Posted on 02/10/2006 12:27:29 PM PST by voletti
Nearly 40 years ago, in a blue-collar Irish neighborhood in Scranton, Pa., Judy McGrath fell in love with music. As much as her father, Charles, tried to get his only child to listen to Duke Ellington on the family hi-fi, she preferred the Rolling Stones, and later, Neil Young. Her mother, Ann, read The Catcher in the Rye to her when she was seven and explained to Judy that the nuns at her Catholic grade school weren't always right: She could have an opinion, too. It was in this progressive environment in the McGraths' small house on Orchard Street that Judy began to imagine a life beyond Scranton, in New York. "It felt like a land far, far away," she recalls. "I'd never been to New York City until I came here looking for a job. It felt impossible, like there was a sense of a tribe, of people I wanted to be part of. So I had this idea that I could write about music. That would be the ideal job for me." She eventually set her sights on Rolling Stone, that pinnacle of pop culture in the late 1960s.
McGrath made it to New York, but never to her favorite magazine. Her life instead took a magical detour that led her to write on-air promotions for a new invention, music television. Twenty-five years later, at 53, she is chairman and CEO of MTV Networks Co. The $7 billion-a-year operation she oversees is a collection of some of the most recognizable brands in the business, from the original MTV to Nickelodeon to VH1 to Comedy Central. Their programs are seen in 169 countries and heard in 28 languages. Under her management are such youth icons as SpongeBob SquarePants, the South Park runts, and comedian Jon Stewart.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
What a boring article.
Yeah. Even I couldn't get myself to read half of it... The lib icon in trouble thing was more a hope than a declarationn...
That's all you need to know.
Her mother, Ann, read The Catcher in the Rye to her when she was seven and explained to Judy that the nuns at her Catholic grade school weren't always right...
And little Judy grew up to do more than 99% of the population in destroying traditional values and replacing them with things like atheism, gay marriage, feminism, multi-culturalism and socialism. We owe you quite a debt, Chuck and Ann.
Owl_Eagle(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Don't you have to be cool to stay cool?
I like MTV, when they played music. I have not watched them in years.
Ironic that she would become CEO of something that completely destroyed it.
Well put. (But she had plenty of help from the other 99%, including all too many with parents like Chuck and Ann.)
MTV... isn't that the channel that used to play music videos?
The only good thing MTV has had is Beavis and Butthead and Kennedy (The Republican VJ, not Ted).
MTV was cool when they played nothing but videos. Now it sucks. VH1, same thing. My sister-in-law has VH1 Classic via satellite. Last year we visited and I was blown away by the videos. It was 1982 all over again. It was really entertaining. Went back this year, and now VH1 Classic has dumped the videos in favor of bad programming.
I really don't want to see the music videos, considering the current crop of music sucks, but wouldn't mind watching a few hours of "Pimp My Ride." :^)
When was MTV anything but a lowest-common-denominator dorkfest?
The business world as written about by a bunch of communists!
I cancelled my subscription after about three issues!
can't "Stay" what they never were.
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