Former Viacom Boss on Dave Chappelle, Netflix and Podcasting From His Closet

Doug Herzog once ran Comedy Central. And MTV. And Spike.

Since leaving his corner office in 2017, he’s parlayed his nearly four decades of television experience and integral roles in the launches of The Daily Show, The Real World and South Park into consulting and advisory gigs, board work and some executive coaching. Or, as he puts it, “busy staying busy.” Then he decided to step up to the mic.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

• Next 'South Park' Made-for-TV Film Dropping in July on Paramount+

• Late Night Hosts React to "Incomprehensible" Overturning of Roe v. Wade

• Mike Judge Details Pre-Lockdown Lunch That Led to Deal for 'Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe'

This spring, Herzog and New York Magazine‘s pop culture critic Jen Chaney launched Basic!, a SiriusXM podcast that explores the unofficial history of (basic) cable TV. Forty-eight episodes were ordered, with guests including Jimmy Kimmel, Amy Schumer, Bryan Cranston and Ben Stiller recalling the glory days of cable. Several others, including Dave Chappelle and Jon Stewart, still sit high on Herzog’s wish list.

Over Zoom in late June, Herzog opened up about his second act, the move that still rankles him and the untapped opportunities he sees in the TV market today.

I’d like to start the way you do on the podcast: Do you remember when you first got cable?

The truth is I worked in cable, I moved out to Los Angeles to work for CNN when it launched, and I didn’t have cable. My neighborhood in L.A. wasn’t wired for it, but my dad lived in Orange County, so I’d go down on the weekends and smoke pot and stay up all night watching MTV. When I got the MTV job a few years later, I moved back to New York and that was the first time I had cable. That was 1984.

And now, after a long career in the cable business, you’re doing a podcast about it. Was this an idea you’d been kicking around for a while?

Not at all. I started advising for a small company called Pantheon Podcasts, which predominantly does music podcasts. Pretty quickly, they were like, “Doug, you should do a podcast,” because I was always dropping MTV anecdotes, but I said, “Nah,” because I felt like the last thing the world needs is another old white guy doing a music podcast. Then somehow, we started talking about doing an MTV podcast, this was last summer and it was the 40th anniversary of MTV, but we couldn’t quite pull it together fast enough. And, as it turned out, nobody really cared about the 40th, and the MTV thing was too narrow. Then one day I woke up and was like, “What if it was about just cable television?” I haven’t read that book or heard that podcast, and I felt like there’s a story to be told. There’s a beginning, there’s a middle and there’s probably about to be an end. And basic cable has always had a chip on its shoulder, right?

Without question …

It was never HBO or Showtime, it was always the cheesier, cheaper stuff and then it finally started to get some respect with the advent of the premium scripted stuff [like Mad Men] but before it could really enjoy its day in the sun, its lunch started getting eaten by the streamers. And as I look around the landscape, I go, “Wow, radio is still here, with some help from podcasts, movies are still here, broadcast television is still here, but I think, over time, cable’s actually going away,” at least cable as we knew it, and it is sort of amazing to me. So, that’s a reason to tell the story and, for me, it’s something I had a front-row seat to and felt like I could talk about comfortably.

What did you want to say about the cable business?

Well, cable birthed reality television and 24-hour news, two of the major cultural signposts of this generation. It really revolutionized TV and television viewing — how we make TV and how we watch it. I just feel like it’s been this incredibly influential platform that doesn’t get any credit or goes sort of ignored, particularly in an era where all people could do is write about streamers. And look, I’m a lifelong underdog guy, and I always had a chip on my shoulder about being a cable guy. At least for most of my career, I was not a network guy or an HBO guy.

You did a stint at Fox. That was, what, two years?

Fifteen months. I think I set the land speed record for a broadcast television presidency. (Laughs.) But, honestly, I feel like there’s a book in here somewhere that’s a little more serious about the business history of cable. I’d love to interview Ted Turner — unfortunately, Ted’s not in great shape — and John Malone, the people who were there at the beginning, really building the foundation of what became cable television beyond the programming of the shows and some of the fun stuff that we’re talking about on the podcast.

I suspect your partners are more interested in the big stars like Jimmy Kimmel and Amy Schumer coming on …

In a perfect world, they’re looking for bigger names and entertainment-oriented versus news of information but I’ve interviewed [FX chairman] John Landgraf, and I just did Jon Murray, who co-created The Real World, and Gale Anne Hurd, who produced The Walking Dead, and we’ll see how those things do with the general public. They’re great conversations. But like I said, there’s a real story to tell, and I figured somebody’s going to tell it, why don’t I see if I can’t get there first and get this thing started.

Had you thought about stepping up to a mic at any point in your executive career?

Never. I mean, people always say to me, “What’s the thing you’re most proud of? Was it, like, The Daily Show? South Park?” And I always say it was my college radio show because I did it all on my own. I started a reggae show on my college radio station [at Emerson] in the ’70s, and it ended up becoming the most popular show on the station and it ran every day for 35 years. I was always enormously proud of that because I did it by myself. I can’t take credit for South Park — it’s a village, right? But I loved being a DJ. And sure, was there a part of me in the late ’70s, early ’80s that thought it would’ve been cool to be David Letterman? Of course, but I wasn’t going to be.

Talk to me about booking. Is it simply a matter of you calling and saying, “Hey, remember me? The guy who gave you your big break …”

That’s exactly what it is. And let me tell you something, it’s humiliating. As the artist formerly known as Doug Herzog, I’m now cold-calling publicists going, “Yeah, that’s Herzog. No, no T.” That being said, I did initially jump on the phone with a bunch of people who I’ve known like Jimmy Kimmel, who I met in the ’90s and stayed in touch with, and Ben Stiller. And Amy Schumer, God bless her, I haven’t seen Amy since she left the [Viacom] building, which was before I left the building, and I called her out of the blue, she picked up the phone, and she couldn’t have said yes faster and we did it. Now, I have to say, sometimes I feel as I’m making these requests, I can sort of hear their eyes rolling but they’re either too mortified to say no, or they go, “You know, Doug seemed to be a good guy back then.” But they’ve ordered 48 episodes, and we’ve recorded about half of them and I’m running out of favors. I’ve still got a couple to follow up on, like the South Park guys and Jon Stewart, who I’m saving for the back end. I thought it might get a little easier once the show went up, but, let’s put it this way, there’s a lot of podcasts out there. (Laughs.) And for a guy who used to have corner offices in both New York and L.A. and now works out a closet in his home, it’s been a humbling experience.

Who’s still on the wish list?

I don’t think it’s going to happen for various reasons, and it’s certainly not going to happen any time soon, but [scandal-plagued WWE boss] Vince McMahon is one because wrestling and basic cable are inextricably linked, they almost couldn’t exist without each other to a certain degree. I’d also love to talk to Oprah, who started her own network and was involved in starting Oxygen, and RuPaul, who I just think is a fascinating, important figure. Who else? Jon Hamm because I have to figure out a way to tell the Mad Men story. I’ve made a list of shows and networks and what I call milestone moments, and I want to get through them all. Like, people always talk about the Gulf War as being a moment for CNN, and it was, but the first real moment was baby Jessica falling down the well. I talked about that at length with [guest] Lisa Napoli, who wrote the book on CNN [Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN and the Birth of 24-Hour News.] I want to do the Gulf War, too, and I’ve been trying to get Christiane Amanpour, but I think it’s going to be difficult — I may have a shot at Wolf Blitzer. And then I don’t think it’s ever going to happen, but Dave Chappelle would be great, although we did talk to Neal Brennan [the co-creator of Chappelle’s Show]. The list goes on and I’m really trying to balance it in a lot of different ways but mostly make sure I cover the spectrum because that’s what cable was all about: choice. And now I feel like that’s something that’s missing from the landscape.

How so?

When you look at the streamers, my bad analogy right now is Netflix, Amazon, Disney, HBO Max, that’s NBC, ABC, CBS. They are the broad guys that are trying to do everything for everybody and they’re pretty hard to navigate, to find that thing that you’re looking for. So, like, where do I go for sports? Where do I go for comedy? Where do I go for music? Where do I go for docs? That was the cable thing, and I feel like that’s missing from the landscape right now in terms of the streamers. So, maybe that comes back around. We’ll see …

You said earlier that cable had a beginning, middle and soon will have an end. How would you be managing a group of cable networks if you were still in the job today?

Back in my day, I feel like the networks ignored cable at what turned out to be their peril — they turned their nose up at it. I think the streamers are different and, in some ways, smarter and also have the wherewithal, if they want, to do it themselves. Disney’s already kind of doing it with Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar. Netflix, which has spent a lot of money and time on comedy, could certainly figure out how to take that to the next iteration, if they wanted, with Netflix Is A Joke and really carve out a comedy vertical. As a consumer, I really miss that. I miss knowing where to go to get sports. I used to know where to get news or premium movies or my comedy in a cable universe. So, it just feels like something that has the opportunity to come back and I feel like that’s where the opportunities are, both for programmers and for content creators going forward. But again, that’s now an amateur’s view.

But it’s not, you have several decades of experience catering to viewers.

Sure, and I think curation is important. And the brand thing, meaning a Comedy Central show or a Lifetime show or a Bravo show, which once meant something, has kind of disappeared. And I understand that they’re still out there making money on the cable spectrum, but that’s a platform that’s now mostly about older people. My kids, who are now all in their 20s, are never going to pay a cable bill. They never have, and they never will. It’s all streaming. So, what’s the next Comedy Central? Growing up, for me, the comedy brands were Mad magazine, National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, then it was Comedy Central and then all these other folks started and it was, like, “Oh, is it going to be Funny or Die or The Onion?” and they didn’t make it right. And with all due respect, Comedy Central is still here, but I don’t think anybody would say it’s the Comedy Central it was five or six years ago. So, what’s the next home base for comedy, and on what platform? That’s an opportunity for somebody — as it is for all the categories.

Do you have a sense for what a “Netflix show” is, and does that matter?

I mean, it’s a powerful brand. When I was leaving Viacom, I remember we were doing Netflix research with our audience at MTV and Comedy Central, essentially young people, and it was the number one brand. And it used to just blow my socks off because I was like, “What’s the brand? What does it mean?” And it meant “Netflix and chill,” that place you go when you come home and you turn it on and hang out. But if you asked me what a hit looks like in 2022, I don’t know the answer. And as a programmer, that would be hard. The last two conversations I’ve had about shows I’m watching, the people I’ve been talking to have been watching a completely different set of shows and, by the way, a couple of them I’d never even heard of. Game of Thrones really feels like the last show that punctured pop culture.

When you look back at your tenure, what stands out as the high and low points?

Look, you’re talking to one of the most fortunate people you’ll ever meet, I got to do what I loved. I loved music, which is why I wanted to be at MTV, and to be at MTV during that era, with all these great people who are now my lifelong friends, was as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. And then I went to Comedy Central and got the opportunity to build it in my own image, and that was also amazing. I mean, stumbling into Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker, of South Park,] and then creating The Daily Show with Madeleine [Smithberg] and Lizz [Winstead], who I also interviewed for this [podcast,] was a dream come true and just super fun. Fox, a little less so, but then I came back to Viacom and had an amazing time at Comedy Central and Spike TV and TV Land and even MTV and VH1 before it was all done. Would I have liked it to have lasted a little longer? Yes. Do I have any regrets? No. It was a great ride.

If you could go back and do it all over again, any decisions you’d do differently?

God, yes. (Laughs.)

Give me one.

Well, the one I think about the most is Chappelle. [His mid-aughts sketch show was a massive hit that ended abruptly when its star quit and fled to Africa.] Like, was there a way to thread the needle on that differently somehow? I think I could have probably done some things differently. I think Comedy Central could have probably done some things differently. Certainly Dave could have, but I can’t control that. I just always wonder, was there a different way out? And I’ve seen Dave a lot recently — we didn’t speak for many years — or we didn’t see each other for years, I don’t even know if we weren’t speaking — but then I ran into him again six or seven years ago and, actually, I’ve seen him two or three times this year, believe it or not. And he’s super gracious and warm when I see him now. It certainly seems like he’s moved on with me; if not, he’s a great actor. But I often wonder, like, “Was there a different way?” And maybe there wasn’t, it was a crazy time.

You mentioned you booked his co-creator Neal Brennan on an upcoming episode of the podcast. Presumably you got into all of this with him?

Oh yeah. And by the way, he had some bones to pick with me. He’s really honest. It’s a good interview.

I’d love to end with the last question you ask on the podcast: What’s your all-time favorite basic cable show (that has nothing to do with you)? 

Others have said it on the podcast, but it’s mine, too: Inside the NBA on TNT. I’ve seen those guys over the years and I’ve said to them, “When you’re on the air during the playoffs, you have the funniest late night show on cable television — and that includes The Daily Show,” and I really do believe that.

Interview edited for length and clarity. 

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

• Pain, Porn and a Wannabe Clown: A 'Jackass' Oral History

• Chris Noth Accused of Sexual Assault by Two Women

• Brian Cox Talks 'Succession' Season 3 Finale Twist and How the Show Stays Unpredictable

Click here to read the full article.