the cannibalization issue we discussed in class if content owners like Viacom others make more from 1 hour of TV watched on TV versus that watched on Hulu, should they embrace Hulu? The con, of course being the potential cannibalization. And the pro being generating ad revenue from consumers who might otherwise consume the content on BitTorrent or other means.Overall, this shows that the market is still in flux. And the business models will need to evolve a lot. I suspect the TV Everywhere initiative will ply a big role. Also, Hulu might also end up breaking its content into types basic (ad-supported) and premium (with subscription). We will wait n see.


10/31/2006 1:43:27 AM EST
In response to: Listen to Colbert and NY Media Exec's Roast Tom Freston
ANDY TYTLA commented:

Good stuff.

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