What does a media mogul do for a second act?
That's what ousted Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Tom Freston was trying to figure out Wednesday. The man who built MTV Networks into a global phenomenon began pondering his next move, not ready to retire with his millions at age 60.
Join NBC Universal? Take a seat on the board of News Corp.?
Team with an investment group on the prowl for a media target?
"I want to get back in," Freston said in his first interview since being fired Tuesday. "I'm open to anything."
He may have many opportunities. Close acquaintances and rivals say Freston, unlike many other media executives, isn't a man known for vindictive tantrums. His reputation as a benevolent manager with a finger on the pulse of the youth market could give him a powerful encore in an Internet era.
"Tom has built a larger reserve of goodwill than any businessperson I can think of," said Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine and a Freston friend. "Tom's second act will be bigger than his first."
But scores of media bigwigs -- including Freston's predecessors at Viacom -- have been forced out of top jobs only to fade from view or step into much smaller roles.
"It's a really difficult transition," said Bill Simon, a senior executive at Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry International, an executive recruiting organization. "There's only a handful of executives who have gone on to bigger things once they've lost a big job."
Freston says that before moving on, he needs to make sense of his fall after a more than two-decade run at MTV Networks, where he built a cable group worth close to $25 billion that includes such networks as MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.
"I've got to take a beat and figure out life after the 20-hour workday," said Freston, who will probably leave the company with a severance package worth $60 million. "You're like an addict to this fast-paced life and you don't know it."
Already, rumors have surfaced that Freston could land at NBC Universal or News Corp. and that he's had discussions with private equity firms. The NBC and News Corp. rumors were both quashed by the respective organizations.
Freston acknowledged that he had a surprising number of board seat and job offers in a 24-hour period but wouldn't provide specifics. He envisions being part of a "maverick organization, left to center, with a good honest product."
