Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Wed, 07 May 2025
Many of us have heard the expression “doing good is good for business.” In this episode, Simon Kingston sits down with former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy about how he put this concept into practice on a truly global scale. Bill takes us on his journey of how he redefined broadcast television, launching the most channels in television history with more than 200 global channels and 20 brands, including MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and numerous others. He discusses how and why he started MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, Suga, and other social responsibility initiatives to realize the ethos of “doing good is good for business.” And Bill shares his journey from West Point to MTV to GAVI and beyond. We'll also hear from Andrew White, a leadership advisor who specializes in executive assessment and development, who will discuss why curiosity and adaptability are essential leadership traits in today's business environment. Four things you’ll learn from this episode: Why doing good is good for business and how to achieve it at scale How to navigate the various challenges when launching a media startup How to deal with uncertainty and risk to realize global growth How to adapt a business background to serve in global non-profits and NGOs If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like these Redefiners episodes:Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis Leadership Lounge: Boardroom Bound: How to Navigate Your Journey from Executive to Board Director Action Creates Hope: A Conversation with IRC President and CEO David Miliband Leadership Lounge: How to develop your personal leadership brand The Business of Football with Los Angeles Rams COO Kevin Demoff Leadership Lounge: Advice on when—and how—to weigh in on social issues
Chapter 1: Who is Bill Roedy and what are his achievements?
He's also somebody I've had the privilege of getting to know as a client and as a guide over a number of years, and I have immense respect for what he's achieved in the course of his career. It's a real pleasure to welcome Bill Rohde to Redefine Us today. He's the former chair and CEO of MTV International.
Bill launched the greatest number of channels in television history, and he built a global operation of 200 channels and 20 brands, including household names like MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central. And that's just scratching the surface. He founded and chaired MTV's Staying Alive Foundation, the longest multimedia campaign to fight the AIDS epidemic.
And expanding on that work in the fight against HIV and AIDS, he was appointed the first ambassador of UNAIDS, and he was a founding member and chair of the Global Business Coalition on HIV-AIDS. He was also appointed the founding chair of the Global Media AIDS Initiative.
He served as chair of AMFAR and was appointed the first envoy for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI, which took him into a whole range of additional global public health challenges. And he was the vice chair there for a number of years, critical years, which we'll touch on in the course of the conversation.
So unsurprisingly, this is a man who has been garlanded with a host of different accolades. He's won the Emmy Founders Award. He's won Amphar's Award of Courage. He was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. He was the UN Global Citizen of the Year. And particularly important on this side of the Atlantic, he last year won the Winston Churchill Leadership Medal. Bill, welcome to Redefine Us.
Thank you, Simon. Some of that's actually true. And it's exhausting just to read it. To have lived it is amazing. Let's begin, as they say, at the beginning. The principle of public service, and in particular of military service, didn't start in your family with you.
Tell us a little bit about the influence of your father's decorated military career on you, and indeed the influence, no doubt in a different way, of your mother's. in the formation of your character and the values that have obviously run as a seam through your career?
Well, I came from a single mom, actually. My mother and father divorced when I was quite young. My father went to West Point, as you mentioned, and he did survive the attack in Pearl Harbor. And he served 33 years in the Army. They evacuated right after the attack. The family did. He stayed there. So they were separated for the next couple of years until the war ended.
But he didn't, even though we didn't live together with my father, he did have a tremendous influence on me, particularly going to West Point. But growing up, it has to be all about my mom. And the reason is those who've had single moms know how difficult that is. It was difficult just making ends meet, really. So I watched her in a parallel or in a set of jobs.
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Chapter 2: How did Bill Roedy's military background influence his leadership at MTV?
Certainly the honor code had a big influence on me. Cadet does not lie, cheat or steal. And it's drilled into you so much that that honor code set the, I don't know, the stage for me to try and adhere to principles of value and integrity going forward. And, you know, it's not always easy to do that when you get in the cutthroat world of business. But it's what I try to adhere to.
And so West Point was a very, very important pivot for me and a very important learning lesson for me. And by the way, I was a terrible cadet.
And what about the experience of being in combat in a conflict situation?
Well, this was an unusual situation because people were actually not wanting to go to Vietnam, people in the service, the military. It was a very unpopular war. I felt that, number one, West Point was given to me really as a huge privilege. So the lesson of marching to the sound of cannons, as they say, was paramount in my mind. And so I wanted to go.
I volunteered when it wasn't necessarily fashionable to volunteer. And it taught me a lot. It put things later in life in proper context as it relates to, you know, how dangerous situations can be and staying calm. I I ended up loving the culture, loving the Vietnamese people. I've been back many, many times since. I started a business in Vietnam. I started MTV in Vietnam.
So I left feeling a very, very strong affection for the country. But it wasn't an easy experience because it wasn't supported by the American public. So coming home was a bit of a shock. It's completely different now when you come home from different wars, unfortunately, to the United States. The first thing that's said to you is thank you for your service.
That was not the experience I had in Vietnam. So it was a bit difficult. Keeping the morale up with the troops was a big, big challenge. But for me... It was a, uh, you know, you can't say it was a good experience. Of course, war is never a good experience, but for me, it was a very, very deep emotional learning experience.
And the transition from that, I mean, two points of transition, as you say, the return to a society that was not necessarily welcoming and the decision to move into a business sector that in some ways, and this is a glib observation, but it's almost as opposed culturally to to the military on the face of it, as you can imagine, the kind of the culture of media and of rock music.
I mean, it's quite a long way from the discipline of West Point, isn't it? Tell us a bit about those two transitions, because they must have been formative.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Bill Roedy face in establishing MTV Europe?
It took a while, I must say, because again, it didn't match what was happening with rock and roll and music around the world. But then, and I was too stupid to really realize that I was using these principles in the military. to grow the business, the global business. But then as I got to know the artist a bit, I found that it was worthy of some, well, I don't know, weird credibility.
Michael Stipe's father served in the service, for example, from REM. Wycliffe's father was in the service also. So I was able to develop some even closer relationships because of this respect, I suppose, for the military and discipline. Now, it is a challenge, it's no secret, to transition from the private sector, I mean, from the public sector, in this case, the military, to the private sector.
And it takes a certain, oh, I don't know, empathy and set of experiences to manage a creative operation. So that was all a challenge and it didn't come overnight. I had to learn it. Now, Harvard Business School did help me on the business side. I had no idea what a logo was. I had no idea what a P&L was. I thought it was some... outdoor latrine or something. So I had to learn from scratch.
And that was a very important transition for me, that experience at Harvard Business School. Not even sure how I got in, but I got in. And it helped me there with the business principles match with my military discipline to go forward.
So the link between HBO and HBS may be stronger than people... realize if we, if we pick up the narrative, I mean, you, you then go and you lead MTV Europe, which is.
in a sense, commercially a startup at the point in which you take over, but also at a moment of extraordinary change, particularly in Eastern Europe, where all manner of people, not just the usual competitors, must have opposed the idea of everything MTV represented in terms of Western values or the absence of them, as some of them might have thought.
Tell us a little bit about that experience and how you approached that as a leadership challenge.
Well, that's very interesting because I guess I suppose I was the non-American American in that I didn't hire very many American employees, which irritated my colleagues back in the States immensely. But I wanted to truly reflect local cultures. And to do that, you had to hire local people, of course.
And I was so fanatic, and I shouldn't say I, it's we, because we became a team very quickly, growing from six to 15 to ultimately 6,000 people. We felt so strongly about reflecting local culture and truly respecting local culture. And at the time, that was a very unusual concept.
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Chapter 4: How did MTV contribute to cultural shifts in Eastern Europe?
And in the very particular context of the late 80s and early 90s in Eastern Europe, you were right at the forefront of an extraordinary upheaval.
You know, I'm a big believer in taking advantage of the opportunity and that was an opportunity. So I first came over in late 88, but I really didn't start with MTV Europe until January of 89. And sure enough, countries started changing. Now, I like to say we played a role in it, but I never want to take ourselves too seriously at MTV. But for example...
One of the first decisions in January of 89 was to go on to a brand new satellite that had K-band technology. What's that mean? Before, in order to receive a single from a satellite, you only had C-band and you needed a three and a half meter dish.
Suddenly, in January of 1989, with KBED and Mr. Murdoch was one of the first to jump on this with Sky Television, you had the ability to receive the single with a 60 centimeter disc. So we jumped on that. It was a big investment. I had a lot of pushback because it was $10 million per transponder. Each satellite has transponders. The other decision that we made, however, was to put it in a clear.
What does that mean? Most channels are encrypted in order to have a subscription revenue. We decided, no, we wanted as much distribution as possible. And by the way, I learned a little bit of this with HBO, that access and distribution was really key to the success of any rollout of a new product.
So by doing that, suddenly people behind the Iron Curtain could buy a 60 centimeter dish, or if they didn't have the money, which was often the case, they'd contact their relatives in the U.S. for $900 and get a dish. It was unencrypted. So suddenly... you had access to Western programming that they've never experienced before. And it was not only the music, it was the commercials.
And we were told, and I modestly believe, that by having that exposure to this whole different form of programming, it energized an audience. Now, it didn't bring the wall down, obviously, although I was in Berlin in the East on November 9th. And so there's a lot of history there with that. But we were told we brought the wall down. It was just, you know, one piece of the puzzle, I suppose.
It was technology, innovation, a little bit like Arab Spring, by the way, you know, with Twitter and Facebook that encouraged change. And the other thing is we were programming the young people and young people. are more prone to a bit of irreverence, rebellion, and change to begin with. So we rode that wave in 1989 with all the countries.
And we made it a mission to make sure that we were distributed in these countries. And it culminated on November 9th. It was a Thursday. I'll never forget it because I was there in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Chapter 5: Why is innovation crucial in business leadership according to Bill Roedy?
The other obvious thing to ask you about in that phase of your career is dealing with huge personalities, both on the business side and the artists with whom you've engaged. And you've proven since that those partnerships can be used for a whole variety of purposes. public goods as well as commercial ones.
But if you were offering advice to people dealing with big personalities, big egos, sometimes pretty volatile characters, what is it you'd say you learned? Is there a single recipe or is there a philosophy that you bring to managing those relationships?
Humility and empathy. You know, when I came to MTV after 10 years at HBO, I decided to go with three subtext personal objectives, if you will. You know, one is that I would never go on camera. And the other one is I would never be exec producers because I saw all these examples where people were CEOs had nothing to do with the program, but they called themselves exec producers.
And then the third thing is I would never become a groupie to the artists. So I must say, the one thing that I violated regularly was I became a groupie to the artist. And I decided I wanted to be on the front lines, you know, when we did events. The first thing I would do is greet the artist. I would go to the red carpet and greet them and make them feel welcomed and warm.
And I think that that sort of relationship and humility helped establish some sort of rapport with the artist. Now, with that being said... I had my difficulty. We had our difficulties. I had one artist who wouldn't perform unless we did an outdoor shower for them immediately. I had to do red jelly beans in the green room for one. I had one that refused. This was a very serious one.
to be the anchor slot on an AIDS concert in Cape Town because we had promised him a slot as the sun came down, sunset. And because his predecessor on the stage, Malisha Keys, was doing so well, she went past sunset. So he came to me and said, I'm not going on unless you yank her. And I said, no, I'm not. Well... Actually, I had to be a little more nuanced.
I said, let me take it under consideration because I was surrounded by bodyguards. And then I went on stage, saw the manager of Alicia Keys and said, you know, I've been asked to pour. And I just want you to know that we are not going to pull Alicia Keys from this stage. So sometimes I had to call the bluff of the artist. But more often than not, it was such a privilege.
to work for professional artists like U2 and REM, and there's just unlimited amounts. And I developed a huge respect for their creativity and just wanted to welcome them and show appreciation for them being part of MTV.
There's something almost biblical, Bill, about being asked to stop the sun going down. The Staying Alive Foundation, it was the beginning, as we've already touched on, of a series of aspects of your leadership in global public health, but more broadly in social impact. What was the genesis of that?
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Chapter 6: What lessons can be learned from managing big personalities in the media industry?
Chapter 7: Why are curiosity and adaptability essential traits for leaders today?
But the thing about MTV at the time was it was a phenomenon. There's no question. I felt like I was on a bucking bronco just trying to hold it. Hang on to the horse. But you never can rest on your laurels. So even though we had this amazing start and response, it was important to change the business model. So we changed the business model quite frequently.
When I was talking about being unencrypted, that only lasted a certain amount of time before we tapped out of what we call pan-European advertisers. And then we decided to go local. And that was a pivot because we narrowed our audience, but we were able to develop a revenue line of subscription. So that was an innovation. We went on digital, as you said.
We had mobile, you know, eventually content. We had gaming. And it was just important to continuously reinvent yourself in order to grow the business. It was ingrained into our DNA.
The other obvious thing to ask you about in that phase of your career is dealing with huge personalities, both on the business side and the artists with whom you've engaged. And you've proven since that those partnerships can be used for a whole variety of purposes. public goods as well as commercial ones.
But if you were offering advice to people dealing with big personalities, big egos, sometimes pretty volatile characters, what is it you'd say you learned? Is there a single recipe or is there a philosophy that you bring to managing those relationships?
Humility and empathy. You know, when I came to MTV after 10 years at HBO, I decided to go with three subtext personal objectives, if you will. You know, one is that I would never go on camera. And the other one is I would never be exec producers because I saw all these examples where people were CEOs had nothing to do with the program, but they called themselves exec producers.
And then the third thing is I would never become a groupie to the artists. So I must say, the one thing that I violated regularly was I became a groupie to the artist. And I decided I wanted to be on the front lines, you know, when we did events. The first thing I would do is greet the artist. I would go to the red carpet and greet them and make them feel welcomed and warm.
And I think that that sort of relationship and humility helped establish some sort of rapport with the artist. Now, with that being said... I had my difficulty. We had our difficulties. I had one artist who wouldn't perform unless we did an outdoor shower for them immediately. I had to do red jelly beans in the green room for one. I had one that refused. This was a very serious one.
to be the anchor slot on an AIDS concert in Cape Town because we had promised him a slot as the sun came down, sunset. And because his predecessor on the stage, Malisha Keys, was doing so well, she went past sunset. So he came to me and said, I'm not going on unless you yank her. And I said, no, I'm not. Well... Actually, I had to be a little more nuanced.
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