Tom Freston Quotations

The skills you acquire can always be effectively redeployed. You will look back on setbacks and be grateful for the catalyst that came not a moment too soon.

A career path is rarely a path at all. A more interesting life is usual a more crooked, winding path of missteps, luck and vigorous work. It is almost always a clumsy balance between the things you try to make happen and the things that happen to you.

Only true love can fuel the hard work that awaits you.

People often say that a bad event is a 'blessing in disguise.' Trust me, experience will teach you that some are unbelievably well disguised. Everyone gets fired, or decides to make a radical change at some point. Everyone suffers setbacks.

Authenticity is really important, and sometimes thats really hard to get.

Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.

If you look at the Internet, it's been hard for a lot of the traditional media companies to launch viable brands.

I always hustled to make money and pay for school. I was never afraid of hard work.

I always imagined myself somehow as an electron around some atom, and you're just, like, bouncing around and spinning. There was a never-ending supply of places to go, people to see, things to do, and fitting it all in became kind of an art.

When I got fired, I had a feeling of loss because Viacom had been a passionate long-term relationship. But I got my balance back. I guess its like getting jilted by a girlfriend, a serious girlfriend. You move on.

We, as Americans, have so much to learn here. We have a shockingly low level of global awareness and familiarity and little idea of how the world sees us. And those disturbing facts keep getting us into a lot of trouble.

I've never been fired in my life. From anything. I've never failed at anything I've tried.

Sometimes I just like the feeling of being a minority and seeing how far you can push yourself in extreme circumstances.

Travel is the best and probably cheapest graduate school you can buy.

Read, listen to and watch everything you can. Explore the corners of popular culture and the arts. And, of course, these days you have to stay maniacally plugged in to the cutting edge of whatever technology is taking your profession into the future - otherwise you're toast.

There's almost nothing that distracts you from your day-to-day problems more than a trip. You're totally consumed in the present, you've got new sense impressions, you've got all this stuff to digest.

I measure success in terms of the connection with the audience, which we've been able to do in spades. I mean, it's very hard to do that. You think about it, you go back in time, you can say, 'Well, there's, like, 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Rolling Stone' or 'MTV.'' I think 'Vice' is in that category now.

I think online is a better platform. If you look at the metrics, if you look at the delivery system, if you look at social - all of the things that online can do - TV can't compete.

Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

We want to produce films here, we don't want to just distribute. We want to work with Indian producers.

I would expect within this year you'll see some good social networking capabilities in our company.

I am here to discuss with various stakeholders. I expect to finish the talks within few days from now. By the next 10-12 months, we would begin production here.

Paramount is going through a whole series of changes and these changes will not happen overnight, but this is the rebirth of Paramount.

We want to have our content on as many platforms as possible, be it cable, video-on-demand, in video games, or online, over broadband and wireless. We want to be able to (reach) our users in many places.

Everyone wants to know how you're going to monetize it. You're asking people to advertise between conversations between two people.

(Advertisers) judge very harshly the kind of content they're advertising on. On television and radio, there are standards.

As a global media platform company, we are looking at various projects in many parts of the world.

As per a part of the deal the director (Steven Spielberg) would produce...not necessarily direct four-five films for us.

Creating a network specifically for the LGBT community is something we've wanted to do for a long, long time, and it's an idea we feel is overdue. Despite our nation's progress on civil rights and the growing visibility of gay people in business, society and even in television programming -- what has been missing is a full-time home for this important and influential audience on television. We have big plans and hopes for LOGO and I'm thrilled to finally announce its arrival.

I have prevented my kids from watching MTV at home. It's not safe for kids.