Who Wants Their MTV?

After Resuscitating Vh1, Chris Mccarthy Is Ready To Save Another Viacom Brand.

- Jason Lynch

When he first started working at Viacom in 2004, Chris McCarthy harbored what he considered a shameful secret: his educational background. Then a freelance director of marketing for MTVU, MTV’s online network for college students, he kept quiet about the fact that he had received his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, after studying commerce and engineering at Drexel University.

“I was maybe the fifth MBA to get a job here, and I purposely did not talk about it, because at the time, it was so not a cool thing to do,” says McCarthy. But actions speak louder than words, and his hush-hush, unconventional background for a TV exec soon became his secret weapon: “I always took the projects that nobody wanted. In my mind, every problem is fixable. It’s just how you get there, and do you believe you can actually solve it?”

Over the past 13 years, McCarthy’s methodical, Money ball-like approach to rejuvenating Viacom’s networks has proven that he is peerless when it comes to fixing seemingly unsalvageable problems. First there was MTV2, where he became gm in 2009, followed by Logo, which he took over in 2013. That led to VH1 in July 2015, where he was named gm, and promoted to president of VH1 and Logo less than a year later. Finally, last October, McCarthy was given his most grandiose challenge yet: he was named president of MTV as well, becoming the third network chief in 13 months tasked with trying to revive the iconic, adrift brand, which had been hemorrhaging viewers for years.