If there was ever a brand that punched far above its weight, it was MTV. It wasn’t just a music TV channel; it was a cultural zeitgeist. If music is a connector of people who wouldn’t even speak the same language, MTV was the cord. With shows such as MTV Grind and MTV Unplugged, the channel built a fan base across the world in as remote locations as Kazakhstan and Timbuktu. MTV’s revenue was just about 15 per cent of its parent Viacom’s, but its valuation and the counterculture imprint on people’s minds were much bigger. But how did MTV get there?

For understanding that, you need to read media maverick Tom Freston’s fast paced, riveting memoir Unplugged that traces his incredible journey from being an adventure seeking spirit to becoming the founding member of MTV and building it to become one of the most iconic brands of our times.

Tom confesses that he grew desperate to experience life after having lived till his college years confined to his home-town with his dad, a US navy veteran who was shell-shocked by his experiences of WWII and discouraged Tom from moving out. With the lure of cash, girls, and drugs, Tom started working at an inn near Lake George and the experiences taught him that life was more interesting off the main track while forging a less conformist path. He then spent his next few years as a bartender at Martha’s Vineyard with a motley cast of characters including free spirited musicians and bikers, whose career path was not to have one!

Tom recounts in great detail his experiences from his beginnings in his first real job at an advertising agency after an MBA in New York, only to chuck it on a whim to travel to Sahara desert for a year, and then eventually inspired by a woman he had met in Greece selling scarves and sarongs from India and Afghanistan. He set up a business of upselling such garments to customers in America and running that business for seven years before his business shuttered when Russia invaded Afghanistan and Indian products got tariffed by Jimmy Carter.

Culture of irreverence

His next two decades were defined by his joining the founding team of what would become MTV. From hiring his creative head at a nude beach to introducing his boss to strip clubs in Thailand, from having a dress code that spelled any dress as long as there was no full-frontal nudity to launching MTV in conservative, war ravaged countries like Afghanistan and Lebanon, Tom built a culture of irreverence in the channel just the way he had lived his life.

His immersive years in Greenwich village had introduced him to the counterculture spirit, with new emerging clothing styles, music, sexual liberation, independent cinema, drugs, left of centre politics, and anti-war self-preservation lifestyle, all of which reflected in the music of rock and roll stars of the 70s and 80s and their videos that were building the brand MTV.

While studying business at New York University graduate business school, Tom had learnt to define the emerging customer in the baby boomer generation who wanted to experience the new everything. Music videos were a new visual playground influencing fashion, style and movies like Miami Vice and Flashdance. He equates MTV to Kabul — an exotic place with a crazy cast of wild characters where few rules apply.

With its reach and clout, MTV held the promise of converting a music nobody to a star overnight and artists lobbied to get their videos on MTV.

Unplugged records

The book derives its title from MTV’s hit show ‘Unplugged’ where top artists like Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Mariah Carey, etc., would come to play acoustic versions of their songs, without electric guitars or synthesisers and MTV would sell hundreds of millions of Unplugged records, getting a royalty on each one.

Tom describes how they built the terrific ‘I want my MTV’ ad campaign to get cable distribution on a meagre budget, which till date is a case study on marketing impact. Their over-the-top contests where winners were flown in private jets to the MTV Video Music Awards concerts where they met the artists backstage in flesh and blood were to die for and their offices would fill up with bags full of contest entries.

As MTV fought irrelevance in the millennium, its premium cable fees and ad revenues plummeted faster. Video had killed the radio star, but eventually digital killed the video star of linear television when music companies refused to licence the streaming rights to MTV.

The last few chapters detail Tom’s attempts to survive corporate politics as CEO of Viacom and his eventual unceremonious sacking. He followed that with a decade-long stint in the digital upstart VICE which started with great promise and saw incredible revenue growth till it filed for bankruptcy.

Through the book, Tom seems to be chasing constant newness as he followed his heart. Candidly, Tom does admit that much of his success was random and attributes it to his being born at the right time as a white male, in the US, in the middle of the twentieth century when America was in the ascendant.

If anything, Unplugged is a wonderful business book wrapped inside an adventure story about a man, the exciting life he led and the iconic brand that he built.

The reviewer runs 91 Film studios that produces films in regional languages

Title: Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu

Author: Tom Freston

Publisher: Simon and Schuster US

Price: ₹799

Meet the author

Tom Freston is a co-founder of MTV and the former CEO of Viacom. He brought MTV to international fame in more than 150 countries

Published on February 6, 2026