Tom Freston :After helping to found MTV, Tom Freston reigned as C.E.O. of Viacom. But it was never his natural habitat. Bono recalls how he cheered when Freston (V.F.’s Man in Kabul) left, in 2006—then promptly recruited him to become chairman of One and (Red), organizations fighting extreme poverty and AIDS in Africa.
By Bono Photograph by Annie Leibovitz
By Bono Photograph by Annie Leibovitz
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| TOM TERRIFIC Tom Freston, photographed on his 2011 Triumph Bonneville T100 motorcycle in Santa Barbara, California. |
Was I the only person in the world who punched the air when Tom Freston was forced out of One Astor Plaza, headquarters of Viacom? I should have been sobbing, like most of the hundreds of colleagues and staff who worked for him. His exit was not good for the audiovisual music business (i.e., MTV) or for the other Viacom companies, which would cry for imaginative leadership as they faced a life without the Walt Disney of Pop Culture.
But I punched the air because I had sensed for some time that this magnificent man, this satellite cowboy, this pioneer of communications, had long since been ready to ride off into a much more satisfying sunset than nail-biting box-office returns and Nielsen ratings. Tom Freston’s world has never been just the Northern Hemisphere, the safety of the corporate office or multiplex. This man has been on a magic-carpet ride since his early 20s, his intellectual curiosity leading him everywhere he wanted to go but shouldn’t. He had lived in India and Afghanistan for years, making and losing his first fortune, before he joined the start-up that became MTV.
For some time I had wanted—needed—his brain to go to work for the poorest of the poor. One and (Red), the organizations I helped set up, were blessed with influence and access, part of a movement helping to generate billions of dollars for vaccines, ARVs, bed nets, schools, wells, food security, etc. But what did I know about building organizations of hundreds of people in seven cities?
“Are you asking will I come work for you?,” Tom said when I began the campaign of recruitment harassment. “No! We all want to go work for you,” I replied. “Your genius is not just innovative thinking but innovative leadership and the structures that are necessary for creative people to succeed.”
Tom was already up to his knees in some of these issues, quietly supporting an orphanage in Burma and many other good works. Before he gave me an answer he asked to go to Washington, D.C. I think he wanted to discover the quality of the people in our U.S. headquarters and assess how lawmakers felt about them.
After three days, he called me from his hotel, mildly traumatized by the scale, the stakes, and the jeopardy involved in organizations trying to change bad policy and protect good policy by appealing to both sides of a very fractious political aisle, not to mention corporate America and the public. “In all my years of traveling through Afghanistan and Iran,” he exclaimed, “hell, I’ve never felt like emptying a whole mini-bar. I’m lying here on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking, this is some mad hill to climb. I want to help you people climb it.”
They say a genius record producer is the guy in the room when someone writes their best song. I disagree. It’s being in the room and showing them how. When Tom Freston walks through the door, somehow everybody else gets a whole lot better.
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