MEMO: Brian Graden on the future of VH1

Tl;dr: Brian Graden wrote a 66-page memo on the future of VH1 and how to fix the struggling music channel in the early 2000s.

Success in television can turn to failure rapidly. This was the case for VH1, an MTV competitor. Once a cultural force it hit a major ratings slide and become a major worry for Viacom, its parent company.

That is why Viacom brought in the MTV programming president, Brian Graden, who had an eye for hit programs. Before he started at MTV, Mr. Graden was already somewhat of a cable legend. As a young executive at the News Corporation’s Foxlabs experimental programming studio in the mid-1990’s, he discovered the hit young animators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. To keep them in his fold, he gave them $2,000 to create a video Christmas card for him featuring the characters of what is now ”South Park.” That made the rounds in Hollywood eventually to become ”South Park” on Comedy Central.

When Brian comes in he comes in hard. He wrote a monster 66 page memo on the situation they are in and what his plans are  to fix things. He has more than 200 in total.

The guy is pretty funny.  He nods to people with ADD. The start of his memo is:

Most consultants are full of shit. The good news is, with respect to their advice; you can take it or leave it.

The opinions–herein are just that: one man’s opinions. The only cert in thing in _entertainment is uncertainty. No one really knows which ideas will work.

Inasmuch as only John and Fred will use this information, I’m going to be very direct I hope you’ll forgive me in advance for that. I realize it’s much easier to be a Monday morning quarterback than a Sunday afternoon one.

This is a huge read.

I tried to OCR this for you but it came out crappy.

Brian Graden on the future of VH1

Here is the PDF version

You can read the images here:

 

You can read the rest of the memo collection here.