MTV CREATOR TACKLES NEW GOALS

Bob Pittman’s idea was considered so “crazy” six years ago that the board of directors of the Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Co.--which had hired the 26-year-old wunderkind to run its Movie Channel--kicked the proposal upstairs to the respective heads of the joint venture: What do you mean a 24-hour TV music cable channel ?

But Pittman’s idea--MTV--has become a pop culture sensation. The channel’s emphasis on quick-pulsed video imagery has not only turned the record industry inside out, but has also redefined the youth market for film, television and advertising. Remember: The working title for “Miami Vice” was “MTV Cops.”

MTV’s success has established Pittman as a “televisionary”--as Esquire magazine dubbed him. Built upon a $50-million investment, the channel--now available in about 30 million homes--was a key part of a package purchased last year for $570 million by Viacom International Inc.

Now at 32, however, Pittman is restless. He has announced that he will leave his present post--which also includes overseeing a second music channel (VH-1), the child-oriented Nickelodeon channel and the adult-oriented Nick at Nite--early next year to launch a new, diversified entertainment and communications company that will make records, movies and television programs. The company will be funded by MCA. Both Pittman and MCA will own a 50% interest in the firm whose first venture will be a record label. Viacom also will be involved financially in the label.

So, tonight’s third annual MTV Video Music Awards ceremony at the Universal Amphitheatre (part of a hookup that also includes a ceremony at the Palladium in New York City) will be a sort of last hurrah for Pittman.

Besides presenting awards in categories ranging from the year’s best video to best choreography in a video, the three-hour program, which will be broadcast live starting at 6 p.m. on MTV, will feature live performances by such acts as Whitney Houston, INXS, the Pet Shop Boys, Robert Palmer and the Monkees. (Tickets are being sold to the public.)

There is debate over MTV’s ratings (the latest Nielsen survey suggested the firm’s earlier estimates of MTV viewership were too high) and some record industry observers are saying the youth rock audience’s fascination with video is fading--just the way it did with video games.

Still, MTV’s impact is undeniable--and Pittman, a Mississippi native and son of a Methodist minister, speaks with the authority of the man who made the “crazy” idea work. MTV wasn’t his first success. Pittman was considered a radio station programming whiz before he was out of his teens. He was just 23 when New York’s WNBC made him its program director. WNBC was soon the highest-rated station in the country.

Pittman was pleased with MTV’s success as he sat recently in his office at MTV’s headquarters in New York. Yet, he was clearly eager to move forward.

“My history has been based on change,” he said. “I started working radio at age 15 and by the time I was 25, I had worked at 13 stations. I am motivated by a challenge . . . by creating things.”

Question: Whatever made you think an all-music channel like MTV would work?

Answer: For my generation, rock ‘n’ roll and television were the two most important things in our lives in terms of entertainment, and it seemed illogical that there wasn’t more of a connection--more music on television.

But as soon as I started experimenting with a music show--it was called ‘Album Tracks’ on WNBC-TV--I realized that music did not lend itself well to the traditional event-scheduling nature of television--the kind of structure where people tune in to see something specific at a certain time.

If you look at MTV today, I think what we have done is break down that pattern. The only connection between what we have done and regular television is that we both come in over the TV set. Basically what we are trying to do is what radio has done fairly well, which is create a mood experience.

How long did it take you to realize that you would need more than just video clips--that contests, live concerts would all play a part in the MTV offering?

I think we realized it before we went on the air. One of the interesting things is that for all the “issues” that have been raised about MTV, no one has ever touched on the real issue of MTV, which is: How do you keep the creativity going? How do you convince creative people to give up a great idea and move on to a new idea? If there is one thing we worry about day after day, it is that issue.

“Saturday Night Live”--in the early days--was probably the most successful at the question of new creativity. If something got big, they wouldn’t do it anymore. They wouldn’t just give the audience more of what it wanted, even if it would help ratings. They got rid of the old thing and went with the creativity, so that creativity became the image of the program.

Looking back, what was your biggest problem in getting a 24-hour music channel on the air?

The fact that it sounded like an asinine idea. The conventional idea was everyone listens to music, they don’t watch it. Everyone kept saying, “No one is going to sit around and watch music on television. . . . It’s a stupid idea.” The board of directors of Warner Amex (the original parent company of MTV) wouldn’t approve the idea. They thought it seemed too crazy, too risky. It eventually had to go to Steve Ross, the chairman of Warner Communications, and Jim Robinson, the chairman of American Express.

Why did you think it would work?

I am not sure you ever know exactly what you are doing in this business. It’s always a certain balance between logic and intuition that goes into any decision. This was just something I felt strongly about and I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t see it.

I told them that people made the same argument--about not watching music on television--about television when it came to soap operas. Those shows were supposed to be the “theater of the mind” and they would never work on television. I told them they were underestimating the power of the television set with the young generation.

Today’s generation grew up with television. Radio is a habit of people’s lives, but nothing works on radio now except music because my generation really can’t hear words on the radio. Talk doesn’t work with this generation. It only works with a 35- or 40-plus audience. No one has been able to get successful talk for a young generation. My generation has to see it, experience it.

When did you know the channel was a success?

Right away. We started getting reaction from the record stores and from (fans on the) street that it was working in the cities we were being seen in. The problem is we didn’t get the distribution we thought we would in the beginning. Cable operators were very slow to put it on. It wasn’t until a year later that we were able to get a lot of subscribers. They thought it was a dumb idea. Advertisers were also slow.

Where we expected to lose only about $10 million total on MTV before we turned it around, we probably lost closer to $50 million.

Was that panic time?

Yeah, I think there was panic in some areas. I’m sure there were some discussions now and then that we should shut this thing down, but I felt pretty comfortable because I felt when push came to shove that Steve Ross was there and Steve knew it was happening. He understood how the consumer felt and the theory was: If this is a big consumer hit, it will eventually be a big financial hit.

What about charges that the channel was ignoring black music?

When you live and breathe in a company and you know what your problems are and what your priorities are and these other things start coming out of left field and don’t match the facts at all, your first inclination is to just ignore them. You think to yourself, “Everyone knows that’s not true.”

I think the painful lesson we’ve learned about dealing with the press is that people don’t know when something’s not true. They often don’t take the time to analyze the situation. If two people write the same thing, no other (writer) wants to buck the trend and write a contrary story. It must be something about safety in numbers. So, we have learned that when issues come up now, we address them right away . . . no matter how silly they may seem.

So, you consider the black music matter a false issue?

When Rick James accused us of being racist and not playing black music, I thought, “Everyone knows we play black music and are playing more of it than had been on rock radio in 10 or 15 years.” We felt we were the catalyst for bringing black artists and pop artists and new-wave artists into the mainstream. We were trying to broaden what was exposed to the consumer rather than narrow it. The charges seemed ludicrous to us. But before you knew it, People magazine writes a story that MTV is playing no black artist. It was a great education about dealing with the press. You have to answer the charges, no matter how ludicrous they are.

What has been your main contribution to MTV?

The job as I saw it was to set up a culture. Writing a promo or picking a logo was never as important as defining what the product would be on a conceptual and strategic level . . . to set a culture here and make sure the people we hired fit that culture.

At this point, I think I have the luxury of being able to leave MTV without affecting it. The culture is in place and the way we do things in strategy is certainly in place. I don’t run it day to day anymore. I have been out of that for a couple of years.

What interests you about starting your own record label?

Each existing label has a certain expertise, something it does well . . . a special niche. The niche I have is I think I really understand the new age of video and how you market an artist. I also think I have insight into talking to the TV generation, how to present an artist so that he seems relevant. The challenge of the record company is not to tell the guy how to sing, but how to get the public to understand what talented people are doing.

What is the challenge of movies?

I clearly want to do something in that arena because I think the audience we talk to at MTV day in and day out is the same audience that the motion picture companies go after. And, I understand that audience, what they are going after . . . how to communicate with them.

Describe this TV generation.

TV is the one thing that has had the most profound effect on shaping this generation. It’s a generation that does not listen to words specifically, doesn’t read words. Instead, it develops a sense impression of the situation and draws a conclusion from that sense impression, which means that mood plays a very big part, visual image plays a big part.

The thing that serves as a perfect example to me was the Vietnam War. When my parents sat down and watched the evening news at night, they listened to the words being said and formed their impression strictly from the words. My generation looked at the pictures and the pictures were telling a different message than the words. . . . “This is wrong, we shouldn’t be there, we are not going anywhere; we are not winning anything.”

I think we had a communication gap, not a generation gap. My parents got their message. I got my message and it was in conflict. I think it was the first time you had the two different types of communication skills going at once.

How do you see that pattern continuing today?

You now see the phasing out of entertainment forms that were slow, plodding, conversational . . . forms that use lots of connectives or place great reliance on words. Instead, you see the emergence of “Miami Vice,” “Moonlighting,” where imagery plays so much larger a part. I love it when I hear (older) people watch MTV and say, “I don’t get it. That show makes me so nervous . . . so much noise.” That says we are right.

Does this have a bearing on the types of movies you will make?

I don’t think it will affect the type so much as how you tell the story . . . how do you grab the audience? The audience doesn’t process information in a linear fashion. They truly do pick up clusters of information and they put them together where they belong.

I think anytime there is a trend, that it is the wrong way to go. But there are lessons to be learned by what is happening now. The main point is that you can communicate things with visual imagery and mood. You don’t necessarily need words to do it. I think that’s where the impact of a “Flashdance” or a “Top Gun” comes through.

1 line of 28p