MTV's Freston Blames Janet
I just got back from the odd little newsmaker breakfast hosted by The Week and The Conference Board. Getting right to it, I thought there was a little bit of news made right at the start. Tom Freston, the chairman and CEO of MTV Networks, blamed no one but Janet Jackson for her peek-a-boobie Super Bowl special. From my notebook:

"We didn't think we were taking a risk with Janet Jackson," Freston said. "Nothing in her career indicated we would have ended up where we did last Sunday."

Freston said that MTV, which produced the half-time show, had no prior knowledge and that an investigation by the FCC will prove him correct. Later in the morning, Freston also made an interesting remark about whether his properties (among his company's 93 networks around the world are MTV and VH1) have missed the boat for music downloads. His quote:

"By no means do we think it's too late because it's still in its nascent stages."

OK, so I did mention this event was a little weird. It started at 8:30 a.m. at the Four Seasons restaurant. The speakers were seated around the tiny pool which was covered by a hard Plexiglas-looking thing. ("I'm walking on water," moderator Harold Evans said as he paced among the panelists.) Maybe 200 or so people were there, very much a business and media bunch. Tina Brown, Maria Bartiromo, Myron Kandel were in the audience along with the likes of Nick Denton, Jeff Jarvis, Nick Gillespie and Liz Spiers. The thing was sponsored by Altria (cough, Philip Morris) and UBS. Lots of suits and schmoozing. I was seated between a reporter for the German edition of the Financial Times and a very nice woman in a fur hat who works in the fashion industry and admitted she has a foot in the socialite circle. She kindly pointed out to me who was whom among the professional socialites in the audience.

I think the weirdest part of the event was when they started taking question from callers (as if this thing was televised or something?) and the big voice of a rather irritated Jack Valenti filled the room. I thought Mr. Head of the MPAA might have merely been grumpy for agreeing to do this call at 6:30 a.m. California time - but no, he said he was in an ice storm in D.C. Valenti first ignored Evans' "lovely question" and then went on some rant that I failed to comprehend. Finally he got to a nugget that got the audience's attention. He said he was recently at CalTech where he was shown a new computer technology of some sort that allowed the user to download an entire DVD in 5 seconds. The CalTech professor (Dr. Neuman, I think) told Valenti that a company with enough money could bring that technology to market in 18 months to 2 years.

I should mention again that I was at this event solely on the invitation of weekly magazine The Week, whose PR department thought it would be good publicity to invite some bloggers to these events. And as my fur-hat wearing friend informed me, the only reason The Week has been holding these events is for the publicity.
- posted by Amy @ 2/03/2004 11:11:00 AM