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Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Larry Namer - E! Founder | The Cable Splicer Who Launched Howard Stern & The Kardashians
01:00:47
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- [00:00]
Larry Namer
We literally climbed over the fence, we snuck. We were on the red carpet with our little beat up cameras and when we started showing that people would like it looks like we were watching something we're not supposed to. And that's really what started the whole red carpet.
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Podcast Host / Advertiser
Some people dream of building an empire while others actually do it. Larry Neymar wasn't supposed to become a media mogul. A kid from Brooklyn who started as a cable repairman ended up creating one of the most influential entertainment brands in history.
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Larry Namer
We had over 100 rejections. One which even at the meeting, the guy literally threw the business plan on my head. Time starting a TV network was somewhere closer to $100 million. The worst thing you could do is say to people, just imagine you've lost them. They can't imagine.
- [00:42]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
This is Larry Neymar, co founder of E Entertainment Television, a pioneer who redefined how the world consumes media and a relentless entrepreneur who's never stopped building. This isn't just a story about television. It's about vision, resilience, and the courage to bet on yourself when no one else will.
- [00:56]
Larry Namer
Once ChatGPT became ubiquitous. Now I'm getting done in one hour what it used to take me five days. As human beings, we all have a finite amount of time on this planet. The best thing we could do is use it efficiently or effectively. Find something you're good at, work your butt off and become great at it and then that will become your passion.
- [01:25]
Interviewer
So Larry, you went from splicing cables in Manhattan sewers for 90 bucks a week to building a $7 billion entertainment empire that spans 142 countries. You've had the number one TV show in Russia. You're the only American allowed to run media in China and you created the Kardashian phenomenon. You've literally lived through the entire evolution of television. But what I found the most interesting because I was listening to some of the shows that you've been on before, was that your real passion wasn't originally entertainment. So talk to me about this accidental discovery of entertainment and how you actually got into this game.
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Larry Namer
Sure. I was, I was the first kid in the family to ever go to college. I got a degree in economics and I thought I would either become an economist or a teacher. And then I quickly found out there weren't really jobs for either of those. So. So I had a friend whose dad was in the electricians union is in New York City and they said, oh, we just organized this thing. It's called cable tv. I'm not really sure what it is. But here's the name of the shop steward. Go see him. Tell him the union sent you, and they'll give you some temporary job. And so I did that, and they gave me a job literally under the streets of Manhattan. So I was an assistant underground supply surfing 90 bucks a week. And so I thought I'd be there for a few months until I figured out what you do with this degree. But I started to like it and stuff. And very quickly people were coming to me and saying, gee, how did you learn how to use the equipment so quick? Usually takes people a year, and you're doing it after a week, you know. And it was very simple. I'm like, well, I read the instruction booklet. It wasn't rocket science. But I went from assistant splicer to splicer, and then kind of moved up the ranks of the operations side. So being a construction guy, then an installer, then a service guy. And then what happened was Time Incorporated, which at that point was still a publishing company, they had made this decision that over 10 years, they were going to become a media company. This is pre Time Warner, way before Time Warner. And so they bought Manhattan Cable. That was the company I worked for. And so somebody in HR said, hey, you know, trying to figure out what it is these guys do. You know, they go under the streets every day. You had all the Harvard and Yalies on one side, and then you had us on the other. And somebody in HR said, wait a second, there's a guy, you know, who does that, who's got an economics degree, maybe. So I kind of became the translator between those two worlds, between a tech world building it and, you know, the Auburn Yellies. And. And then after a while, guy that they timing put in as president, a guy named Nick Nicholas, who later went on to become the chairman of Time Warner. After the merger, he kept trying to get me to come into management. And then finally he convinced me. So I ended up. It was like really crazy. I was 25 years old, and I had risen through the ranks of management, becoming the director of operations of Manhattan Cable, which is the biggest cable system in the country. And so I did that. And then kind of like 1980, all the big cities began to realize that cable was more than a. More than a vehicle for good reception. And a lot of the big cities started issuing franchises to be built. But the one caveat that most of the big cities had was they didn't want the wires to go on telephone poles. Cause it was incredibly unsightly. They all Wanted them to go underground. Well, there's only one underground system built in the US Then that was Manhattan Cable. And I was the guy who was running operations. So I ended up getting recruited by a. It was actually a Canadian company, won the franchise for Los Angeles to build the first 61 channel, two way interactive cable system there was, but all underground. So I got recruited by that company. You know, they made me the proverbial offer you couldn't refuse. Literally paying me like four times what I was making in New York and rented me a house with a swimming pool and all of that stuff. And you know, but you're. So we build that. And I started now I had programming and marketing and finance reporting to me as long as all those other things. And you know, you're a New York kid and all your neighbors in LA are going to parties and premieres and hanging out with celebrities and stuff. And I'm like, hey, that looks really cool, I want to do that. And you know, I call the studios and they go, no, no, no, you're a utility, you like the gas company, and you know, we not putting you on the party list. So finally I met somebody in marketing at one of the studios and I said, you know, I really don't understand this. The most effective marketing vehicle you have for a movie is the movie trailer, that two minute thing that they always show before, you know, the movies. I said, but the only time I ever see the movie trailer is when I'm already in the movies. I said, wouldn't you want me to see that while I'm at home to make me want to go to the movies? And they said, yeah, but you know, it's too expensive to buy two minutes of TV time, so, you know, we don't do it. I said, great, you give me those trailers, I'll put them on TV for free. And you put me on the list for, you know, all these movie screenings and stuff. And they went, sure. So, you know, we did that and I hired a kid and literally we just looped them together for, you know, we did like an hour reel of the movie trailers. But when we started doing market studies of the audience and said, what's your favorite channel? And they go, oh, I love, you know, espn, I love cnn, I love that trailer channel. And I'm going, wait a second, I'm getting the best two minutes of a $50 million movie. Then movies are only 50 and I get that for free. And people are telling me it's one of their favorite channels. And I kind of filed that in the back of my head. And then the company that I work for, the Canadian company, they had actually sold, and they went back to Toronto, and they were like, okay, Larry, when are you coming up to Toronto? And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I said, I didn't go from New York to LA to go to Toronto. I said, I'm done with cold. I'm not doing that. And so a friend of mine, my friend Alan Maruvka, who also from the east coast, you know, we were talking and he was out there on a project. He had something to do with Francis Ford Coppola's studio, but he was more on the real. We said, you know, really, like la, let's think of something that will keep us out here. And he goes, yeah, I've been playing with this idea, you know, like Entertainment Tonight 24 hours a day. And I went, wait a second. I said, you know, this is the time when MTV was actually showing music videos. And I said, you know, you have MTV puts a host in front of a green screen, and they point to the screen and go, and Madonna has a new video. I said, I could get all these movie trailers for free, and people love it. And we'll stand a house in front of a green screen and go, and Schwarzenegger has a new movie. So we, you know, so basically, we turned the idea to MTV of the movies. And, yeah, we wrote a business plan. We thought we were really smart. And, you know, then it was before you actually did all this stuff digitally, so you actually had a business plan that was like 200 pages and. And stuff. But we were a little naive at that point. Nobody. There's never been people, regular people, that have actually ever started a TV network. Only big media companies do that. And that's kind of what we got. You know, people are going, you know what, Larry? It's a good idea, but you're not Rupert Murdoch, you're not Time Warner, and you're not Fox or Universal. You can't just start a TV network. You know, we weren't smart enough to listen, so we just kept going. But three and a half years later, we met this guy that just took over investment banking for what was a bond house on Wall Street. And somebody we knew introduced us. Somebody. This time we were beaten up. We had over 100 rejections. One, which even at the meeting, the guy literally threw the business plan at my head and said, how dare you insult me with such a piece of junk? And we. We finally. We met this guy and we go in his office and he's got movie posters on the wall. And he said, you know, he goes, I really love this. I want to do it. And I'm like, at that time, starting a TV network was somewhere closer to $100 million. Kind of low end was 60, but.
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Interviewer
It'S still very expensive.
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Larry Namer
Yeah. And we, you know, because he had to rent satellites and all studio equipment was expensive. And we, we. He goes, I really want to do it. I said, well, great. Could you give us more like the 100 million so we could do everything that we know we need to do? And he was like, no, no, no. He goes, I'm only allowed to sign for two and a half. And I'm like, what is that going to do? I said, you know, I can't even buy the cameras for two and a half million dollars. And he goes, well, that's all I'm allowed to sign for. And Alan and I just said, you know what? Chances are nobody's ever going to give us 60 or $100 million, so we'll take the two and a half. And I had a friend who was teaching radio, television and film at University of Texas in Austin, and I called him up and said, brian, you know, do you have kids that need intern jobs? And he goes, yeah, we had a lot of trouble placing kids this year. I went, send them. Send everyone you got. And yeah, and people don't realize that, you know, because he is in 142 countries and valuation is, you know, crazy. Seven billion. And, yeah, arguably he is now the number one influencer of pop culture in the world by far. And so we. So people assume that it's a. It started with a big company, but it really started with me and Alan. 11 employees and including us. So nine employees plus me and Alan, and 31 interns at university of Texas. As soon as we got on the air, everybody came to us and said, oh, my God, that's what you wanted to do. We would have given you the money three years ago. And so, you know, we were an overnight success. And I think in the first year, we ended up expanding to 14 countries. And my friend Brian wanted to kill me because half of the kids, they started out as interns at the beginning of the summer, and by the end of the summer, half of them were vice presidents. We just grew so big so quickly.
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Interviewer
So it took off fast. It took off very fast when you.
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Larry Namer
Got it off the ground. But it really taught me this lesson that when you're pitching something that people have never really seen or experienced or something to really compare it to that. The worst thing you could do is say to people, you know, you give them what's in your head by saying, well, just imagine. And that's it. You've lost them. They can't imagine. So it really gave us both really good lessons on learning how you pitch stuff and how you had to explain it, because what we were thinking in our head clearly wasn't getting across to people until they saw it. So that was, that was a good life lesson. Actually.
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Interviewer
When you think about what made it so popular, what was the kind of programming that you figured out just hit that blew up? Because I mean, like that you, you blew up fast at the beginning. But then if you look at your other wins, I mean, Talk Soup, the Kardashians, Howard Stern. So you have an eye for this. I'm sure there's a lot that didn't work, but we could talk about the ones that did. What was the difference?
- [14:31]
Larry Namer
Well, you know, we. Well, first of all, the whole thing of celebrity reporting was incredibly stiff. It was things like Entertainment Tonight. So if you had a new movie, you would fight. Forget 20 seconds on entertainment Tonight. So it wasn't really in depth coverage and everything was done by big studios. Yeah, the Paramounts and the Disney's and stuff. And it was very stiff and very corporate looking and very, very polished because they could afford the hundred million dollars ours because we didn't have a lot of money. We had to be very inventive. We didn't even have professional broadcast equipment. We ended up finding some company that had like old equipment that they're using to make sales training tapes. So we bought that. But what happened was. And again, because Alan and I didn't come out of that Hollywood world, so we looked at a lot of stuff and go, look, Hollywood is funny stuff. Let's not make believe it's rocket science. So a lot of stuff looked very pirate because again, we didn't have a lot of money. And you know, we didn't have the fancy cameras or the effects or the editing equipment, all that. And people would watch it and go, oh my God, I never thought I would see like a half hour interview with my famous, my favorite director. Or now I learned about movie music because we would do a. We would take these movie trailers and slice and dice them in like 20 different ways. So, you know, we would have movie music, we would have foreign film, we'd have indie film. You know, we literally had every different kind of film and film related person. And. But again, it looked very pirate. But one of the things that really, I think broke us through was the first year we applied for credentials to go to the Academy Awards and they rejected us. They basically said, well, you're not really interesting to us. You're more like a utility. You're like the gas company or the phone company. And they wouldn't give us credentials. And what happened was we literally, me and the crew climbed over the fence, we snuck in, we were on the red carpet, and, you know, then everybody was still doing the same old. So, Mr. Cruz, tell us about your next movie. And, you know, we were there like, we were like, wow, we snuck in. We can't believe it. You know, hey, Tom, those are great shoes. Where'd you get those? So we were just asking the questions that really interested us. And, you know, and again with our little beat up cameras and stuff like that. And when we started showing that people would like send us information, like letters and calls and go, wow, it looks like, you know, we were watching, we were flying on the wall watching something we're not supposed to. Well, the fact is they were, you know, we got caught and thrown out. But, you know, we had enough footage that we made good shows and people loved that. And that's really what started the whole red carpet, you know, thing. I mean, the way the carpet gets covered changed dramatically because of us, you know, and that led to things like Joan Rivers doing talk, you know, Fashion Police and stuff like that. And then we, you know, we kind of did that. And then when we started getting a little bit of traction and we started getting a little bit of money, we went from just showing movie trailers, but again, we didn't have a lot, so we had to be very creative and inventive. I went to the team and said, hey, I have this idea. I want to do a TV show that makes fun of TV shows. And they were like, what? They go, that doesn't make any sense. Nobody will let you do that. And that show was Talk Soup. And that was the first breakthrough, more traditional 30 minute TV show and talk Soup. Just then, Greg Kinnear blew up. And you look at all those people that have followed on Talk Soup that have become famous from it. I think we counted 17 people who are Talk Soup hosts that ended up getting jobs on, like we call them real tv. And, you know, so that, that show, while it started out as people thinking Alan and I were out of our mind, I think ran 26 years, you know, something. And then the next one, you know, we met this tall guy in a elevator in New York and He was telling us about he's a radio host. And we were like, yeah, okay, great. You know, as a guy, if you haven't realized, radio's been dead for, like, 40 years. And he's going, no, you got to come and see the show. And we went and watched his radio show, you know, because I. I think we were all living in the same building. And, you know, so we said, oh, we're going to run into this guy. It'd be kind of rude if we didn't go and see his show. And, you know, then we just loved it. And we went back to the crew and said, hey, we want to put cameras in this guy's radio studio. And they were like, larry, when you wanted to do, you know, talk soup, we thought, you're out of your mind. They go, radio's dead. Why wouldn't anybody watch a radio show? And I said, you know what? You don't understand, There used to be a TV show, a sitcom called WKRP in Cincinnati, and it was about a radio crew, ensemble crew, but it was a comedy. I said, this is a reality TV version of that show. And, you know, of course it was an ensemble comedy. I mean, Howard. It wasn't just Howard. It was that whole entourage that he had, you know, and then Howard broke, you know, broke out. And then we grew the first year, I think, 14 countries. And because we realized, and a lot of people weren't paying attention, that, you know, for U.S. cable networks, if you're doing something like the Weather Channel, yeah, it's a great utility. And instead of having to watch TV at 11:30 every day at night to find out what the weather would be tomorrow, you had a channel that would let you see the weather anytime you wanted. But that was very local. If you didn't live in that city or in that country, you couldn't care about what the weather is in London or anything like that. But we said celebrity and celebrity culture are popular all over the world. And that turned out to be very, very true. But you go back to the origins of the idea. At that time, we looked at cable and said, you know what? It's like an electronic newspaper. You had CNN as the headline and ESPN as the sports, and QVC is our home shopping network, is the ads. But what was missing, so obvious to Alan and I, was the second most read section of any Sunday newspaper, which was the entertainment pages. So, you know, we went from, you know, MTV of the movies to, you know, the entertainment pages of the Hollywood newspaper. You know, it's what America wants to know about Hollywood netsuite Is a Success.
- [21:45]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [22:58]
Interviewer
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- [22:59]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [23:53]
Interviewer
You know, it's very interesting because you keep coming up with all these ideas that have never been done before. Everything in your life is doing things that really have never been done before and not listening to everybody who's telling you that it can't be done. And what I find really interesting. So I read your book, and if anybody wants to get it's called off script. And your real passion is cooking. Now, I find that interesting because that means that you built your entire career and all of e on something that you're not actually that passionate about. You're not passionate about entertainment. Cooking was the passion. So when you're going up against the grain, when you're doing all these things that have never been done before, when you're not even inherently that passionate about the thing that you're doing, what is the advice? To keep going when you get told no, when it's not working out, when you're doing something that is completely blue ocean never done before? Because that's a skill set in and of itself.
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Larry Namer
Yeah, well, you know, I was cooking since I'm 12 because both my parents worked and my choice was either learn how to cook or eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner every night. And. But, you know, I liked it and I was good at it. And I just kept reading cookbooks and learning more and more and diversifying. But what I say to people, you know, a lot of times people get confused between what their passion is and what their hobby is. And we all have the same realities of life. We got to make enough money so we could pay the rent and eat and educate our kids or pay our college loans or whatever it is. So what I tell people, I said, find something you're good at. In my case, you know, I obviously was pretty good at the television stuff. I said, and then just work your butt off and become great at it. And then what happens is that becomes your passion, and then you could use that to make enough money to be able to pursue your hobbies. And that's what cooking, you know, the whole cooking was for me is, you know, look, TB was obviously pretty lucrative. I was pretty good at it. I still am pretty good at it. And. But it lets you know, it gives you the ability to, you know, then focus on your hobby whenever you feel like focusing on your hobby without knowing, like, oh, my God, I may not be able to pay the rent next month.
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Interviewer
I think that's wise advice, I think. And I'm also very curious what you think about all about new media and content creators and everyone trying to become their own media channel and media station. And I feel like a lot of it is just copying the other creator. You know, my podcast is probably a copy of, you know, 15 other podcasts, and that TikTok channel is a copy. What would your advice be coming from an entertainment TV background for somebody that wants to create something unique? How do you look at the world? How do you create something that's never been done before the way you did it?
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Larry Namer
Well, I mean, I embrace new technology. I mean, a lot of people like, oh my God, we're not going to allow that AI stuff to happen. And I say, look at the music industry. When digital music came around, I said, now they bitch and moan that, oh my God, itunes has so much power or Spotify has so much power. I said, but you as an industry, music spent 10 years fighting it as opposed to embracing it, and you would have owned it. And now you're complaining that somebody had the brain power and the wherewithal to go after it while you were rejecting it. The same thing with AI. There are certain things that, yeah, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with it. We need rules and regulations and we need ways to keep it orderly. You know, right now there's no deterrence for bad people, you know, to do bad things with it. But the fact of the matter is it's a great tool and it's going to exist whether you like it or not. You know, Screen Actors Guild or Writers Guild and stuff like that. So, you know, you better learn how to prompt and learn how to do this stuff because it's not going away. And, but storytelling, it's an art and it's practiced really well only by humans and stuff. So I use, I've been using AI and stuff for the longest time from even before it became, you know, world known. If I have a new idea for a TV network or TV series and stuff, and I want to write, like, do a little bit of market study and research and do budgets and stuff, it used to take me five days to come up with a basic idea. You know, once ChatGPT became ubiquitous, it takes me 30 seconds to plug it in. It takes me an hour to clean it up because it's never 100% so it I it. So, but now I'm getting done in one hour what used to take me five days. And you know, I say to people, I go, how do you not love that? I mean, as human beings, we all have a finite amount of time on this planet and, you know, the best thing we could do is use it efficiently or effectively. I said, so now in one hour I get done what used to take me five days. I could either do more of them or, and make more money or, you know, Now I got a little grandbaby, I could spend time with my little grandkid, I could learn how to speak Spanish, I could go on a cruise. I mean, I've reclaimed the most valuable thing that all of us as human beings have, and that's our time. So you got to embrace it. You got to make sure that, you know, again, you need rules and regulations. You can, and I always give the example of like driving a car. A 12 year old kid can't say, hey, give me the keys, I feel like driving. You know, you got to be a certain age, you got to take a class, you got to take a test, and then there are rules of the road and if you don't obey the rules of the road, there are penalties for that. With AI and stuff, there's, there are rules and regulations need to catch up. And that's kind of, you know, where, where that's at. But like I say, when you come up with something new and it's in your head, you got to, I self assess every night I come up, I wake up in the morning, I have 10 new ideas. By the time I go to sleep, I realize most of them were dopey, but I'm very honest with myself. I could, I'll sit down and go, okay, sounded like a good idea this morning, but no, you know, and again, I'm shrinking the timeframe. But technology changed people, taste changes, the economic environment changes. Just learn to be honest and go, you know what, it sounded like a good idea, but now I realize it's not. What's next? And just move quickly on to the next thing. Because again, we're back to that issue of maximizing the value of your time.
- [31:11]
Interviewer
I love it. And you're right. Like with AI, you can adopt new ideas quickly, you can brainstorm new stuff quickly. You can, you can realize that it's a bad idea quickly and move on. But also to your point, everybody in any media, sort of legacy media, anyone in film, tv, if they don't learn how to use AI, the people that work in those industries will also get replaced. So whether or not you're a content creator or you're working in those industries, you got to, you got to adopt it.
- [31:42]
Larry Namer
Yeah, it's, it's an incredibly valuable tool. I mean, a good example, you know, after God knows, 20 years of people, you know, telling me, I gotta write a book, I gotta write a book, I finally did it and the book went bestseller in four days. And people going, what did you do? You cheated. You know, well, it's Impossible. You're a bestseller in four different categories in four days. And the fact of the matter is, I used. Actually, I was still in the chat GPT days. I used GBT to design a marketing plan for the book. And I followed the marketing plan and, you know, the AI understood how to use the algorithms much better than my human brain could. And literally, by following the plan done by AI, we became a bestseller in four days. You know, people are going, no, it usually takes months. How did you do it? Well, that's how I did it.
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Interviewer
I love it. Talk to me about. Talk to me about the Kardashians because you built out. I mean, we spoke about Talk Soup, Howard Stern. Kardashians is a cultural phenomenon. How did you discover it? How did you know that it was going to be good? Or did you?
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Larry Namer
Well, at the beginning, though, we were. I, Alan and I were friends with Bruce and Chris, and it's a whole long story, and I think it's in the book. At one point, we were going to do another TV network called fxtv, Fitness and Exercise Television. And our partners were Bruce and Kris Jenner and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, a bunch of other folks. But also one of our partners was O.J. simpson. And obviously that didn't turn out well. But, you know, so I was friendly with Bruce and Chris, and, you know, Chris was always like, oh, we gotta think of something to do with the girls. The girls are so good and whatever. And, you know, Bruce and Chris, between them, I mean, there were like 10 kids, you know, because they all came from other marriages, but the kids were underage when we first met them. And, you know, again, we didn't have a lot of money, so we had to be really careful. So we couldn't afford to do the things that were needed to have young kids on the set. I mean, you needed to have tour tutors, and you only do a certain number of hours a day or a week. So we just said, you know, hey, the kids are great, but you gotta wait till they turn, you know, adult age so we don't have to deal with those restrictions. And. But, you know, look, he gave them the platform. But quite honestly, you know, and I say to people, the. The mom, Chris, she's the brains behind it all. She. Those. Those girls and guys just learned what they did from their mom, who was a great driver and stuff like that. And then, you know, so, yes, we did give them the platform, and they probably couldn't have become what they became without that platform, but the real driver of that Family was the mom.
- [35:00]
Interviewer
Chris, like in 2025, are there any people or trends or ideas that you're excited about that could be as big as the Kardashians?
- [35:12]
Larry Namer
Yeah, I think that kind of stuff is cyclical. I mean, look, the Kardashians have done amazingly well. But, you know, I get people all the time saying, I want a TV show. I want to be this, I want to be else. I. I mean, you know, the one we haven't talked about is Ryan Seacrest, you know, which. That's where Ryan got his start. But, you know, you and I actually have this mutual friend, Natasha Graziano, and I must get 100 people a year who come to me wanting to be the TV host. And you need several components. The main ones being a, you need to have the personality, but then you have to have the work ethic. And a lot of times I meet people that, whose personalities are great, but then you get to the issue of work ethic and, you know, I go, okay, you want to be a TV host in daytime, so that means you're going to be up at 3:00 in the morning, you're going to go with the hair and makeup till 5, you're going to shoot till 11, you're going to go home, you're going to have lunch, you're going to go to sleep, and you're going to do it 50 weeks a year. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, I spend the summers in Ibiza or I spend the summers in the Hamptons. I can't do that. And so you realize they have one or the other, but very rarely do you find people who have both of those traits. But then I met Natasha and several things. Number one, she's not from the US Which I thought was a plus. But she had this great backstory. Single mom living in London, literally homeless. Cut to now, eight years later, she's living in Bel Air and life coaching Will. I am and Steve Aoki and all of that. But she's motivational, inspirational as opposed to promotional. And for me, that was important because I said, you got all these guys in late night TV here. We have no women in late night TV in America. And they all do the same show. It's a guy sitting behind a desk and he's got a couch and, you know, it's the same. So, Mr. Cruz, tell me about the next Mission Impossible. And I said, particularly after Covid, I want to go to sleep with a smile on my face. I want to think tomorrow is going to be better than Today was. And so she's, you know, had the motivational, inspirational. But then I would test her, you know, I'd be like in China and I would intentionally call her knowing it's 3 o' clock in the morning, her time. And she would actually pick up the phone and stay on the phone with me for hours. And I said, okay, got the personality, she's the motivational and the work ethic clearly is there. So we created this talk show, late night talk show, which is going to go on this winter on national tv. Call Natasha After Dark. And you know, and that, you know, that's just a great example of how you could take something and again we, we couldn't go and pitch it and explain it to people. So we had to shoot a pilot and cut a sizzle and then show them how different this show was from anything else that was on.
- [38:34]
Interviewer
I love it. And that's, I mean if anybody's listening, like the traits that you just described that like make a successful talk show host anchor, just successful person in general, the work ethic, the personality, the showing up, I mean if you just emulate those traits in any industry, you're probably going to be pretty well off. I think that those traits are, are those are the prerequisites to, to build anything meaningful, whether or not it's a career in TV or a career in anything really. One of my favorite ideas that you discuss is that you reinvent yourself every few years. Every, I think when I listened to this it was every seven years. A lot of people really struggle to reinvent themselves ever and they're the same person at 70 as when they started their career when they were 25, 20, 25. Talk to me about reinvention. Why is it so important?
- [39:29]
Larry Namer
You know, people go, why did you stop doing E, you know, running yourself? I stayed on the board but you know, quite honestly I got bored. You know, we became huge and you know, it was this, this great thing. But when you get to the issue and it's kind of like when somebody convinced me to write the book, that I really began to focus on this, I said, you know what, I do have like all these kind of seven, eight year periods where I'm a totally different person. So I have my Brooklyn years and my Manhattan cable years and my Valley cable years, then my E years, my Russia years, my China years, my post Covid years and stuff where just entirely different and stuff. I got to admit, China does keep my interest because it's just so huge and there's so much different opportunity There. Um, but it's, it's basically staying fresh and stuff and staying up with new technology. I mean, I'm really keen on making sure that whatever the new technologies are that are coming down the road, that I'm, I'm there before the big companies get there because it takes them so much time to, you know, they, they study, they write plans, they have board meetings and you know, they get the stuff probably a year or two years later than they could or should.
- [40:53]
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- [42:47]
Interviewer
You know, you mentioned China. What are the things that, first of all, why are you excited about China? What are the things that we could learn about how they do media? Because I think that you predicted linear TVs death a while back. I know that China is always sort of cutting edge in terms of media and social media and a lot of different things. So what's, what's China doing? What, what gets you excited? What's stuff that we should maybe try and emulate?
- [43:16]
Larry Namer
First of all, you know, two different things there. So there was no legacy media there, you know, to speak of. You know, everything was government controlled, so cellular and, you know, and digital and stuff were all new there. So you didn't have to spend a lot of time taking away old habits. You would just had to spend it on creating the new habits and then much more open. And plus a very simple thing, because here big media is controlled by public companies, so they're very slow to adapt because it really means writing off old date. You got to write off the old before you can get to the new. I mean, I talk to like people, chairman of like TV networks, and I'm going like, why are you still doing linear tv? I mean, it makes no sense. And they're like, well, you know, it would be like a $7 billion write off. And I'm going to retire in two years. And I'm not walking into a boardroom or you know, a shareholders meeting saying I'm writing down $7 billion. They go, I'll retire, let the next guy deal with, with that. So has nothing to really do with what's right or what you should do or reality. But there are these other things in play that, you know, kind of restrict us. But in China we do tv, film, Internet content, we do immersive, we do all kinds of stuff there. And you people who watch our TV shows, well, first of all, we're successful in China because we make stuff in China in Mandarin language specifically for the audiences in China. So we don't take what we do in Australia and go here, you know, we'll subtitle in English for you and go with it. China is three or four times bigger than the United States. And people in China are very proud and happy to be Chinese. And you know what people have said to me early on? They go, look, if you don't really want to do something in here in our language for our people, you're in the wrong place. And I think Rupert Murdoch learned that pretty early on because he got bounced out pretty quickly. So but you just take the TV shows we do there and 70% 7 0, it's probably a little more now. I'm going back a year. The people who watch our shows watch them on us on a 5 inch screen, watch them on a cell phone. And so we've had to learn to adopt production and editing and stuff. Noting that if we're going to shoot a wide shot which looks great on a 55 inch TV, it's going to look horrible when you put it on a cell phone. So a lot of the stuff we shoot is a lot more close ups and headshots and so do it. And which really that whole phenomenon led to the whole thing going on now with vertical. Vertical programming is now beginning to take care in short film, two minute movies and things like that. We've been doing that stuff in China for years. So I think there's almost 800 million people in China with a smartphone now. So, you know, so it's a pretty good base to experiment against.
- [46:36]
Interviewer
I think that, that, I think that, you know, I, I look at some of the other stuff coming out of China and there's like e commerce trends that are coming out of China and the way people shop and the way people buy, the way people consume content, for sure, I think that's going to be, I always think that a lot of the things that we see coming out of China in terms of just behaviors, they're going to make their way to the US eventually.
- [46:58]
Larry Namer
Yeah.
- [46:58]
Interviewer
So just a matter of time. Just a matter. So you said 70 plus percent of people consume just on phones. Not surprising. You were also doing something really interesting in China where you create movies broken down into two minute segments and then audiences buy them piece by piece. I don't think that's made it to the US but that's another form of like short content that I think you could see in the US too. So again that's like short content vertical. And this is something that creators should pay attention to. Like okay, what am I seeing in China? How can I adapt my content to that? Because that's what's going to be coming down the pipeline.
- [47:35]
Larry Namer
Yeah, well you, you, all you got to do is just go to the app store and you'll find that there are a bunch of things, you know, they need a market, they need to catch up. But that has become, that's come over here already and interesting. Most of them are actually owned by Chinese companies. But the theory. And again we come at stuff from a different place. We look at whatever we create as a Media play has to be financially sustainable. We don't do it because we think it's wild. We're so creative or we love it. But if you can't sustain it financially, don't do it. Of course, eventually, you know, like I say, the realities of life take over. But with, with short films, you take or serialized film, you make a 90 minute movie. You know, most of them now are like rom coms, very inexpensive, 300, $400,000 for a movie. But use folks who are really good at soap opera writing because soap opera writers learn to write in two minute arcs. Because then if you, you watch the pattern of storytelling in a soap opera, they literally are broken down into two minutes and a little cliffhanger and two minutes and a little cliffhanger. So you, you make a 90 minute movie, you divide it up into 45 two minute segments, more or less two minutes. You don't have to time them out. And you give people the first 10 episodes for free. But then episode 11 is like the equivalent of a dollar. Yeah, it's not a big deal. I liked it. It was good. I want to know what happened. Does Janie kill him? Okay, for a dollar, you find out if Janie kills him, and then on and on and on. But you look at the financial model there. So you then have 35 segments that you're getting a dollar for. So on a 300 or 400 million, you know, million movie, you're getting a $35 ticket price. Yet look at Marvel spending 200 million on a movie and getting a $19 ticket price. Who's got the better model?
- [49:46]
Interviewer
Do you think that, I mean, at one point you had, you know, 142 plus country broadcasts. Now we have all these individual creators, these podcasters, these YouTube channels. Do you think we're moving towards infinite, like, fragmentation of media, or do you think that we'll ever see like unifying media sort of taking hold? Because I see all these individual podcasters as sort of like, and, and media channels as the new age, like the Joe Rogan's the, the, the. I mean, pick a, pick a YouTube channel. The Mr. Beast. It seems like infinite fragmentation of media.
- [50:23]
Larry Namer
Yeah, you'll see, you know, whenever new media comes out, and I hate to say it, I've been, I've been involved in probably new media seven or eight times in my 50 years. When it first comes out, people are very forgiving of quality and content. But over time, right now there's like some crazy number of podcasters. Everybody thinks, I buy a camera for $40 and stick it on my laptop and I put a lamp over my head and I'm a TV star. Well, it doesn't exactly work like that, but then you get to the audience and at the beginning of any new technology, people are very forgiving of poor quality. He is a great example. He forgave us for using industrial equipment. But over time, the eye and the brain begins to expect more and more and more. So we actually dove into the podcast world last year because post Covid, I started doing a lot more in the US again. And we just said, we know where it's going, we know that people are going to want better, better quality out of their podcasts and their podcasters. So rather than start at the low end, we decided that our podcast got to start at the higher end. So we actually shoot, we do a lot of women empowerment related stuff because we thought that was a niche that really could be, you know, developed well. But we shoot our podcast in 4K. We shoot it with four cameras, we switch live, we edit, we audio engineer design. The audio and lighting guy designed that and stuff. So when you watch it, it really looks like television. I mean the first one we did is called Stall Talk and you know, it looks like a younger hipaa, cooler version of the View and stuff. So, you know, more and more we love podcasting because there are no barriers to entry, there's no gatekeepers, but you got, at the end of the day you gotta be good. And you know, we think there'll be a huge shakeout and you know, a lot of the stuff that's going on now, I mean, for several reasons, you know, the economics are just not there. Big advertisers need mass, they can't afford to keep buying audiences of a few hundred people and stuff like that. So you gotta, you gotta build them up and you gotta get sponsors to keep them self sustainable and, and stuff like that. But it's not, it's not this or that. I mean, a lot of times I need stuff quick, give it to me quick. I'm a big TikTok fan. I love TikTok, you know, but it's during the day, you know, I'm in the car, I'm on the bus or the train and I just give it to me in two minute bites and I'm good, or 40 second bites and I'm good. But then I come home and you know what? I want to lump out on the couch and have a beer. And so I want those half hour shows, I want the Spielbergs of the world. To tell me their stories. Cause they do them better than my college roommate did. So it's not this or that, it's really both. And they both fill a need at different times in people's daily routine of their life.
- [53:45]
Interviewer
Yeah. And so I think that, you know, really the, the answer is maybe we're over fragmented but eventually we're going to consolidate like the best podcasts or the best TikTok channels or the best YouTube channels. That's what's going to sort of be like the go tos and, and I.
- [54:01]
Larry Namer
Think you're already, already starting to see it now. You're watching the big guys, you know, jump in and force the consolidation. I think Sirius Radio just did a big deal with Tribune to you know, to really push simple cast and stuff like that. And there, yeah, it'll be consolidation. We, we look at it, I mean our podcast stuff, we're building this women's block because we said okay, with one podcast maybe we get 10,000 we. Which means you could only go to the kind of local advertisers. But If I do five and I get the same demo across five, I now have 50,000. I can now go to L' Oreal or you know, PMG with it.
- [54:42]
Interviewer
Larry, where do people connect with you? Where do people get your book? I'm assuming, I'm assuming you can get, you can get your book wherever you get books, Amazon, whatnot. But what's the socials, what's the website you want to send people to?
- [54:55]
Larry Namer
Well, you could go to, well the name of the book is called Off Script. And so you can either go to off script podcast or offscriptbook.com and find it or you know, people. The email that I actually get myself, and I do answer all my email myself is ljnjn media.com but yeah, the book is available Amazon, Barnes Ingram, everywhere, all the usual places.
- [55:29]
Interviewer
I'll link, I'll link everything below. Last, last questions. Just to pull out a couple final thoughts from you. You've had an incredible career. If you had to, you know, look at not what you've learned but what you had to unlearn to be successful. The thing that you think held you back the most, what would that thing be?
- [55:54]
Larry Namer
Well, you know, I grew up my, and I grew up in a very poor neighborhood. I grew up in Brooklyn, but before it was trendy Brooklyn. So I grew up in an area called Coney island, which is still the hood. I mean you go through there today and it's still a war zone, you know, burnt out buildings and Stuff like that, it's beginning to gentrify. But, you know, my parents came from, you know, immigrant mentality and their, you know, wishes for their kids were get a civil service job and be able to retire at 65. And, you know, so I spent a lot of time having to listen to other people's design for my life as opposed to what was going to. What I knew was going to make me happy. And so I guess the greatest thing I learned is just, you know, follow your heart, follow your gut. And again, second, you say to people, just imagine you've lost them, just if it feels right to you. And you got to be honest, you got to evaluate. Like I say, I come up with 10 new ideas every day, and by the time I go to sleep, I realize most of them would dopey. But I'm honest enough about myself to go, stupid idea. What was I thinking? What's next? Just don't waste your time on stuff.
- [57:12]
Interviewer
I love it. And if, but if you do believe in it, like, you have to commit to it.
- [57:17]
Larry Namer
You gotta, like I say, you know, find something you're. You're good at and work your butt off and become great at it, and then that will become your passion.
- [57:27]
Interviewer
The last thing that I wanted to ask you, you've given over a lot of wisdom. And you. And maybe just go a level deeper on this thought because, say, you could only pass on one life lesson to your kids because it was the most important life lesson that you've ever learned. You've given over a few. But what would be those final words of wisdom that you'd pass over to your kids?
- [57:50]
Larry Namer
Well, I think, you know, where we're all on this planet for a finite amount of time, and I think our purpose here is we're here to leave this place better than we found it in every way, from people to the planet to animals and stuff. And to me, the object in life. And I've always had this conversation with my mom when my daughter would be dating. My mother would say, well, is it serious? And, you know, it made me start to think. I'm going, well, what does that mean? She goes, well, are they going to get married? And I'm going, you know what? My wish for my daughter, all my kids, is to be happy. The wish for myself is to be happy. It's not to be rich or whatever, but it, it really, that's. That's the object is find your happy place.