Graden, Brian

UXL Newsmakers, (2006)

Graden, Brian

March 23, 1963 • Hillsboro, Illinois

President of programming, MTV and VH1

Graden, Brian. Photo by Keith Bedford/Getty Images.

Brian Graden has the knack—the knack for knowing what twenty-year-olds want to watch when they grab the remote control. As president of entertainment for MTV and VH1, Graden is responsible for deciding which programs will be the next big hits and which ones are destined to fizzle. Although the network uses market research to gauge viewer likes and dislikes, success often comes down to instinct. It is that instinct that prompted Graden to introduce original, reality programs to MTV, which transformed it from a music-video cable network to a mega-hit, must-watch channel. In 2002 Graden was charged with refreshing the identity of MTV's sister network VH1, a channel aimed at Generation X (people born in the 1960s and 1970s). VH1 soared in the ratings, and Graden proved again that he could tap into any audience. As MTV president Judy McGrath told Broadcasting & Cable, "Everything Brian does breaks through and yet is completely in touch with the popular culture."

Not cut out for finance

Brian Graden has always been obsessed with music and television. He was born on March 23, 1963, in the rural community of Hillsboro, Illinois, population five thousand. When he was young, Graden taught himself how to play the piano, and by the time he was a teenager he was a major rock-music fan. In high school he and his friends formed a cover band called Ace Oxygen and the Ozones, with Graden on keyboards. When not practicing he and the band spent a lot of their time watching a brand new channel on television that showed only videos. This was Graden's first taste of MTV. As he recalled to Jeffrey Epstein of The Advocate, "I was 16 or 17 when MTV first came on the scene. Nobody had cable, but there was one person in the whole city who had satellite. So we would go over to his basement and just watch for hours and hours."

When Graden was eighteen the future of the Ozones was threatened when the guitar player's father, who was a minister, found out that his son was playing in bars. As a result, he shipped his son off to the ultra-conservative Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The determined bandmates followed, but the reunion was short-lived as the Ozones broke up just a few years later. Since his future as a rock musician seemed doubtful, Graden wondered about his next move. After graduating from Oral Roberts in 1985, he headed to Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study business, still not sure where it would lead. One glimpse into his future came in 1988 when he took the summer off to intern at the newly formed Fox network.

The programming czar

In 1989, following graduation from Harvard, Graden moved to Los Angeles, California, hoping to get hired at Fox. He ended up working on the network's production staff, and just four years later, in 1993, he became vice president for program development. He also headed up Foxlab, a branch of the network that was in charge of alternative programming. Graden and his Foxlab creative team were responsible for launching such reality shows as America's Most Wanted and Cops. Always on the lookout for new talent, it was during this time that Graden happened upon two young writers who had just made their first live-action film, called Cannibal the Musical (1994). Their names were Trey Parker (1969–) and Matt Stone (1971–), and little did Graden know that the three would soon make television history. Graden hired Parker and Stone to create a Christmas video card for him to send out to friends, which resulted in The Spirit of Christmas, a five-minute animated short that eventually gave birth to South Park.

The video created such a buzz that Graden quickly tried to hire Parker and Stone to create a regular series. Fox, however, decided to pass on the project, a decision that prompted Graden to leave the network. "If Fox was not the kind of culture where South Park could be accommodated," he remarked to Romano, "then I questioned whether broadcast was the kind of medium where ideas could be accommodated." Graden left Fox and moved with Parker and Stone to the cable network Comedy Central, which first aired South Park in August of 1997. The irreverent animated series was an immediate hit, just the first example of the Graden development magic in action.

Shortly before South Park debuted, Graden left Comedy Central to branch out with his own production company. Before he had a chance, however, he was approached by a recruiter who was hiring for MTV. Graden did not think twice about abandoning his fledgling company; this was his childhood dream come true. This was not, however, the MTV that Graden grew up with. When MTV was launched in 1981, it was a revolutionary concept—a cable channel targeted at teenagers that aired nothing but music videos twenty-four-hours a day. It was basically televised radio, complete with veejays who introduced the music clips. By the 1990s, viewers were demanding more than just music videos, and MTV began featuring more and more non-music programming, some of it animated like Beavis and Butthead, and some of it reality-based, such as The Real World.