February 13, 2020 • 35 mins
BusinessWeek once called him “the James Bond of the media world.” The Columbia Journalism Review declared “No other reporter has covered the news communication business as thoroughly.” And the truth is, there’s a lot about the world that we wouldn’t understand if it wasn’t for journalist Ken Auletta—from his profiles of powerful people to his keen instincts for industry reporting. But how did working in politics lead him to journalism? Why does he think the press can be such a motivator for good? And what’s his trick for landing so many high-profile interviews? Tune in as Bob and Ken discuss.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic production. I heart radio.
When I interviewed with Murdoch unto the twenty thousand profile
of him, and we went up spending probably ten straight
days in his office. I was a fly on the wall.
We had dinner maybe six or seven of those nights.
(00:22):
Yet he and I had a history. I had quit
rather than work for him, so he knew I abhorred
his journalism, and yet he was open in part. I
think because I said, look, I'm gonna try and understand you,
and I think that is seductive to people. I am
(00:45):
Bob Pipman. Welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the
Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore the entire gamut of marketing,
from analytics to creative. On this episode, we have someone
who has been exploring the same thing for most of
his career. He's perhaps the greatest media critic and observer
of my generation. Ken Aletta Ken grew up in Coney Island,
(01:14):
New York. Worked for Robert Kennedy twice. He was a
big part of the Village Voice in New York Magazine
in their heydays, and for the last twenty five years
he's written the Analysts of communications column for The New Yorker.
His books have explored everything from the three broadcast networks
before their fall, from Grace to Google, to the advertising industry.
With his latest Enemies, his interview was at the center
(01:37):
of recent documentary about the man behind McCarthy ism and
the Blacklist of the fifties and a legendary New York fixer,
Roy Cohne. He was a high school and college baseball player,
and he continued that into a well known writers baseball
team as an adult. He's a nice guy with a
big smile, who sometimes asked tough questions, and he's a friend.
Welcome Ken. Before we dig into the goods off, I
(02:00):
want to take a minute to start off with you
in sixty seconds. Ready to go Fireway. Do you prefer
cats or dogs? Dogs? Brooklyn or Manhattan Brooklyn Beer Wine Wine,
Mets or Yankees Mets. You prefer to play left field
or first base? I used to play left field, now
first base. As you get older. A cup or cone cone,
(02:23):
roller coasters or bumper cars, bumper cars, Ted Turner or
Barry Diller. I like them both. Cooking or tennis. Cookie. Okay,
it's about to get harder. Secret talent cooking. Favorite Coney
Allen Ride, Oh boy boy, the horses, and it's deeple chase,
which is no longer their favorite sport baseball Probably I
(02:43):
love this slowness and the art of good pitching. Favorite
meal to cook, D. S Huce. What would you for
your last meal? D? Souce. Smartest person you know, Tom Malone,
childhood hero Sandy koa first job working for Howard Simon
is writing speeches and carryen codes. Favorite book com punishment
(03:04):
Both to live by Albert Camu Good Hope is better
than the bed holding Your proudest professional achievement, Getting people
who are hard to open up to open up. Scariest
interview you've done, Roy Cohn. He was easily the most
disgusting you may have ever met in my life. No
one even clothes. What did you want to be when
(03:25):
you were growing up? Last question? Baseball player? Okay, this
podcast is for entrepreneurs and marketers, so let me ask
you the big question. I'm sure they all want to know.
You've met and interviewed the greats of media at their peak,
Ted Turner, Larry Tish, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, and some
not so great like Harvey Weinstein. Is there something the
(03:45):
successful ones having common Is there a secret sauce? I
don't know if there is a secret sauce, but there
are certain commonalities. And one of them is a conviction
that I'm going to do it my way. So it's
a kind of self confidence that people, uh, I know
the answer to this, and I'm gonna do it, and
damn the torpedoes. Some of my staff think I'm crazy
(04:07):
and I'm gonna go do it. And that's what Bill
Gates did, That's what Barry Dilla did on a number
of occasions. That's what John Malone, That's what Murdoch did.
And you don't necessarily agree with these people. I mean,
I don't agree with Murdoch in terms of journalism, but
as a businessman he's not easily equal. Did you find
these folks were, in addition to knowing exactly where they
(04:29):
wanted to go, where the good listeners do. Actually, that's
a mixed bag. One of the things that make a
good reporter is to be a good listener, and you
got to draw people out. There are some Murdoch, for instance,
a good listener. Bill Gates when he ran Microsoft was
not a good listener. I think he is now in
philanthropy and if he were good listening, he wouldn't have
had the anti trust trilleyet and have lost it. We're
(04:51):
going to come to that. Barry Jill is a good listener.
John Malone is a good listener. You have to be
open to ideas and to exploring things to come up
with a big idea, a fresh, a new idea, which
many of these people did. They had to be listening
to something. As you began your exploration of your subjects,
do your conversations usually confirm initial impressions or other surprises.
(05:17):
Always surprises. One of the things I say to people
to try and seduce them to agree to a profile,
and a profile is a very in the New York
is a very elaborate process. It's probably four or five
months of reporting, and you say to them, I want
to be flying on the wall in your office. I
spent lots of time interviewing you. One of the things
you say at the beginning is that my task is
(05:40):
to understand you, so I'm starting with a clean slate.
When I interviewed Murdoch and did a thousand profile of
him in we wound up spending probably ten straight days
in his office. I was a fly on the wall.
We had dinner maybe six or seven of those nights.
Yet he and I had a history. I had quit
(06:00):
rather than work for him, so he knew I ahoured
his journalism. And yet he was open in part, I
think because I said, look, I'm gonna try and understand you.
And I think that is seductive to people when you
do that, but it's genuine. That's my task to understand
a person. And so you got to free yourself of preconceptions,
preconceptions that are facts. Murdoch doing lousy journalism is a fact,
(06:23):
and ultimately that came back and punched him in the
nose when I wrote the profile. I want to dig
into a lot of those stories, but first I'd like
to get some context. So can we go back to
your roots. You were born during World War Two, grew
up on Coney Island, Brooklyn. Your dad owned a sports
equipment store. Can you paint the picture of those times?
My mother was Jewish, my father's Italian working class. I
(06:46):
went to work with my father's sporting it so when
I was nine, my brother who was five years old
and worked there as well. A million people came off
the Subway and Coney Allen every Saturday and Sunday in
the summer. And they wanted something, they went the hats.
They too, clogs or whatever. My father had a little
sporting and store right across my train station, and he
would open the outdoors and we would sell hats. We
(07:08):
lived in a stoop house. You played Johnny on the
pony ring O Leevio and you played on the street.
Everyone was on the street. There were no big apartment
houses and projects then. So that's how I grew up.
I went to public schools. At Abraham Lincoln High School
where I went, I had a sixty four average and
I was a school up. I was thrown out of
(07:29):
high school for stealing a pack of passes to get
out of the building to hang on this sweech up,
and my parents somehow got me a meeting with a
blast who was a principal, Abraham like in high school,
a great man. And I came in with my T
shirt and he says, tell me Kenneth, and he liberally
used the word Kenneth, and I hated being called Kenneth.
(07:49):
Tell me, Kenneth, what do you like about Abraham Lin
in high school? And I said baseball and football. He said,
let me ask you a question, Kenneth. He said, if
you're not attending abraham Like in high school, how are
you going to play baseball and football? Favery mare, I'm
liking it. Never had gone to me. I was a
junior in high school and he had my attention, and
he said, here's the rules, and he became my lifelong
(08:09):
mentor what was his punishment? His punishment was had no
free periods, had to come to his office, and how
to read books like Dickens and other great books. Did
this reading as punishment change your relationship? I became more
serious person. I got into the State University of Oswego,
and when I'm going to graduate school, you go off
(08:30):
to college and from what I've read, I can't tell
if you were a serious activist or a hell raiser.
You outed the president of the school for a shady
real estate deal. He was eventually fired. It was Foster
Brown was his name. I was a reporter for the
paper and a column, but I thought the paper was
too tame, so I started an off campus alternative newspaper
(08:54):
called which means truth in Russian. And this guy who
helped me by distributed in the mimograph paper. His name
was Dan Schoffman and then was a communist, a self
proclaimed communist. I wasn't at all, but we were both
trying to raise havoc. And one of the things I
found out is that Foster Brown had these real estate deals.
(09:14):
Someone must have given me a tip, because I would
not normally have gone to the land records. When I
did go to land records, I found for Brown on
this land which he was selling at the university and
making a lot of money. And so a graduation he
was there wouldn't shake my hand, but he was fired
the next year. What did college do to shape who
(09:35):
you became? I went there as a freshman, and we
didn't say in the dorm. We would say boarding houses
off campus. We wheel our luggage off the train and
we go to this house and these two elderly people say, Hi,
how are you? Mr? And Mrs Gardner. You know, Corny Hellen.
You didn't say a lot of strangers. I mean you
didn't you You always kept it a kind of a guard,
(09:57):
a distance. And I felt that all to college, that
sense of community that opened this and I always felt
that I learned much more about that than I learned
in subjects in classes that I learned how to listen.
I learned how to relate to people and talk to
them and appreciate them. It was just a great experience.
(10:17):
Was this your first time really outside of Brooke? We
couldn't take vacations because in some of my dad out
of work and we didn't have the money to go
on vacations, so I've never really been at to go.
Now you've been quoted as saying you think it was
good for you to be a success at a school
that was not as academically rigorous as a school where
you would not have been the big success. Yeah. I
(10:39):
think that's right. I think I gained confidence by the
fact that it was not as rigorous as, say, my
graduate studies at Syracuse. I had no reason to be
confident when I went to US for you in my
intellectual capacity. I remember being in a constitutional law class
and he said, I want you to attend your Supreme
Court justice and take the opposite position from the one
(11:03):
you believe in. So in my case it was defense
States rights against civil rights. I found it so stimulating
to do that. I suddenly felt like, oh my god,
I can I can hold my own and I can
stand up. You've got confidence at a place like us,
we're going I feel eternally grateful. You went off to
grad school at Syracuse. She joined the Air Force Reserves.
(11:23):
You did six months active duty during the Vietnam War.
You came out of all this working for a candidate
for the governor of New York. You worked for Bobby
Kennedy twice, but after his assassination you left politics and
moved to media. What happened to you? I always wanted
to be in journalism. It was in a PhD program.
I got a master's. We went a little beyond that
and said it's boring. Got a job of this guy,
(11:46):
Howard Samuels. This wonderful man was called the Upstate industrialist
Exoter Company co Court. I very successful, but he wants
to run for governor. And I was writer and wrote
for the column at the school paper. The dean of
the Exwell School recommended me to him as a speechwriter.
Dran for governor lost, but after Bobby Kennedy died in
(12:09):
I said, well, now this opportunity to go through journalism again.
So we started a weekly newspaper, Manhattan Tribune. It was
supposed to be a black white newspaper as a black
editor and a white editor of me, and it was
a wonderful experience. But the guy who put up the
money bill had had a business and when Nixon was elected,
he wanted us to write nice things about Nixon. So
(12:31):
me and my co editor and a number of people
just quit. You have one detour. You were the executive
director of the New York City Off Track Betting Corporation.
I had a big job there as executive director in
sixty nine. Howard Samuel's the guy worked and was very
loyal to and deeply fond of. He was the first
(12:52):
Democrat to endorse John Lindsay for re election as an
independent in nineteen sixty nine, and Lindsay came and said,
New York has started the first off track betting corporation
in the country. Howard, would you and your businessman would
you run it? So Howard started. I was his executive
director in the office next door to him for about
(13:13):
three years, and then I left to plot his campaign
for governor in seventy four. He was a heavy favor
to win. He was called Howie the Horse, and he
was very well known. And I was a campaign manager
and with my help, he went from a twenty point
lead to twenty point defeat and that was the end
(13:34):
of my politics. Any insights from your experience and all
of that politics running off track, betting that you've applied today, Well,
one of the truisms that punches me in the nose
all the time as a journalist, and one of the
reasons why I think when you do profiles of people,
you really gotta be in their office and you gotta
(13:54):
dig deep. It's what I call the human factor. Oftentimes
you'll find the most mathematically scientifically oriented person making seat
of the past decisions for very human reasons. For instance,
I'm doing a profile of John Malone in he was
then the most powerful person in television. John Malone didn't
(14:16):
have a television in his office, and the phone's rarely right.
But at twelve o'clock, as I'm sitting there, I hear
a phone ring, and he opens up a drawer and
he texted a red phone, Yes, dear, I'm right there.
At five o'clock, the same thing happens, Yes, dere right there.
So this happens two days in a row. And I said,
all right, Malone, what is that all about? He said,
(14:37):
that's that's my wife. I meet her at the gym
and I meet her for lunch every day. I said, so,
let me ask you a question. You just sold your
company to the telephone company d C I thirty four
or so billion dollars. You made a lot of money,
so the other was good? I said, Was that the
only reason you sold your company? And its Actually it wasn't.
(14:57):
What was the other reason? The other reason I did it?
It was very human reason my wife, I said, what
do you mean? He said she would leave me if
I didn't have a more normal life. You, darling, promised
me when you married me, you would be there. But
you're never there. You're always working. I need you there more.
I mean, take Bill Gates. When I covered Microsoft antitrust trial.
(15:21):
Bill Gates could have avoided that entire trial, could have
avoided the charges from the just Departments of Monopoly had
he just acknowledged, yes, we have a large footprint. And
I'm not gonna answer David Boys's questions like a brig.
I'm not going to be an arrogant guy. I'm gonna
be humble. When I interviewed the judge in that trial,
(15:42):
he said he didn't believe Bill Gates because he watched
the deposition. So if Bill Gates had not been so proud,
so arrogant at that point in time, he could have
avoided a lot of headache. Again, Human Factor, Just hold
on a second, because we've got so much more to
talk about. We'll be back after a quick break. M
(16:03):
Welcome back to Math and Magic. We're here with Caneletta.
You went on to start them. At the Village Voice,
New York magazine. You wrote and won one of your
first awards for an article called fifty Bad Decisions that
brought about the New York fiscal crisis. Did that make
you an insider suddenly to this kind of community or
(16:25):
were you a threat to them? I was a threat
to them. The Voice was a threat to the establishment,
and I was writing. Actually, I would argue a piece
that had more impact was a piece I wrote for
New York Magazine, a cover story should these people go
to jail? And it looked at the decisions that were
made over the years that put the city in this
(16:46):
fiscal hole, by bankers, by union leaders, by mayors, by governors,
and looked at the law and said they commit fraud?
Did they lie to the public? And say they had
money they didn't really have. And I'll know forget that
piece because I wrote it in almost scholarly way, did
a lot of reporting and said one hand of the
hand Milton Glazer, who was one of the most geniuses
(17:07):
I've ever met. Clay Felk was the editor, and Milton
was there and Walter Bernard who was his deputy, And
I said, you know, the story is these people commit
a crime, and you know it's complicated. And Milton said,
how about this, took out a pad and he drew
prison bars and he had holding the prison bars may
(17:28):
have been Mayor Lindsay, Governor Rockefeller, Walter risk and the
head of City Bank. And he said, how about this
the headline should these people go to jail? And I said,
oh my god. It was just brilliant. You know that
gets people to read a piece. New York Magazine was
the hot of the moment media property. It was sort
of the Facebook of its day. It's founder, Clay Felker,
(17:49):
who you mentioned, could not have been more important. And
then Rupert Murdoch, still at the beginning of his empire,
takes it over. You walked out with a bunch of people,
what happened was Rufromer as a bold businessman who takes risks,
but he also cuts corners. He and Clay Felker we're friends.
Clay Felker introduced him to Dorothy Schiff in nineteen seventy five.
(18:13):
He both an air Post and promised to keep it
a liberal newspaper, and of course immediately made it a
conservative newspaper. Then in nineteen seventy six, Clay Felker confided
in his friend Roue Murdoch. He said, I'm having terrible
problems with my Border Directors. It's just awful. I gotta
figure out something. Murdoch then went behind Felker's back, went
to the Border Directors and made a deal to buy
(18:36):
the company out from his friend Clay Felker. So we
heard that, and when that became public, all of us,
almost the entire staff went on strike. We said, we're
not going to work for Murdoch. I was in my
late twenties. I knew Howard Squadron, who was Murdoch's attorney,
because he had helped Howard Samuel's unners in politics. We
(18:56):
go to Howard's office and I say, Howard, I just
want to tell you lectually back away and not do
this takeover because all of us are going to leave.
We're not going to work for Murdoch, and that'll be
disaster for New York Magazine. And Howard looked at me
and he said, Ken, I don't think you understand. I
said what he said. You have furniture, you can be replaced.
(19:19):
And that's what happened. We all quit and he replaced
us all with furnitures. There was a lesson that money talks.
If you had the perspective of you today, would you
have done it? Absolutely? I was glad I did it.
I must say in fairness, we worried that Murdoch would
take New York Magazine downmarket the way he took the
New York Post, and he didn't do that. And by
(19:40):
the way, I was the only one who also worked
at the Village Voice then, so I was quitting both.
He didn't do that The Voice. In fact, one of
Murdock's very frustrations. He could not control the Village Voice
and he didn't try to control New York Magazine because
it was successful the way it was. I messed with that,
but I'm balanced. I'm happy I took the edition, and
I think most of us would say the same thing
(20:02):
worked out well for you. Yeah, I worked out well,
But it was actually interesting what happened. I remember, figure
out what am I going to do now? And I
go out to lunch with Richard Reeves, who was my buddy.
We come back to my apartment and there's a message
on the machine that just pressed the button and it said, hello,
Mr all Thatta, this is William Sean s h A W.
(20:25):
And he spelled his name, and he was the other
of the New Yorker. Of course, call me, and that's
the soda the New Yorker. I wound up doing longer
pieces for The New Yorker. I got a column in
the New York Daily News on Sundays and did a
weekly television show on w n E T. So my
life turned out. Okay, let's get into some men's sights.
You are, through your work, an expert on disruption and
(20:47):
transformation or lack of it in the media and tech world.
You covered the Microsoft trial. We talked about it twenty
years ago. What came out of that trial that's relevant
today with all the talk that's going on about tech
and the giants. Microsoft lost the trial both in Judge
Jackson's Federal District Court, and in the Court of Appeals
(21:08):
they would deem to be a monopoly. But the appeals
court overrule Judge Jackson's ruling that they should be broken
up in any case, Microsoft because it was left in
such bad order by that decision and by its own
behavior and that trial, they really suffered up serious blow
(21:28):
less ability to recruit good people who don't want to
work for an ogre. They became a much more tentative company.
And the lesson for that, as you spend forward, you
see today a much greater bipartisan support for regulating the
facebooks and the Google's and the Amazons, and they are
(21:49):
just as arrogant and as out of touch with Washington.
Those politicians have real power now. When you watch Mark
Zuckerberry be interviewed by the Senate and you you see
these unbelievably dumb questions that senators asked, you're almost sympathetic
to Mark Zuckerberg because of that. On the other hand,
they are in danger today of being regulated because people
(22:11):
are worried about not just their influence and power over journalism,
over privacy, just too much power. The lesson for them
is heed what happened to Microsoft. Even though Microsoft was
not broken up, they suffered. Do you think the government
can understand the issues well enough to effectively regulate detech
giants or do they not quite know what they're looking at?
(22:33):
I think they don't quite know what they're looking at.
I mean when you see Senator or in the hatch
asked Mark Zuckerberg, So you're free, how do you make
your money? I mean, god, you just say, oh my god,
I can't believe this guy. I remember when the government
recommended to break up Microsoft and the judge, who was
a wonderful man but digitally illiterate. I thought it was
so foolish. It's so unbelievably foolish. But if you were
(22:57):
conversing with the way the world was moving open source,
the internet, packet software was Microsoft was dead at some point,
don't artificially manufacturers. What do you think the remedy should
have been? Well, in part, the remedy was scold them,
humiliate them, shame them. That's something I believe in. It's
(23:19):
a fundamental point that you have to shame people. Journalism
has a big role in that too. Expose wrongdoing, expose arrogance,
exposed stupidity or corruption. You take Mark Zuckerberg today or
Cheryl Sandberg today. I've spent time with both of them
over the years and written profile of her and quite admirer.
(23:42):
But they've been shamed. That affects their behavior and will
affect their behavior, perhaps more than a misguided government regulation would.
By the way, same is true for journalism. One of
the most fun pieces I've I did for The New
Yorker was I think a ninety four It was called
Fee f Ee Speech. I interviewed about fifty journalists about
(24:04):
the fees they took to give speeches from organizations that
they are about. And I'll never forget that. People I
admired telling me, I don't have to answer that question.
It's private. So what do you get this private? Would
you let a politician get away with that answer? Were
you shunned for that? Yeah? Well over it made a
lot of people really angry. But that was fun, I mean,
(24:24):
but it also has an effect. I mean, I know
organizations that literally institute a policy saying you have to
come to us for approval before you give a paid speech,
or you can't give spaced speeches to organizations you write
about or cover and I think that's great. Let's fast
forward twenty years. You wrote about the disruption of the
(24:45):
ad business with frenemies and Google before that, how were
those two interconnected? Google started out when they formed, they
didn't have any idea how to make money. By the way,
Facebook was the same some years later. But what happened
us in two thousand four? Google is trying to figure
out how do we make money and they came up
(25:05):
with both ad Sense and ad Words. Today, Google's revenues
come from advertising, which is why it's free of Facebook's
comes from advertising. They originally were very reluctant to do advertising.
They felt were cheapened the product, and they don't have
that compunction today. When we look at the two though,
(25:27):
with the advertising industry and Google, is the advertising business
now controlled by Google and Facebook? It's certainly dominated by them.
I mean more than fifty of digital ads go to
those two companies, and sev of the growth in digital
advertising goes to those two companies. The one to watch
out for is Amazon. Amazon is growing like a rocket
(25:50):
faster and the reason for that is that they have
the most vital information and advertising. Once you know this
better than I do, purchase decision So do you think
that Google and Facebook and Amazon pushing the advertising business
to data is making the advertising business ultimately stronger. Well,
(26:11):
it does in some ways, but it also becomes a
menace of the advertising business because advertising business wants and
more data, and yet more data means less privacy. The
privacy issue has really surfaced and risen as a major concern.
And you watch a company like Apple make the opposite
arguments saying, don't go to Google and Facebook and Amazon,
(26:34):
we won't violate your privacy, and they do, and so
that becomes a defining difference between some of the digital
companies as well. You look at new leaders in the
advertising business. I look at Christian Jewels, Got Hagadorn, people
who are really digitally savvy and see the world through
the lens of data. Is that driven by this disruption
(26:55):
that's come from these original tech players. A basic division
is between math men and mad men. The math men
are digitally savvy people who want data, more and more data,
and they say, we can create algorithms to target ads
that people, knowing enough about those people that they'll be
(27:16):
interested in our product. And the creativity matters less, the instinct,
the judgment matters less. It's a math problem, and that's
a division in the ad world that will persist. I
think in Three Blind Mice a while back, you called
the demise of the broadcast TV networks. Looking back, was
(27:37):
there anything you missed or did it play out as
you expected? It didn't play out totally as I expected.
What I said in Three Blind Minds is that the
broadcast television networks were being disrupted by a new technology, cable.
We were new tech in the cable days, and you
were and you had two sources of revenue advertising, but
you also had subscriptions. Broadcast was all advertising. So I said,
(27:59):
broadcast scenes in trouble unless they can get another source
of revenue. What happened was actually Congress played at the
largest role in this. They passed the Cable Act in
nine four. Cable Act allowed retransmission consent, so the cable
companies were required to pay the broadcast networks for use
of their programs. The second thing was the Fincin rules
(28:21):
would change, which allowed the networks now to own the
programs and syndicate them and therefore creating another source of
revenue for them, particularly when the digital world came on.
The Netflix is and the youtubes, they allowed them to
sell programmings to them. CBS went from almost a reliant
on revenues from advertising, reliant on advertising. They were selling
(28:46):
programs and Netflix in two stations. They were getting retransmission
consent a couple of billion dollars from cable, and they
were selling overseas the programs that they own now. And
that's true of all the networks. But then the question becomes,
by selling their programs to Netflix, was CBS and Fox
and NBC building up a competitor? And I think yes,
(29:10):
thinking about what they could have done differently, the cable
companies John Malone et cetera start building out the major cities.
They need something more than distant TV signals. They need
real cable networks. They first go to ABC, NBC, CBS
and say, hey, I've had this idea. Why don't you
build us these networks? The broadcast networks based to say,
go away, what are you crazy? Why would we cannibalize ourselves.
(29:33):
This contrast, this is Steve Jobs saved Apple transformed. It
came out this great new thing called the iPod, and
he had iTunes and then it was gonna be apparent.
Music was going to be on the phone. So what
does he do. He goes into the phone business, basically
cannibalizes himself. But I don't think there's a person alive
looking at that they would say that turned out to
(29:54):
be the wrong move. What was different about those two
and how they looked at it. I think Steve Jobs
was not wedded to the past in any way. And
by the way, he was not an employee who worried
about his stock price, which most of the network people.
They were not owners, they were employees, they were managers,
(30:15):
and he thought out of the box. An example of
a traditional media person who thought outside the box is
Bob Iger. The deals he made with Steve Jobs. I mean,
Michael Eisner would not make those deals. Bob Byger becomes
CEO and suddenly he's reaching out. His people are saying,
what are you reaching out to him? He's the enemy.
He's competing without animation business. He's no, no, I want
(30:35):
to own that animation business. I wanted to transform Disney's
animation business. I watched the Roy Cohne documentary, Your interview
was the thread. Roy Cohne, for people who don't remember,
is the sidekick of Joe McCarthy. He was the fixer
in New York. He sort of knew everybody and sort
of got stuff done, and probably not the most scrupulous ways.
(30:57):
And you said you felt a little creepy doing that interview.
What did you learn about our city and about politics
and about the way things are done through that interview?
He had an enormous political power. The first interview we
did was at lunch at the twenty one Club, where
he had at Joyce table and I'm saying that he
didn't order, and I ordered a hamburger and French fries,
(31:19):
and he's sitting next to me, side by side with
his fingers. He's taking French fries off my plate and
eating them, and I'm kind of stunned by it. And
he's looking around the room and he sees his former
clients at Best Myers and other people, people who hired
him to kill their spouse or their business Pardner, and
you realize the source of his power was that people
(31:42):
hired him to kill four of them legally. And so
I write this piece and I thought he would hate it.
Was called a legal executioner on the cover, and it
was tough on him. And he calls me up and
I said, oh God, I'm gonna yield at by this creep.
And he says, Ken, I loved your piece, and how
do we get five under copy? And I realized pleased him.
(32:04):
It was a calling card. He said, would you sign one?
And I signed it and I said, de roy Cone
who I wished I had punched, and then he started
attacking me after that. From your vantage point and with
the keen pattern recognition you have. For a CEO listening
to this, or an entrepreneur, what advice would you give
them about success and failure be a good listener. Both
(32:25):
Barry Diller and Bob Iger when they were trying to
understand the digital world, Barry Diller said, I don't do emails.
I do them just twice a day so I can
concentrate it. But Bob Iger said to me he spent
an hour a day just surfing the web, just trying
to understand what was going on the sides. So I
think listening, being open, asking questions is critical. I think
(32:50):
humility is critical. Iger in his book talks about how
you gotta make people feel good. And I'll never forget
when I was doing my three Blind Mice book on
tele as networks, one of the great managers was Dan
Burke of Cap City that would spend time with him.
Dan would go around and he would compliment people, and
I said to him at one point, why do you
(33:12):
compliment people at the time and he looked at me.
He said, Ken, have you ever met anyone who tires
of a compliment? And that was one of his reasons
for success. I mean, he made people feel good. I
want to get one more personal insight. Your wife, Binkie
is a hugely successful literary agent. How is living in
a household with your careers intertwined? Upsides and downsides? Well,
(33:36):
the upside is you have so much to talk about.
You're unkindred Fields. You've got to read Jenny Egan, who
she represents. And I read Jenny Egan. I said wow,
and so that's great. The downside is that Binkie is
the first person who edits my work and she kills me.
So as we wrap up, we always end where we began.
(33:57):
Math and magic. Let's give a shout out to those
you think deserve it. Who's the best analytical, business, marketing
or media person the math side of it? Ran Goli,
best magician, the showman or show woman. Michael Heston's pretty good.
Can your insights have shaped the generation. Your contributions to pen,
(34:18):
the Public Library, New York Shakespeare Festival, one Very which
is the Public Theater, and more are greatly appreciated to
Thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Jorda. Here are
a few things I picked up in my conversation with Ken. One,
to really understand someone, you have to start with a
(34:40):
clean slate. By freeing himself a preconceptions, Kim was able
to earn the trust of people he had had a
history with, like Rupert Murdoch, and ultimately get them to
agree to a profile. To be a good listener, whether
you're a CEO or a journalist, asking questions is key
to understanding the world around you. Three, stand up for
what you believe in. When Ken walked out of his
(35:03):
job at New York Magazine on principle, he quickly got
a call from The New Yorker that would change his
career trajectory. Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman. That's it
for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math
and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. This show
(35:23):
is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger
for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic production. I heart radio.
When I interviewed with Murdoch unto the twenty thousand profile
of him, and we went up spending probably ten straight
days in his office. I was a fly on the wall.
We had dinner maybe six or seven of those nights.
(00:22):
Yet he and I had a history. I had quit
rather than work for him, so he knew I abhorred
his journalism, and yet he was open in part. I
think because I said, look, I'm gonna try and understand you,
and I think that is seductive to people. I am
(00:45):
Bob Pipman. Welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the
Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore the entire gamut of marketing,
from analytics to creative. On this episode, we have someone
who has been exploring the same thing for most of
his career. He's perhaps the greatest media critic and observer
of my generation. Ken Aletta Ken grew up in Coney Island,
(01:14):
New York. Worked for Robert Kennedy twice. He was a
big part of the Village Voice in New York Magazine
in their heydays, and for the last twenty five years
he's written the Analysts of communications column for The New Yorker.
His books have explored everything from the three broadcast networks
before their fall, from Grace to Google, to the advertising industry.
With his latest Enemies, his interview was at the center
(01:37):
of recent documentary about the man behind McCarthy ism and
the Blacklist of the fifties and a legendary New York fixer,
Roy Cohne. He was a high school and college baseball player,
and he continued that into a well known writers baseball
team as an adult. He's a nice guy with a
big smile, who sometimes asked tough questions, and he's a friend.
Welcome Ken. Before we dig into the goods off, I
(02:00):
want to take a minute to start off with you
in sixty seconds. Ready to go Fireway. Do you prefer
cats or dogs? Dogs? Brooklyn or Manhattan Brooklyn Beer Wine Wine,
Mets or Yankees Mets. You prefer to play left field
or first base? I used to play left field, now
first base. As you get older. A cup or cone cone,
(02:23):
roller coasters or bumper cars, bumper cars, Ted Turner or
Barry Diller. I like them both. Cooking or tennis. Cookie. Okay,
it's about to get harder. Secret talent cooking. Favorite Coney
Allen Ride, Oh boy boy, the horses, and it's deeple chase,
which is no longer their favorite sport baseball Probably I
(02:43):
love this slowness and the art of good pitching. Favorite
meal to cook, D. S Huce. What would you for
your last meal? D? Souce. Smartest person you know, Tom Malone,
childhood hero Sandy koa first job working for Howard Simon
is writing speeches and carryen codes. Favorite book com punishment
(03:04):
Both to live by Albert Camu Good Hope is better
than the bed holding Your proudest professional achievement, Getting people
who are hard to open up to open up. Scariest
interview you've done, Roy Cohn. He was easily the most
disgusting you may have ever met in my life. No
one even clothes. What did you want to be when
(03:25):
you were growing up? Last question? Baseball player? Okay, this
podcast is for entrepreneurs and marketers, so let me ask
you the big question. I'm sure they all want to know.
You've met and interviewed the greats of media at their peak,
Ted Turner, Larry Tish, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, and some
not so great like Harvey Weinstein. Is there something the
(03:45):
successful ones having common Is there a secret sauce? I
don't know if there is a secret sauce, but there
are certain commonalities. And one of them is a conviction
that I'm going to do it my way. So it's
a kind of self confidence that people, uh, I know
the answer to this, and I'm gonna do it, and
damn the torpedoes. Some of my staff think I'm crazy
(04:07):
and I'm gonna go do it. And that's what Bill
Gates did, That's what Barry Dilla did on a number
of occasions. That's what John Malone, That's what Murdoch did.
And you don't necessarily agree with these people. I mean,
I don't agree with Murdoch in terms of journalism, but
as a businessman he's not easily equal. Did you find
these folks were, in addition to knowing exactly where they
(04:29):
wanted to go, where the good listeners do. Actually, that's
a mixed bag. One of the things that make a
good reporter is to be a good listener, and you
got to draw people out. There are some Murdoch, for instance,
a good listener. Bill Gates when he ran Microsoft was
not a good listener. I think he is now in
philanthropy and if he were good listening, he wouldn't have
had the anti trust trilleyet and have lost it. We're
(04:51):
going to come to that. Barry Jill is a good listener.
John Malone is a good listener. You have to be
open to ideas and to exploring things to come up
with a big idea, a fresh, a new idea, which
many of these people did. They had to be listening
to something. As you began your exploration of your subjects,
do your conversations usually confirm initial impressions or other surprises.
(05:17):
Always surprises. One of the things I say to people
to try and seduce them to agree to a profile,
and a profile is a very in the New York
is a very elaborate process. It's probably four or five
months of reporting, and you say to them, I want
to be flying on the wall in your office. I
spent lots of time interviewing you. One of the things
you say at the beginning is that my task is
(05:40):
to understand you, so I'm starting with a clean slate.
When I interviewed Murdoch and did a thousand profile of
him in we wound up spending probably ten straight days
in his office. I was a fly on the wall.
We had dinner maybe six or seven of those nights.
Yet he and I had a history. I had quit
(06:00):
rather than work for him, so he knew I ahoured
his journalism. And yet he was open in part, I
think because I said, look, I'm gonna try and understand you.
And I think that is seductive to people when you
do that, but it's genuine. That's my task to understand
a person. And so you got to free yourself of preconceptions,
preconceptions that are facts. Murdoch doing lousy journalism is a fact,
(06:23):
and ultimately that came back and punched him in the
nose when I wrote the profile. I want to dig
into a lot of those stories, but first I'd like
to get some context. So can we go back to
your roots. You were born during World War Two, grew
up on Coney Island, Brooklyn. Your dad owned a sports
equipment store. Can you paint the picture of those times?
My mother was Jewish, my father's Italian working class. I
(06:46):
went to work with my father's sporting it so when
I was nine, my brother who was five years old
and worked there as well. A million people came off
the Subway and Coney Allen every Saturday and Sunday in
the summer. And they wanted something, they went the hats.
They too, clogs or whatever. My father had a little
sporting and store right across my train station, and he
would open the outdoors and we would sell hats. We
(07:08):
lived in a stoop house. You played Johnny on the
pony ring O Leevio and you played on the street.
Everyone was on the street. There were no big apartment
houses and projects then. So that's how I grew up.
I went to public schools. At Abraham Lincoln High School
where I went, I had a sixty four average and
I was a school up. I was thrown out of
(07:29):
high school for stealing a pack of passes to get
out of the building to hang on this sweech up,
and my parents somehow got me a meeting with a
blast who was a principal, Abraham like in high school,
a great man. And I came in with my T
shirt and he says, tell me Kenneth, and he liberally
used the word Kenneth, and I hated being called Kenneth.
(07:49):
Tell me, Kenneth, what do you like about Abraham Lin
in high school? And I said baseball and football. He said,
let me ask you a question, Kenneth. He said, if
you're not attending abraham Like in high school, how are
you going to play baseball and football? Favery mare, I'm
liking it. Never had gone to me. I was a
junior in high school and he had my attention, and
he said, here's the rules, and he became my lifelong
(08:09):
mentor what was his punishment? His punishment was had no
free periods, had to come to his office, and how
to read books like Dickens and other great books. Did
this reading as punishment change your relationship? I became more
serious person. I got into the State University of Oswego,
and when I'm going to graduate school, you go off
(08:30):
to college and from what I've read, I can't tell
if you were a serious activist or a hell raiser.
You outed the president of the school for a shady
real estate deal. He was eventually fired. It was Foster
Brown was his name. I was a reporter for the
paper and a column, but I thought the paper was
too tame, so I started an off campus alternative newspaper
(08:54):
called which means truth in Russian. And this guy who
helped me by distributed in the mimograph paper. His name
was Dan Schoffman and then was a communist, a self
proclaimed communist. I wasn't at all, but we were both
trying to raise havoc. And one of the things I
found out is that Foster Brown had these real estate deals.
(09:14):
Someone must have given me a tip, because I would
not normally have gone to the land records. When I
did go to land records, I found for Brown on
this land which he was selling at the university and
making a lot of money. And so a graduation he
was there wouldn't shake my hand, but he was fired
the next year. What did college do to shape who
(09:35):
you became? I went there as a freshman, and we
didn't say in the dorm. We would say boarding houses
off campus. We wheel our luggage off the train and
we go to this house and these two elderly people say, Hi,
how are you? Mr? And Mrs Gardner. You know, Corny Hellen.
You didn't say a lot of strangers. I mean you
didn't you You always kept it a kind of a guard,
(09:57):
a distance. And I felt that all to college, that
sense of community that opened this and I always felt
that I learned much more about that than I learned
in subjects in classes that I learned how to listen.
I learned how to relate to people and talk to
them and appreciate them. It was just a great experience.
(10:17):
Was this your first time really outside of Brooke? We
couldn't take vacations because in some of my dad out
of work and we didn't have the money to go
on vacations, so I've never really been at to go.
Now you've been quoted as saying you think it was
good for you to be a success at a school
that was not as academically rigorous as a school where
you would not have been the big success. Yeah. I
(10:39):
think that's right. I think I gained confidence by the
fact that it was not as rigorous as, say, my
graduate studies at Syracuse. I had no reason to be
confident when I went to US for you in my
intellectual capacity. I remember being in a constitutional law class
and he said, I want you to attend your Supreme
Court justice and take the opposite position from the one
(11:03):
you believe in. So in my case it was defense
States rights against civil rights. I found it so stimulating
to do that. I suddenly felt like, oh my god,
I can I can hold my own and I can
stand up. You've got confidence at a place like us,
we're going I feel eternally grateful. You went off to
grad school at Syracuse. She joined the Air Force Reserves.
(11:23):
You did six months active duty during the Vietnam War.
You came out of all this working for a candidate
for the governor of New York. You worked for Bobby
Kennedy twice, but after his assassination you left politics and
moved to media. What happened to you? I always wanted
to be in journalism. It was in a PhD program.
I got a master's. We went a little beyond that
and said it's boring. Got a job of this guy,
(11:46):
Howard Samuels. This wonderful man was called the Upstate industrialist
Exoter Company co Court. I very successful, but he wants
to run for governor. And I was writer and wrote
for the column at the school paper. The dean of
the Exwell School recommended me to him as a speechwriter.
Dran for governor lost, but after Bobby Kennedy died in
(12:09):
I said, well, now this opportunity to go through journalism again.
So we started a weekly newspaper, Manhattan Tribune. It was
supposed to be a black white newspaper as a black
editor and a white editor of me, and it was
a wonderful experience. But the guy who put up the
money bill had had a business and when Nixon was elected,
he wanted us to write nice things about Nixon. So
(12:31):
me and my co editor and a number of people
just quit. You have one detour. You were the executive
director of the New York City Off Track Betting Corporation.
I had a big job there as executive director in
sixty nine. Howard Samuel's the guy worked and was very
loyal to and deeply fond of. He was the first
(12:52):
Democrat to endorse John Lindsay for re election as an
independent in nineteen sixty nine, and Lindsay came and said,
New York has started the first off track betting corporation
in the country. Howard, would you and your businessman would
you run it? So Howard started. I was his executive
director in the office next door to him for about
(13:13):
three years, and then I left to plot his campaign
for governor in seventy four. He was a heavy favor
to win. He was called Howie the Horse, and he
was very well known. And I was a campaign manager
and with my help, he went from a twenty point
lead to twenty point defeat and that was the end
(13:34):
of my politics. Any insights from your experience and all
of that politics running off track, betting that you've applied today, Well,
one of the truisms that punches me in the nose
all the time as a journalist, and one of the
reasons why I think when you do profiles of people,
you really gotta be in their office and you gotta
(13:54):
dig deep. It's what I call the human factor. Oftentimes
you'll find the most mathematically scientifically oriented person making seat
of the past decisions for very human reasons. For instance,
I'm doing a profile of John Malone in he was
then the most powerful person in television. John Malone didn't
(14:16):
have a television in his office, and the phone's rarely right.
But at twelve o'clock, as I'm sitting there, I hear
a phone ring, and he opens up a drawer and
he texted a red phone, Yes, dear, I'm right there.
At five o'clock, the same thing happens, Yes, dere right there.
So this happens two days in a row. And I said,
all right, Malone, what is that all about? He said,
(14:37):
that's that's my wife. I meet her at the gym
and I meet her for lunch every day. I said, so,
let me ask you a question. You just sold your
company to the telephone company d C I thirty four
or so billion dollars. You made a lot of money,
so the other was good? I said, Was that the
only reason you sold your company? And its Actually it wasn't.
(14:57):
What was the other reason? The other reason I did it?
It was very human reason my wife, I said, what
do you mean? He said she would leave me if
I didn't have a more normal life. You, darling, promised
me when you married me, you would be there. But
you're never there. You're always working. I need you there more.
I mean, take Bill Gates. When I covered Microsoft antitrust trial.
(15:21):
Bill Gates could have avoided that entire trial, could have
avoided the charges from the just Departments of Monopoly had
he just acknowledged, yes, we have a large footprint. And
I'm not gonna answer David Boys's questions like a brig.
I'm not going to be an arrogant guy. I'm gonna
be humble. When I interviewed the judge in that trial,
(15:42):
he said he didn't believe Bill Gates because he watched
the deposition. So if Bill Gates had not been so proud,
so arrogant at that point in time, he could have
avoided a lot of headache. Again, Human Factor, Just hold
on a second, because we've got so much more to
talk about. We'll be back after a quick break. M
(16:03):
Welcome back to Math and Magic. We're here with Caneletta.
You went on to start them. At the Village Voice,
New York magazine. You wrote and won one of your
first awards for an article called fifty Bad Decisions that
brought about the New York fiscal crisis. Did that make
you an insider suddenly to this kind of community or
(16:25):
were you a threat to them? I was a threat
to them. The Voice was a threat to the establishment,
and I was writing. Actually, I would argue a piece
that had more impact was a piece I wrote for
New York Magazine, a cover story should these people go
to jail? And it looked at the decisions that were
made over the years that put the city in this
(16:46):
fiscal hole, by bankers, by union leaders, by mayors, by governors,
and looked at the law and said they commit fraud?
Did they lie to the public? And say they had
money they didn't really have. And I'll know forget that
piece because I wrote it in almost scholarly way, did
a lot of reporting and said one hand of the
hand Milton Glazer, who was one of the most geniuses
(17:07):
I've ever met. Clay Felk was the editor, and Milton
was there and Walter Bernard who was his deputy, And
I said, you know, the story is these people commit
a crime, and you know it's complicated. And Milton said,
how about this, took out a pad and he drew
prison bars and he had holding the prison bars may
(17:28):
have been Mayor Lindsay, Governor Rockefeller, Walter risk and the
head of City Bank. And he said, how about this
the headline should these people go to jail? And I said,
oh my god. It was just brilliant. You know that
gets people to read a piece. New York Magazine was
the hot of the moment media property. It was sort
of the Facebook of its day. It's founder, Clay Felker,
(17:49):
who you mentioned, could not have been more important. And
then Rupert Murdoch, still at the beginning of his empire,
takes it over. You walked out with a bunch of people,
what happened was Rufromer as a bold businessman who takes risks,
but he also cuts corners. He and Clay Felker we're friends.
Clay Felker introduced him to Dorothy Schiff in nineteen seventy five.
(18:13):
He both an air Post and promised to keep it
a liberal newspaper, and of course immediately made it a
conservative newspaper. Then in nineteen seventy six, Clay Felker confided
in his friend Roue Murdoch. He said, I'm having terrible
problems with my Border Directors. It's just awful. I gotta
figure out something. Murdoch then went behind Felker's back, went
to the Border Directors and made a deal to buy
(18:36):
the company out from his friend Clay Felker. So we
heard that, and when that became public, all of us,
almost the entire staff went on strike. We said, we're
not going to work for Murdoch. I was in my
late twenties. I knew Howard Squadron, who was Murdoch's attorney,
because he had helped Howard Samuel's unners in politics. We
(18:56):
go to Howard's office and I say, Howard, I just
want to tell you lectually back away and not do
this takeover because all of us are going to leave.
We're not going to work for Murdoch, and that'll be
disaster for New York Magazine. And Howard looked at me
and he said, Ken, I don't think you understand. I
said what he said. You have furniture, you can be replaced.
(19:19):
And that's what happened. We all quit and he replaced
us all with furnitures. There was a lesson that money talks.
If you had the perspective of you today, would you
have done it? Absolutely? I was glad I did it.
I must say in fairness, we worried that Murdoch would
take New York Magazine downmarket the way he took the
New York Post, and he didn't do that. And by
(19:40):
the way, I was the only one who also worked
at the Village Voice then, so I was quitting both.
He didn't do that The Voice. In fact, one of
Murdock's very frustrations. He could not control the Village Voice
and he didn't try to control New York Magazine because
it was successful the way it was. I messed with that,
but I'm balanced. I'm happy I took the edition, and
I think most of us would say the same thing
(20:02):
worked out well for you. Yeah, I worked out well,
But it was actually interesting what happened. I remember, figure
out what am I going to do now? And I
go out to lunch with Richard Reeves, who was my buddy.
We come back to my apartment and there's a message
on the machine that just pressed the button and it said, hello,
Mr all Thatta, this is William Sean s h A W.
(20:25):
And he spelled his name, and he was the other
of the New Yorker. Of course, call me, and that's
the soda the New Yorker. I wound up doing longer
pieces for The New Yorker. I got a column in
the New York Daily News on Sundays and did a
weekly television show on w n E T. So my
life turned out. Okay, let's get into some men's sights.
You are, through your work, an expert on disruption and
(20:47):
transformation or lack of it in the media and tech world.
You covered the Microsoft trial. We talked about it twenty
years ago. What came out of that trial that's relevant
today with all the talk that's going on about tech
and the giants. Microsoft lost the trial both in Judge
Jackson's Federal District Court, and in the Court of Appeals
(21:08):
they would deem to be a monopoly. But the appeals
court overrule Judge Jackson's ruling that they should be broken
up in any case, Microsoft because it was left in
such bad order by that decision and by its own
behavior and that trial, they really suffered up serious blow
(21:28):
less ability to recruit good people who don't want to
work for an ogre. They became a much more tentative company.
And the lesson for that, as you spend forward, you
see today a much greater bipartisan support for regulating the
facebooks and the Google's and the Amazons, and they are
(21:49):
just as arrogant and as out of touch with Washington.
Those politicians have real power now. When you watch Mark
Zuckerberry be interviewed by the Senate and you you see
these unbelievably dumb questions that senators asked, you're almost sympathetic
to Mark Zuckerberg because of that. On the other hand,
they are in danger today of being regulated because people
(22:11):
are worried about not just their influence and power over journalism,
over privacy, just too much power. The lesson for them
is heed what happened to Microsoft. Even though Microsoft was
not broken up, they suffered. Do you think the government
can understand the issues well enough to effectively regulate detech
giants or do they not quite know what they're looking at?
(22:33):
I think they don't quite know what they're looking at.
I mean when you see Senator or in the hatch
asked Mark Zuckerberg, So you're free, how do you make
your money? I mean, god, you just say, oh my god,
I can't believe this guy. I remember when the government
recommended to break up Microsoft and the judge, who was
a wonderful man but digitally illiterate. I thought it was
so foolish. It's so unbelievably foolish. But if you were
(22:57):
conversing with the way the world was moving open source,
the internet, packet software was Microsoft was dead at some point,
don't artificially manufacturers. What do you think the remedy should
have been? Well, in part, the remedy was scold them,
humiliate them, shame them. That's something I believe in. It's
(23:19):
a fundamental point that you have to shame people. Journalism
has a big role in that too. Expose wrongdoing, expose arrogance,
exposed stupidity or corruption. You take Mark Zuckerberg today or
Cheryl Sandberg today. I've spent time with both of them
over the years and written profile of her and quite admirer.
(23:42):
But they've been shamed. That affects their behavior and will
affect their behavior, perhaps more than a misguided government regulation would.
By the way, same is true for journalism. One of
the most fun pieces I've I did for The New
Yorker was I think a ninety four It was called
Fee f Ee Speech. I interviewed about fifty journalists about
(24:04):
the fees they took to give speeches from organizations that
they are about. And I'll never forget that. People I
admired telling me, I don't have to answer that question.
It's private. So what do you get this private? Would
you let a politician get away with that answer? Were
you shunned for that? Yeah? Well over it made a
lot of people really angry. But that was fun, I mean,
(24:24):
but it also has an effect. I mean, I know
organizations that literally institute a policy saying you have to
come to us for approval before you give a paid speech,
or you can't give spaced speeches to organizations you write
about or cover and I think that's great. Let's fast
forward twenty years. You wrote about the disruption of the
(24:45):
ad business with frenemies and Google before that, how were
those two interconnected? Google started out when they formed, they
didn't have any idea how to make money. By the way,
Facebook was the same some years later. But what happened
us in two thousand four? Google is trying to figure
out how do we make money and they came up
(25:05):
with both ad Sense and ad Words. Today, Google's revenues
come from advertising, which is why it's free of Facebook's
comes from advertising. They originally were very reluctant to do advertising.
They felt were cheapened the product, and they don't have
that compunction today. When we look at the two though,
(25:27):
with the advertising industry and Google, is the advertising business
now controlled by Google and Facebook? It's certainly dominated by them.
I mean more than fifty of digital ads go to
those two companies, and sev of the growth in digital
advertising goes to those two companies. The one to watch
out for is Amazon. Amazon is growing like a rocket
(25:50):
faster and the reason for that is that they have
the most vital information and advertising. Once you know this
better than I do, purchase decision So do you think
that Google and Facebook and Amazon pushing the advertising business
to data is making the advertising business ultimately stronger. Well,
(26:11):
it does in some ways, but it also becomes a
menace of the advertising business because advertising business wants and
more data, and yet more data means less privacy. The
privacy issue has really surfaced and risen as a major concern.
And you watch a company like Apple make the opposite
arguments saying, don't go to Google and Facebook and Amazon,
(26:34):
we won't violate your privacy, and they do, and so
that becomes a defining difference between some of the digital
companies as well. You look at new leaders in the
advertising business. I look at Christian Jewels, Got Hagadorn, people
who are really digitally savvy and see the world through
the lens of data. Is that driven by this disruption
(26:55):
that's come from these original tech players. A basic division
is between math men and mad men. The math men
are digitally savvy people who want data, more and more data,
and they say, we can create algorithms to target ads
that people, knowing enough about those people that they'll be
(27:16):
interested in our product. And the creativity matters less, the instinct,
the judgment matters less. It's a math problem, and that's
a division in the ad world that will persist. I
think in Three Blind Mice a while back, you called
the demise of the broadcast TV networks. Looking back, was
(27:37):
there anything you missed or did it play out as
you expected? It didn't play out totally as I expected.
What I said in Three Blind Minds is that the
broadcast television networks were being disrupted by a new technology, cable.
We were new tech in the cable days, and you
were and you had two sources of revenue advertising, but
you also had subscriptions. Broadcast was all advertising. So I said,
(27:59):
broadcast scenes in trouble unless they can get another source
of revenue. What happened was actually Congress played at the
largest role in this. They passed the Cable Act in
nine four. Cable Act allowed retransmission consent, so the cable
companies were required to pay the broadcast networks for use
of their programs. The second thing was the Fincin rules
(28:21):
would change, which allowed the networks now to own the
programs and syndicate them and therefore creating another source of
revenue for them, particularly when the digital world came on.
The Netflix is and the youtubes, they allowed them to
sell programmings to them. CBS went from almost a reliant
on revenues from advertising, reliant on advertising. They were selling
(28:46):
programs and Netflix in two stations. They were getting retransmission
consent a couple of billion dollars from cable, and they
were selling overseas the programs that they own now. And
that's true of all the networks. But then the question becomes,
by selling their programs to Netflix, was CBS and Fox
and NBC building up a competitor? And I think yes,
(29:10):
thinking about what they could have done differently, the cable
companies John Malone et cetera start building out the major cities.
They need something more than distant TV signals. They need
real cable networks. They first go to ABC, NBC, CBS
and say, hey, I've had this idea. Why don't you
build us these networks? The broadcast networks based to say,
go away, what are you crazy? Why would we cannibalize ourselves.
(29:33):
This contrast, this is Steve Jobs saved Apple transformed. It
came out this great new thing called the iPod, and
he had iTunes and then it was gonna be apparent.
Music was going to be on the phone. So what
does he do. He goes into the phone business, basically
cannibalizes himself. But I don't think there's a person alive
looking at that they would say that turned out to
(29:54):
be the wrong move. What was different about those two
and how they looked at it. I think Steve Jobs
was not wedded to the past in any way. And
by the way, he was not an employee who worried
about his stock price, which most of the network people.
They were not owners, they were employees, they were managers,
(30:15):
and he thought out of the box. An example of
a traditional media person who thought outside the box is
Bob Iger. The deals he made with Steve Jobs. I mean,
Michael Eisner would not make those deals. Bob Byger becomes
CEO and suddenly he's reaching out. His people are saying,
what are you reaching out to him? He's the enemy.
He's competing without animation business. He's no, no, I want
(30:35):
to own that animation business. I wanted to transform Disney's
animation business. I watched the Roy Cohne documentary, Your interview
was the thread. Roy Cohne, for people who don't remember,
is the sidekick of Joe McCarthy. He was the fixer
in New York. He sort of knew everybody and sort
of got stuff done, and probably not the most scrupulous ways.
(30:57):
And you said you felt a little creepy doing that interview.
What did you learn about our city and about politics
and about the way things are done through that interview?
He had an enormous political power. The first interview we
did was at lunch at the twenty one Club, where
he had at Joyce table and I'm saying that he
didn't order, and I ordered a hamburger and French fries,
(31:19):
and he's sitting next to me, side by side with
his fingers. He's taking French fries off my plate and
eating them, and I'm kind of stunned by it. And
he's looking around the room and he sees his former
clients at Best Myers and other people, people who hired
him to kill their spouse or their business Pardner, and
you realize the source of his power was that people
(31:42):
hired him to kill four of them legally. And so
I write this piece and I thought he would hate it.
Was called a legal executioner on the cover, and it
was tough on him. And he calls me up and
I said, oh God, I'm gonna yield at by this creep.
And he says, Ken, I loved your piece, and how
do we get five under copy? And I realized pleased him.
(32:04):
It was a calling card. He said, would you sign one?
And I signed it and I said, de roy Cone
who I wished I had punched, and then he started
attacking me after that. From your vantage point and with
the keen pattern recognition you have. For a CEO listening
to this, or an entrepreneur, what advice would you give
them about success and failure be a good listener. Both
(32:25):
Barry Diller and Bob Iger when they were trying to
understand the digital world, Barry Diller said, I don't do emails.
I do them just twice a day so I can
concentrate it. But Bob Iger said to me he spent
an hour a day just surfing the web, just trying
to understand what was going on the sides. So I
think listening, being open, asking questions is critical. I think
(32:50):
humility is critical. Iger in his book talks about how
you gotta make people feel good. And I'll never forget
when I was doing my three Blind Mice book on
tele as networks, one of the great managers was Dan
Burke of Cap City that would spend time with him.
Dan would go around and he would compliment people, and
I said to him at one point, why do you
(33:12):
compliment people at the time and he looked at me.
He said, Ken, have you ever met anyone who tires
of a compliment? And that was one of his reasons
for success. I mean, he made people feel good. I
want to get one more personal insight. Your wife, Binkie
is a hugely successful literary agent. How is living in
a household with your careers intertwined? Upsides and downsides? Well,
(33:36):
the upside is you have so much to talk about.
You're unkindred Fields. You've got to read Jenny Egan, who
she represents. And I read Jenny Egan. I said wow,
and so that's great. The downside is that Binkie is
the first person who edits my work and she kills me.
So as we wrap up, we always end where we began.
(33:57):
Math and magic. Let's give a shout out to those
you think deserve it. Who's the best analytical, business, marketing
or media person the math side of it? Ran Goli,
best magician, the showman or show woman. Michael Heston's pretty good.
Can your insights have shaped the generation. Your contributions to pen,
(34:18):
the Public Library, New York Shakespeare Festival, one Very which
is the Public Theater, and more are greatly appreciated to
Thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Jorda. Here are
a few things I picked up in my conversation with Ken. One,
to really understand someone, you have to start with a
(34:40):
clean slate. By freeing himself a preconceptions, Kim was able
to earn the trust of people he had had a
history with, like Rupert Murdoch, and ultimately get them to
agree to a profile. To be a good listener, whether
you're a CEO or a journalist, asking questions is key
to understanding the world around you. Three, stand up for
what you believe in. When Ken walked out of his
(35:03):
job at New York Magazine on principle, he quickly got
a call from The New Yorker that would change his
career trajectory. Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman. That's it
for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math
and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. This show
(35:23):
is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger
for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
small feat. Nikki Etre for pulling research bill plaques, and
Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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