Know which rules to break, with MTV co-founder Tom Freston
Know which rules to break, with MTV co-founder Tom Freston  
Podcast: Masters of Scale
Published On: Thu Aug 13 2026
Description: Tom Freston is a cofounder of MTV and former CEO of Viacom. He joined host Jeff Berman to dig into the wild stories and meaningful lessons from his life as an unconventional corporate leader. Freston reveals how MTV’s audience-first mentality and “subway car” approach to hiring helped the network scale into a cultural icon. Tom’s memoir is Unplugged: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Unplugged/Tom-Freston/9781668089798See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.