Navigating from Old to New Media Careers - Bob Bowdon

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication.

Skills and practices of world class leaders. Okay, folks, I admit it. I'm an old timer. I've been at this whole media biz stuff since the early 80s. I've had to reinvent myself many times just to keep my head afloat. We can't all be the Bob Schieffers of the world, work CBS for 90 years and get the gold watch. And yet the modern media world is filled with people who are successful at navigating from the old to the new. Our special guest today is Bob Bowden. You may have seen him when he was a primetime anchor for the Bloomberg News Network. You may have seen him as a fake comedy TV reporter on the Onion TV. You may see him on places like Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly opining on top education issues of the day. He's someone who has had his finger in almost every single media pie over the last 30 years. Bob Bowden, thanks for being our guest today.

Thanks, T.J. great to be here. Appreciate it. Now, how did you.

First, you have a very odd career path in that you studied engineering, you did sort of high tech stuff out in Silicon Valley, hp. Then you went to film school, then you went into news. Explain to us your career path and that that early sort of zigzag trajectory, which may have seemed odd at the time, it's probably very helpful these days, isn't it?

By odd, I think you mean, you know, brilliantly eclectic. There you go. So, yeah, I mean, I went to, I ended up with a master's degree in engineering and started that career. And after a few years in that field, four and a half or so, I kind of decided I wanted to have a different career. And that unlike some who were lecturing me that it was too late in one's mid to late 20s, at 27 years old, too late to switch careers and go into something else. I kind of rejected that idea. I just don't feel like I'm too old, that my life is now completely planned out forever. I want to, I want to do something different. So I'm going to. So I, Yes, I then went to film school to the great consternation of my father and some people who thought this sounded like foolishness, so much foolishness. But I started over and then ended up becoming a television producer and then ultimately television anchor, host, commentator, and then a documentary filmmaker.

By the way, in your bio, I neglected to mention it's not just that you went to film school, but some 20 years later, you produced Directed and starred in a documentary that was one of the most profitable, successful documentaries of all time. The Cartel, about education reform in New Jersey.

Yeah, I mean it was, it started as a purely independent film, meaning I went out and bought a camera and I went out and bought some lights and I went out and bought some microphones, phones, and I got some help from friends, you know, who would show up with me on interview locations and help set up the lights and we would do these interviews. And it kind of took on its own snowball, you might say, where as soon as I would have a great interview with someone, they would say, now here are three other people you really need to talk to. And I'd say, oh, okay. And I'd write down their names and then I'd go do more interviews. And so it ultimately, yeah, it ended up getting a Warner Brothers distribution and a dozen film festival awards and all about corruption in public education. So that was. Yeah, it was a combination of luck and I also think some, you know, a little bit of skill that I'd. This was after I'd worked in television for over 15 years, so I had. I wasn't just exactly a, you know, brand new media guy with a camera. I'd been around the world of video production.

Well, your experiences build from one to the other. It's not exactly the traditional one step up trajectory every 18 months that some people aspire to if they are working for one corporation. But the skill sets do build. For those of you interested in learning more about the Cartel and other issues related to education reform, you may want to check out Bob's website, Choicemedia TV. That's 3W Choicemedia TV. And you can see his latest video segments there. Interviews with policymakers, plus opinions on the day that relate to education. Bob, you and I both grew up in an era where there was basically three TV stations and a local newspaper. And to make it into the media as a career, it was talk about harder than getting through the eye of a needle on the back of a camel. In a biblical sense, it was extraordinarily difficult. And you navigated your way through some of that. Now there's a lot more. In some ways, it's never been easier to start a media company, a website, a nonprofit, and yet it can be harder to get over that initial threshold of credibility. Making money. Is this real? Do I have a job? Am I pretending? You did that when you started Choice Media half a dozen years ago? What is your. In terms of revenue? Employees, donors? What is your advice to people who actually want to create their own media entity and not be dependent on just a job from Roger Ailes that might.

Be hard to get these days. So I mean, I would say, at the risk of abject cliche here, that follow what you're passionate about and really care about what you're talking about. And if you pick a subject that really winds you up and gets you motivated and something you're already talking with your friends about or at least thinking about a lot on your own and approach it that way rather than. Look, there was a period in my career to which you alluded earlier where I was a stock market reporter for Bloomberg Television. And the way I got that job is I had an agent and I went and they wanted to hire people to be on TV and I, I went and did interviews and they looked at my previous on camera work and they hired me to do it. But each day I was talking about things like the Alcoa earnings report, what the aluminum company might say for second quarter forecast or something, or I would do a report on, I don't know, everything from the semiconductor segment to what the Fed might do in its next, at its next Fed meeting. And so it happened. I know there are a lot of people that find that stuff interesting and I do to an extent. But I ultimately was doing the opposite of what I just told you a second ago. Meaning it was not my passion. I was paid to do it every day. I was paid pretty well by most standards, I think, across the country. But I wasn't happy. I was bored to tears. I, you know, after about five, six years of that, you know, after something, you know, several dozen earning seasons which you have every quarter, I just lost, I lost the passion for it. And so I left that really without another job to go to. But just because, and folks, we need.

To point out that's pretty rare to actually quit a job as a network newscaster seen around the world. And you and I have known each other for more than 20 years. I would be in India, all over the world and I would flop on the TV in my hotel and there you were. It's extraordinarily rare for someone to just quit a network anchor job for no other particular gig. But you did have the courage to do that.

I mean, I guess I'd already started over several times in my career and was kind of accustomed to the drill of building up enough savings where you feel confident enough to take a risk and getting some ideas in the hopper for, well, I might try this next. And if that doesn't work, I'll try this next thing instead and kind of get a few ideas. You get enough savings and there's a cultural thing. Once you've done that once, it is considerably easier to do it the second time and easier still the third time.

Now, with Choice Media, you have created an institution. You're not the Heritage foundation, nor do you tell people you are. But a lot of people have an idea. A lot of people have a cute video, maybe even a viral video. How can you go from an interest or a passion for a subject, a passion for communicating, a passion for creating video or audio or text content? Because a lot of people have those. How do you wrap it all into something bigger and institutionalize it? How do you raise the money to make this happen so that it can sustain itself and it's not just a hobby?

Yeah, a lot of times there are communities of people out there that would agree with and support work that you might be doing, and it might not occur to a lot of people to reach out to those communities. Now, if the work is purely, I guess, just purely entertainment oriented, it might be a little harder than if it's about an issue like education reform, like I chose. But there are. I mean, I met a guy, for example, who had done a documentary film about the Korean War. And you might think to yourself, in fact, I did. When you first hear this idea and I went to the screening in New York City, you might think, well, you know, boy, that's not in the news. Headline story every day, you know, updates on reflections on the Korean War. Like, what is the audience for a film about the Korean War that was so many decades ago. And the fact is, other than watching.

A rerun in MASH about mash, that doesn't sound particularly interesting.

Which really felt more like Vietnam, even though it was allegedly about Korea. Right. The MASH show. But, you know, it turns out what this guy did was reached out to VFW groups and, you know, American Legion posts around the country and marketed this to many, many thousands of veterans who were eager to host their own screenings at these VFW halls of this film. And the guy did great with this film. It's a super successful documentary film because he didn't just make it and then move on. He thought about, how can I reach out to existing groups of other people that would be happy to partner with me on the marketing and distribution of this piece of media? So that's kind of one way to approach it. It particularly works if you're doing some sort like a doc. I think that's probably Documentary.

How did you do that with your documentary? Because you were not particularly tied in with any one community when you started on that track of producing that movie?

Oh, no. I mean, I had zero. I approached it as a journalist, but I had zero background in education at all. But what I did was I systematically started reaching out to people. I made phone calls to people that I found in quoted in newspaper stories about this issue. And I called them and would, in some cases just, can I meet with you? Can I meet with you? And I would show up and meet with them and sit and have lunch, and I would tell them about the project, and they would then tell more people, and then those people would tell more people. So while a lot of people, I think TJ may hear you your advice, maybe they're already making their own videos, their own projects, whether it's a podcast or a film of some kind or YouTube videos, they may already be doing it, but they may not have thought of calling up people and meeting with them saying face to face, or at least a phone call if they're not located in the same geographic area, and say, I want to tell you about my project and make those other people feel included, like they're important and like maybe you're reaching out to advice for advice from them. And it's a way to build a network of potential advocates who will help you market and spread the word of your project.

You mean I can't just stay at home, text and tweet and it all happen? I actually have to go out and.

Talk to real people? Yeah, I mean, you know, right. You can do the most brilliant piece of work, YouTube video every day. And if you never tell anyone about it, you know, you might get some views, but you'd be way better to, I don't know, pick. Pick a topic that's even. Even if the next one week's YouTube video, let's say, and I'm just picking this out of thin air, and it's about some topic you're going to talk about instead of just talking about it yourself with all. And while your ideas might be brilliant, you also book a guest who you will interview a little bit about it. You will also then get that guest to help promote the project through that person's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And it's a way to make, basically to build partnerships. Because none of us in this world just, you know, come, come are born into the world and completely on our own with no help from anyone else, just becomes successful. We ultimately need to partner at some point with other People, whether you're Bill Gates or Zuckerberg or anyone else who we think of as icons of success, at some point, they had other people they were working with and they were successful because of those. And I think a lot of media people, particularly broadcast types, may not think about that because they themselves are talkers and they are fonts of. Of ideas, wellspring of ideas. And they forget about how much further you can go when you bring other people into the fray.

And you mentioned promotion. You have spent a lot of your career promoting your products, whether it is your movies, you have several movies, your nonprofit, other things. As a guest on talk TV shows, talk radio shows, podcasts, you've been on everything from Morning Joe multiple times to Stossel on Fox. How do you prepare for TV and radio interviews? Number one. Number two, how are you seeing things evolve? Because I'm hearing from clients of mine that they go on, for example, not to pick on somebody, but wor radio and there's no audience and they go on some podcast I've never heard of, and they tell me they sell a thousand books. So how are you navigating this evolving media world and how do you prepare for talk shows?

Well, it's always important to go in with, with particular things to say. I like to have specific things to say that are sometimes with numbers or actual names or actual references to studies and the results of those studies or mentions of legislation that passed in particular states. Whatever you're going on to talk about, it's good to march in with some just really specific information to convey because you can always, on top of that, you know, be charming and fun and funny and kind of. But if you add to that a lot of hard, specific information, I think the hosts appreciate it, the viewers appreciate it. It comes through like you care about deliver. You're respecting the audience. You're saying, I am not just here to tell you how great I am. I want to be like, really clear as an information provider, this kind of when I'm a viewer, I always appreciate that. So I think preparation is really important. But then again, you also need to be free enough that you're not a robot and that if something happens that's spontaneous, you can roll with it.

Now that Oprah is no longer Oprah, I always stress to my clients that being on any one talk show doesn't really move the needle. It doesn't do much. The whole key to success is getting invited back. It's the regular repetition. And you are often invited back, whether it's on Fox, whether It's on AM FM talk radio shows around the nation. What is the biggest difference you see in how you perform on air that gets you invited back versus somebody who is perfectly fine guest, but you forget about them and the producer forgets about them and they don't get invited back.

I like Oprah is no longer Oprah. I kind of thought maybe she had a name change like Daddy Diddy or something like that. I need to be up on that, the new Oprah name.

I just mean she doesn't have 14 million people watching her every day.

Well, yeah. So how to get invited back? I think that you. Sometimes you can kind of walk in with this feeling, even if it's a brand new host that you've never met before, and you kind of walk in and you project this idea that you're already friends with this person in a way you can kind of imagine it or visualize it if that helps you. And I've had hosts do this to me. I was actually on a show recently where I remember it's probably my sixth or seventh time on. This is a national radio show, but I remember the very second time going into that show, this host said, and my good friend Bob Bowden. And Bob Bowden is, you know, great. And we, you know, we. And he kind of on the hearing, it's almost like he was explaining how cool we were with each other. And it was kind of an effective technique. I sort of felt like.

And he didn't know you. He didn't know you from Adam, I assume.

Pardon?

He didn't know you from Adam, I assume.

I just never met the guy ever before. I didn't know anything about. I barely knew his name when I walked in for that first interview. And I barely remember the first interview when I came for the second one. And he was, and he treated, he acted like we were the greatest of friends. And so you can do that as a guest too. You. Basically, the idea is don't walk in thinking to yourself, I'm gonna prove myself. I'm gonna show them how much I know. I'm gonna show them how smart I am. They'll just have to admit how, you know, what a great guest I am. It'll be inevitable to ask me back. I will just be so great. Me, me, me. I'll be so great. No, you should be friendly to the host. And if. Also I have this theory too. If the viewers see that you're having an interesting discussion or a good time, if you just have a good time in the studio and have a Vibrant, high energy, thoughtful exchange in the studio. You don't have to worry about the viewers. The viewers will just see that and they will basically think that it was a good segment. And several producers.

Sound advice, although I once made a blunder that relates to this. I used to advise people, and still do sometimes at the end of the interview, shake hands with the host so that the viewer sees that there's a bond there and it's friendly. And most TV networks, local broadcasters, people still do that. It's acceptable. But after the financial crisis, Bloomberg, cnbc, others instituted a policy where they didn't want their anchors shaking hands with the guest. It seemed too chummy to the viewers. So I made the mistake at Bloomberg TV one day, shaking the hands of the anchor at the end of a segment, he's like, tj, wish you hadn't done that. Now I got to reshoot the end. Now, it was taped in advance, it wasn't live, so it was only another 30 minutes. Excuse me, 30 seconds of work. But there are certain things you need to be aware of when trying to be friendly. But in general, being friendly helps, whether you're the guest or the host. I remember I was at a party one time, Dick Cavett comes up, arms outstretched to me, says, you're here.

Fantastic.

Looking right at me. He obviously had no idea who I was, but a mutual friend had told him that I was a big fan of his, and he went out of his way to be extra friendly and leave a memorable impression, even though he didn't know my name, he didn't need me. I wasn't even a guest on his show. But it was a nice, friendly tip.

I once heard a story about Bill Clinton when someone met him in person. This is from a critic of Bill Clinton, who in this instance, though, was acknowledging some praise to Clinton, saying that when he had given some talk at a public event, Clinton had been in the audience and heard a little bit of this guy's talk. Later, when meeting in person, Clinton looked at him, he said, with the look of a proud father who just observed their son or daughter just do something wonderful in public, like given a valedictory address or something like that, or hit a home run in the baseball game or what. But without saying, but without the talking part of the proud father. Just had that look on his face of this proud father look. And that was Bill Clinton's look when he was meeting my friend. And I kind of thought that was. That was the same kind of thing you're talking about. Yeah. That you can even if you don't know someone that well. You can project such positive energy toward them that they feel a bond.

Clinton's in another class all his own. Even Newt Gingrich says that Bill Clinton is the most charming man in America, if not the world. Our special guest today is Bob Bowden. He is the founder and managing director of Choice Media. You can find out more about him at ChoiceMedia TV, on Twitter, Choice MediaTV, it's on Instagram. All of this will be linked to in the show notes and you can see some of his latest media activities and what he's up to. But I want to hear a little more about your influences. You've worked with what Joe Franklin, you've worked with Jackie Mason, you've worked with Roger Ailes. You've worked with a lot of different people who are quite famous. Tell me what you've gleaned from these. And certainly you've seen them all come through your network, whether it was at Bloomberg, the old news talk television network, which disclosure, is where we met more than 20 years ago. What is it you've learned from some of the most successful famous people and how they communicate?

Well, there are such huge differences as, you know, between all these people. But I think one thing they do have them, they would have all in common is that they have some sense of themselves, of what they're good at, of the kind of media that probably many of them have tried different things and maybe failed a few times and reinvented themselves enough that they've learned what the public responds to from them. And so it reminds me a little bit of there's an old TV commercial where you had this concert pianist playing some classical music. And then cut. And it was Dave Winfield, the New York Yankees outfielder. And he started playing piano also wearing tails, a tuxedo and tails in this black tie audience. And he's, you know, and he's banging on the piano making horrible sounds. And there's like shots of the audience gasping, you know, saying, good Lord, what's this? And, you know, at the end, the commercial was, you know, you can never be successful playing another man's game. The idea being that, you know, Dave Winfield was successful as a baseball player, hall of Famer, but he was no good on piano. So something about that stuck with me all these years, that ad, you can never be successful playing another man's game. And that many of the people you just outlined, all of them, they have a sense of who they are and how to frame and craft a message that's within their. They're not reaching too far beyond their native personality. They're not putting so much a filter on their personality or thoughts or idea flow that it seems artificial or forced. So that's one thing that. Yeah, that's one thing.

I won't ask for the single most favorite. But who has impressed you the most when you've met them in person, in the studio, in the green room, or on the set, with their just. Raw ability to communicate.

That's a good question, huh? Raw ability to communicate. I guess sometimes I'm surprised a little by people to think for a second about off camera. Ability to communicate.

Well, and it translates on camera too, while you're thinking of that, who are some of the worst. Because I'm sure it does stick out more.

Yeah, I mean, I gotta tell you, I met Dennis Miller one time about 20 years ago and he, he was awful in person. He was just terrible. He was, you know, that was back.

When he was a good liberal Democrat.

Yeah, I mean, it was, it was. He was hosting the ESPN Emmy Awards with, you know, sports. Sports Emmys for sports broadcasting. And I was, I was going up and I basically, they had some of us there helping out with the production. So in rehearsals, we were going up at the podium and, you know, giving fake speeches while they were blocking the camera shots of how to produce this live television event. So I was kidding around and I was, you know, I was up on the microphone at the podium and he would introduce me and as if I were one of the winners, I would come from the audience area and take the walk and the cameras would figure out how to block it to get the shots. And I would go up on the steps and be on the stage and then I would talk at the podium and then I'd go back and then something else would happen that someone else would, you know, he'd introduce me again and I come from another part of the audience. So I was, I had been this, you know, several hours of this, of this afternoon, blocking all these shots. And then on a break later, you know, we were not talking between each other, we were just doing this rehearsal. But then later at a break, he's by himself. And I walked up to him and I said, yeah, you know, Mr. Miller just wanted to say hello. And I thought it kind of earned a certain right to walk up to him after having spent all that time together on the stage. Just want to say hello. And he basically looked at me like I had a combination between leprosy and malaria. I had my hand like hanging out there in the Air waiting for him to shake my hand for what seemed to be an hour. I don't know, finally sort of this disdainful look on his face and a kind of limp handshake from him came my way. He didn't say a word to me, just kind of like grunted and nodded a little bit and then like looked back down at what he was reading and I was just, I came very close to just saying, you know, and I'm going to go kill myself right now. Speaking to a man like you. So there's one little anecdote for him.

And he may be an awful person. He may have had a headache, he may have been so far behind immediately I'm always a little, I don't certainly doubt your word, but it seems to me that with celebrities they either get way, way too much credit for just being a normal polite person. Hi, nice to meet you. On the one hand, on the other hand, we've all had bad days or we have a stomachache or a headache and no one's coming up to us, those of us who are not famous like that and no one's annoyed with us. But certainly true. But if you're ever annoyed, if you're ever feeling sick and you've been a little bit rude to someone in an airlines, then if you're famous, people are talking about that 20 years later. So the fame could be a double edged sword.

There's no doubt there's a difference between someone who's just sort of brief with you and maybe they don't want to sit down and have a beer with you because they don't see how brilliant and interesting you are. If someone is just basically oh, nice to meet you, thank you very much and they kind of then go back to what they're doing. I think to me that's the line. That's where the line is. If they give you at least some sort of, I don't know, some sort of perfunctory basic response that is at least polite, I think that would be considered normal. Whatever. I wouldn't really have, I wouldn't be telling the story years later if that's what it was.

I tend to think he's sort of an obnoxious guy.

So I don't mean to, I don't mean to. But no, you're right. I mean all of us at our worst moments, it is something that you said in this cell phone era, right, where, where you know, all kinds of off camera we'll call it, remarks are captured on cell phones and don't you.

Know who I am?

Yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah. You talking about the woman who was at the, the parking garage?

No, I'm just talking about that happens.

To a lot of celebrities or people.

Who are not celebrities but act as though they are.

Yeah, there was a big viral video of a woman who was at a, who was some sort of minor television reporter or something whose car had been towed and she went on a pretty caustic rant against the poor employee of the, you know, car depot where the cars get towed to. And it was kind of a don't you know who I am moment. Just like you said, these days everyone.

Can be a media star. Unfortunately not for planned reasons or positive reasons. Right.

Yeah. No. And you know, and yeah, it doesn't. The good news doesn't seem to get the views as well as the bad news, does it? I mean, maybe once in a blue moon, but usually acts of kindness are not viral videos.

What is your advice to young people today who come to you who say, I want a career in the media. I'm a communicator. I love journalism because when you and I were in college, the advice was really one of two things. One, go to a prestigious journalism school. Go to the Columbia School of Journalism. Get your internship at the New York Times or cbs. Go to a really small town newspaper, work your way up if it's broadcast. The Bill O'Reilly way of you go from one small town to another for, you know, every 18 months for 20 years and then work your way up. Or it would be something like go to law school, work at a high level administration and in a president's for a president segue into a commentary role. It's completely different. Now. What is your advice to young people?

Well, I would say that, you know, if you want to be a commentator, you can start that any day you want and just start and practice and get better and find your own voice because that needs to happen before any sort of, I think large scale success is likely to ensue is you have your own voice and kind of know who you are as a public person. It's funny, you told me that it reminded me of a story when I finished film school, I wanted to get a job at a television station. And so what I did was I contacted all the television stations and they were like, okay, well mail in a resume and then that's it. So I mailed in a resume and then nothing else happened. So then I actually called up a TV station and offered to be. I wanted to get in so much I just wanted any job at a TV station. I wanted it bad enough I offered to be a janitor for free at a TV station. Here I was with a master's degree in engineering. I said, I will be a free janitor for you if I could just.

And I'm sure your dad was especially.

Well, you didn't know that. And so. And no, they wouldn't hire. They wouldn't respond to me. They would not even let me be an unpaid janitor at TBC. This was how. This is how hard the Catch 22, to which you refer to, by the way.

We have openings for that position at Media Training Worldwide and speaking with TJ.

Walker, if the offer is still good. This was how hard it was to break into television. And the only way I ultimately did it was through people that I had met and friendships I had made and contacts. And I started. Once you develop a network. And I'll tell you something else. If you ever get yourself some sort of little job on a film production, in which, or even in my case I was, you know, anything that was sort of entertainment related, I considered close enough. So I was. I had one job one summer actually selling beer at the Central park concert series in New York City. So this was. But it was show business to me. Like, even though I was literally selling beer like bags of peanuts and stuff like that. So what did I do? This person I had met, it was a woman who was also trying to work in television. I got her a little gig selling beer at the Thing. I also had a little. I had a small film job that I ended up finagling New Line Cinema. And I was sort of a location scout. But there were certain shoot days that needed to hire other production assistants. And I got her a little production assistant job. As soon as you get any job like this, my advice to you, if you're trying to get ahead, it can be as uncool as you know, or unprestegious as selling beer. If you get any kind of job, but you show an interest in getting your friends who are also struggling to get ahead, you try to get them placed also. That can end up working out for you because basically the same woman who I got these little jobs ended up then getting me a really great job, my first real job in television that was considerably better than anything I'd ever gotten for her. But she only thought of me because I had first thought of her for these other jobs. So that's what.

And I was. I was about to say, if you do that, people will never Forget. And it just occurred to me that I in fact forgot the fact that you got me a job 20 years ago as a substitute host for the regional news network debate show. They had a show like Crossfire for our listeners, Crossfire style show. And you in fact, got me hired for that. This was after we had met what was going to be just for five minutes on the set of the old news talk television network. I had just moved to New York City, was a complete utter pauper, was living on the floor of a friend's apartment in midtown Manhattan. I was booked to be a guest on the news talk television network. And 18 inches of snow came down the day before. This was back in the day.

It was a national cable network huddle. But a small, upstart, struggling national cable network, but nevertheless a national cable network.

But this was back in the day when it took a week to clear the streets of New York City. It's not like now where the salt snow machines are out and you're back in business. So I went to be a guest, as you recall, for a three, five minute segment. But then they said, can you sit here and talk to Bob Longer? Our next guest hasn't arrived. Okay, I'm on another segment. Producer comes back. TJ can you stay another segment. Our next guest hasn't arrived because of the snow. Next thing you know, I'm on the air with you for about five hours talking about snow. Now, the network went out of business shortly thereafter. I don't know if it's cause and effect, but.

It was, you know, we got to where every possible story from our childhoods involving cold weather or snowmen or Christmas this year or that or Santa Claus or a mill. We were riffing out for hour after hour on live television because the entire guest flow had shut down. No one was getting to the studio and we just had to fill.

And I was the best guest in the world available because I was the only guest. And sometimes you take whatever advantage you have and go with it. Not that that ended up in a plum job for me from that particular gig. Now that was owned by Gannett. You've worked with a lot of large media companies, small media companies. You've worked for people who were with the Sally Jesse Raphael show big shots. You've worked with Roger Ailes. I'll let you decide what you want to say, good or bad, about any of the top, best or worst bosses you've had in the media world.

Well, let's see.

And of course, people really want to hear about Roger since he's still in the news.

I mean, look, I worked for NBC in the mid-90s for the network called America's Talking, which had been started by Roger Ailes. There was this moment where talk shows, for those old enough to remember, in the early to mid-90s, there was this explosion of daytime talk shows on TV. You originally had Phil Donahue, then Oprah came along, then there were. Then maybe Sally Jesse Raphael was third. But before long, there was this explosion of a bunch of people like Ginny Jones and the.

Les Brown, Montel Williams. There was one year when there was like a dozen years.

And the name, the former Cincinnati mayor's name is eluding me. Jerry Springer. All of these shows came forward and then a lot of these cable executives thought, huh, these syndicated shows are getting so many eyeballs. Maybe we can. We want a little bit of this. Well, this action. Give us some of these eyeballs. We'll start some cable channels that are just like these shows, if not just like them, at least have some similarities to them. And we'll. And cable can participate in what is a broadcast syndicated phenomenon. So thus, I guess Roger Ailes was probably the. Maybe the idea came from somewhere else in NBC. But he was chosen at any rate, to be the president of this America's talking network, which was filled with a lot of shows that were, you know, I think, kind of misguided. There was a show called Pork, and it was an hour every day. I, well, remember it about overspend government overspending and the idea that you can fill an hour every day. I mean, sometimes there are anecdotes that really are, you know, worthy of, you know, investigation and news coverage. And some of them are shocking and can be mocked and ridiculed. Sure. But an hour every day of nothing but that subject matter is, well, it's just pretty much crazy. Speaking of crazy, but that's certainly. Which was nothing but a psychologist taking calls from viewers about their psychological issues, you know, without really knowing the people very much. That was probably one of the sounder concepts.

But the. But the show about pork certainly foreshadowed the Fox News Channel because you certainly would have never seen a show like that on CNN or abc. It was a show specifically to appeal to conservatives who believe that government is bad, government is wasteful, and the show might not have been perfect, but in some ways, that's almost the origins of the Fox News Channel, isn't it?

You could make an argument that, at least in the sense of let's bring a skepticism about government as a television recurring TV show theme or something. Yeah, I mean the fact that cable TV time will be devoted to government ways to, you know, there's a connection. I guess so. Yeah. So that was the network I worked in. My show was called R and R with Roger Rose, which was like the late night show. Supposed to be sort of the show with entertainers and we had, you know, actors and stand up comedians booked and stuff like this. But it was extremely low budget. We basically just had, you know, a host and a studio and our, you know, the goal was just to have people come in who are hopefully interesting enough, they could sit there and do an interview and we would somehow compete with the big, you know, we'd be competing with Letterman and Leno and all the big budget late night talk shows that had much better a list talent and had big bands and big promotional budgets and all this other stuff and not to mention carriage that we didn't have. So it was kind of moribund from the start, you might say. But yeah, that was my, my role was to produce that show. And it was just tough. I think it was. I mean it's not surprising that whole network folded. I mean it folded because of some of these things we're talking about. I think it was not. A lot of the shows weren't logically conceived. They didn't grow and develop over time. They were just sort of all created out of the blue and. And so it wasn't like a tried and true concept that had been expanded.

Lots of things fold, surprises end up thriving. You mentioned Jerry Springer a moment ago. Here's someone who, when he started his show, it was that year when they had like eight or ten new talk shows. Jenny Jones, Montel, all these people. Jerry Springer was considered in some ways kind of the bottom of the barrel. Plus at that point he was doing sort of highbrow public policy. People forget that his first year he was doing more like Phil Donahue. Highbrow public policy issues. In some ways he defies all convention because as you mentioned earlier, you should follow your passion, speak out on what you're interested in. Jerry Springer has famously said on numerous occasions his own show doesn't interest him. He's never watched it. It's not the sort of show he would watch. And yet hundreds of millions, maybe a billion dollars later for the company, quarter century later, his show is still going. Almost all of those others have been canceled. Why is that?

Well, I think he's a minor part of the show. His security guard, Steve Wilkos can step in and host the show. Host his own show, which has the same format and it does as well as the Jerry Springer Show. I think in a lot of ways he is. He's kind of there, but people aren't really tuning in for him as much. I think they're tuning in for the. We'll call them guests.

That's a very odd. I mean, you could make the case traditionally that, you know, Leno, Letterman, in some ways it's about the guest. But those hosts assert themselves. People tune into Bill O'Reilly not just because of the guest, although they're a famous guest. They want that flavor of the host on the top issues of the day. Springer does seem to be an anomaly that way, doesn't he?

Yeah, I mean, quite frankly, I'm not. Is it still on?

Oh, yes, it is on.

I haven't seen the. I'm not embarrassed to say I haven't seen the.

That's one of the few things you don't have to be embarrassed for in life is saying you're not aware that the Springer show is still on.

Yeah, I. Yes, it's right. So Gary Johnson didn't know Aleppo, but I don't know whether the Jerry Perner show is still on.

You're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. If you like the program, please subscribe. If you don't like it, subscribe. Please leave a review, share it on Facebook and tell your friends about it. Also, take a moment to thank Bob Bowden for being our guest today. You can just thank him on Twitter oyce MediaTV. You can find him there on Twitter or just go to his website, choicemedia tv. Bob, when you look at the modern media landscape, who do you think is really the future? Is it Glenn Beck? People scoffed at him leaving Fox and starting his own totally digital empire. It seems to be thriving. Many others, from Sarah Palin to Herman Cain to Ron Paul have tried that. You don't hear much about it. Is it the podcasters like the Tim Ferrisses of the world who have some 60 million downloads? Is it going to be Donald Trump in cahoots with Roger Ailes for Trump TV online? Who is it that you think really represents the future of the media?

I mean, I think almost overnight we're going to see a lot of the traditional network structures disappear. Really, all that has to happen is we basically have to have the same shows that are on television networks today that have to soon all get offered a la itunes style as an individual on demand show. It hasn't quite happened yet. It seems to me it is seconds away that Any day we could look up and find out that the entire Tonight show is available as a micropayment download. And so you just have to pay however much it is, and probably $0.10 or $0.30 or whatever the amount is, and you can get that show in its entirety instead of having cable you can get.

And right now you can get segments. But is it still the case that you can't get all of it?

There are parts of things you can pay to get, sports programs, for example, by joining the Major League Baseball or the NFL Download, you have to kind of pay for the whole seasons and stuff like that. I think that will emerge and become even more flexible to the viewer, so the viewers will have more control and more on an on demand basis for any piece of content, whether it's a movie, whether it's a TV show. It will soon be like as if everything is a podcast or a YouTube video, with the top possible exception that some require micropayments and some are advertising supported, advertiser supported. But this idea of bundling up into cable networks all of the own channel, or all of the Comedy Central channel or all of the A and E or Bravo or all these different channels, that there's some sort of package thing that you have to buy the whole thing or you have to buy cable, I think that is just in the cusp of disappearing. And it's going to happen really quickly. And it might be a good time to short those cable stocks because very soon it's just going to be producers of content selling direct with no middleman to the viewers. And the viewers will pay for it a la carte. So that's like a big. I think that's kind of going to be a big thing. And the people that are well poised to take advantage of that are those who are like you're doing right now, tj, people who are already creating their own content and already going straight to the viewers or listeners.

So look into your crystal ball ten years from now, when you look at the Old man show, Adam Carolla sort of initially went nowhere. Jimmy Kimmel got the late night broadcast show. Everyone thought he was the big winner. Adam Carolla now has not just a podcast show, but a whole network 10 years from now. Is it even possible that Adam Carolla has a bigger footprint, makes more money, reaches more people? Where do you see that going?

I mean, sure, it's really just based on the talent and the money will flow to where the viewers and listeners are, and then those people will have bigger production budgets. They can add more shows to their portfolio or they can make their shows higher production values. An audio podcast that Corolla does doesn't require a lot of money for production values to be good. And so, yeah, I think it's going to be. It's cliche to say content is king, but it'll be even more king in the sense that, right, these gatekeepers will even to an even greater degree, recess into the background and, you know, and people talking straight to viewers will, you know, it's going to get easier. It gets easier and easier to create content, but it will, I think, will also therefore get harder and harder to monetize it because you'll have more people doing it and the more people that do it, the more distributed and segmented the eyeballs and ears are. So therefore harder to monetize.

It's harder to stand out. I mean, I know just my own self giving commentaries after, say, for example, the 2008 political debates, Obama against McCain or Sarah Palin, just doing a simple talking head analysis right after the debate. I could post that on YouTube. Boom, 8, 10,000 views. And doing that this year, quite often a small fraction of that because there is a lot more competition and people doing it with more showmanship and special effects and bigger guests. So it can be harder and it can be easier to fail if your goal is big audience or big money. Speaking of failure, one of the most popular segments on this show is when our guests talk about their worst TV or radio talk show appearance or their worst speech. People love it when I talk about getting booed off stages, kicked. In fact, it was the old news talk television network where Bob Dornan was screaming at me, saying, you're a homosexual, you're a homosexual. Which back then, to him at least, that was the ultimate in attacks. I've fallen off stages. I've had guns pulled on me on the radio by host. Tell us about, if you can, your worst either media appearance or perhaps anchoring or your worst speech.

Well, one of the worst moments I think was, and I know it was in my head at the time. I'll just tell the story though. I was anchoring at Bloomberg Television and it was going to be an hour of live tv. We have certain reporters we go to who are live at the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq marketplace or there's an interview that's remote here or there. Some of the guests come in studio, et cetera. So this one particular guest, the producer came and warned me, this particular guy can be kind of caustic, kind of Tough. He can be kind of tough on hosts. He's sort of like that. He can be a little bit of a jerk. You need to be kind of aware of this. I'm like, ah, fine, please, come on. I'll just laugh it off. Whatever he says, who cares? So that was my approach. So I go and I prepare my interview as usual. The guy shows up and I said something about this company and its earnings report from either that morning or the afternoon before. And he corrected me and said, no, that's not what it was. They didn't say this many cents per share. They said some other number of cents per share. And I said, okay. Well I said the data that I have is like, well, that's wrong. Like he got very assertive about how wrong I was and was this in.

The tone of Jane, you ignorant self?

A little bit. He's just like, no, you're wrong about that. Like he was. But I'm just, at the time, I'm like, you know, I'm just not going to create a big problem. I'm just going to move on. And the fact is we were talking about I was correct and we were citing different numbers is what it was. And he was basically, you know, there are different ways to quote earnings. You can quote earnings that eliminate certain expenses that are not considered ongoing expenses.

EBITDA and earnings per share and pre tax.

There are those kinds of different metrics too. That's right. But in terms of even just earnings per share, you can cite them as the raw numbers, so to speak, or you can cite them after eliminating what are considered one time costs, that analysts shouldn't be distracted by one time costs since they're more focused on the future than the past. So this was the distinction between the numbers I cited. It's not important between his numbers and my numbers. It was based on that. And what I said technically was not wrong, but he said it on the air that I was wrong and he corrected me. Well, I didn't care to actually get into that distinction or look it up. I just moved on and kind of laughed it off. Like I played planned. Well, what happened was one of the executives at Bloomberg was watching this and just walked away with this impression that I had been corrected on the air because I was, I'd messed up. I had just given the wrong number that I was just. And before I knew it, there were, you know, several. I was, I got feedback from several executives basically lambasing me for being so poorly prepared and for being so, you know, and basically it was a It was an unfortunate sort of snowball that got out of my control of people saying that I had screwed up and it was really not true. But if I had defended myself more assertively, which I could have done, I had just made the decision in advance of the show to laugh off anything this caustic guy was going to say, I could have defended myself and have avoided that entire problem. But instead, I basically got humiliated by this internal narrative that I had screwed up this interview and gotten corrected sternly on the air and made the network look bad. So I kind of walked away with that impression. Never let that happen again. If someone ever corrects me on the air and they are either wrong or they are citing, or they're citing something different, or there's some distinction that could be clarified, I need to go ahead and do that and not just leave it out there that I'd messed up. Because what do you do, though, if.

You'Re not 100% convinced? I mean, if you've done your homework, you've read a bunch of facts and some things stick, but you don't have it right in front of you. Is this one of those facts where you were 100% certain or you were like 90% certain? I got this was right.

I was 90% sure. That's part of why, I guess I didn't want to do a deep dive. But the fact is I should have anyway. I would have looked better anyway. Even if I had done the deep dive and then said our. And then it would have looked like I was at least being, you know, adding enough value that I wanted to clarify and get everything right. I think that would. Whereas what happened the way it looked. What happened was it looked as if I was just sort of sloppy, which is, I think, worse than if you're corrected on something and you. And you then want to aggressively clarify the information, and even if you're still proven wrong, then you do a mea culpa. And I think it's perceived that you're being thorough.

That does bring up the question of how much do you push back against guests when they're either correcting you or they're just saying things that are flat out wrong. Specifically, in the last week, there's been so much controversy generated from Matt Lauer's interview with Donald Trump for not correcting him on the issue of Trump asserting that he had never supported the Iraq war. Do you think. How would you have done that if you're Matt? It just seems to me that. But let me just finish. Let me just Finish just seems to me like question like Donald Trump, where so many independent experts will analyze any five minutes of what he says and say here's 95 factual errors. It just seems like a no win situation, everybody reporter because if you're correcting him every time you're instantly castigated as some left wing Democratic hack.

I think if you have the level of preparation to say here is the video clip of you Saying the opposite, Mr. Trump, we're going to play that now and then have you respond. I think if you have that, then you do it. Or if you have a quote on a piece of paper with the date and time and the program that he set it on, you read the quote exactly. I think if you have to say, well wait a minute, didn't you say something contrary to that? But I'm not sure when and on what program, then that's probably not enough to challenge any political candidate. You probably need to be, I mean, that's a highly rarefied moment too when you're dealing with major party nominees for President of the United States. That's a specific kind of situation. I think if you're going to say they are contradicting themselves, you need to be absolutely clear. Otherwise, I think it does. You are open to attacks of partisanship that are valid. If you can't kind of fish around for those kinds of things, it just sounds like you don't like them. You need to be, I think, absolutely clear with what they said. That was different.

Well, what do you do if you're interviewing someone and you really don't like them? Certainly that must have happened to you before. I know it's happened to me. Not today, of course, but it has, it has happened. How do you mask that and is that fake or phony?

Sometimes it comes through anyway. I gotta tell you, even when you're not sure, even when you're not, you don't even realize it. In other words, it's, you know, I've looked at footage of myself working with certain people who we were both on the staves of programs and, and I kind of chuckle to myself when I watch some old footage because I can re feel my old anxieties and animosities emerge as I look at old clips. You know, I think you can just stick to. You can probably keep things as brief as possible. When, if you don't like the person, you can probably keep things to as objective and least subjective as possible. If you don't like the other person, you can, you know, a lot of times in the case in my own case, I would just notice. I would not look at the person like I would look at footage of myself, somebody I was on the air with, on TV with.

You know, you're giving them the Dennis Miller shake.

Yeah. Well, at least their arm, their hand wasn't hanging out in the air, you know, waiting for me to shake it, but.

Well, that's good. The website is choicemedia tv. You can thank Bob for appearing on the show by going to Twitter hoicemediatv. He's on Instagram. You see him everywhere. Keep your eyes open for him on various major news networks, at the movie theaters and on your cell phone. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me, Bob. Thanks for being a great guest today.

You bet.

Thanks for listening to speaking with TJ Walker, where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.