THE ET CETERA CHRONICLES - JOHN LACK AND HIS MTV

You probably won't recognize this face, but if you watch cable television,  especially if you are under 50, you have certainly watched his program.

This is John Lack.  He came to Dublin in the mid 1960s to work for Clearview Cable Company.

Lack took a job in 1970 as an account representative with CBS radio in New York.  At the age of 32, Lack had climbed the corporate ladder to the position of General Manager of WCBS-AM radio, CBS’s top network affiliate. The broadcast networks, both television and radio, were at their zenith, but Lack knew that the future of television would lie in a different field, cable television.

In 1979, Lack did the unthinkable.  He left the king of the networks for a position with Warner Communications, which was in its second year of a new cable service called Qube, which was being test marketed with its unheard of 36 channels in Columbus, Ohio.   The new system included for the first time, pay per view television channels.  When American Express bought into the venture, the company was split into two divisions.  Lack was chosen to work under his idol from his CBS days, Jack Schneider, to develop cable satellite programming.  Schneider and Lack revamped old Warner programming ideas and launched the Nickelodeon and The Movie channels.

Lack loved rock and roll music.  He loved to sneak away from school to hear black groups such as the Coasters.  Michael Nesmith, who had gained superstardom as one of the Monkees, proposed an innovative idea to Lack.  Nesmith, who had been producing video clips of himself  lip synching his songs, worked with Lack in developing a series of these clips under the title of “Pop Clips.” When Nesmith stated that he thought the future of music videos was in video discs and Lack firmly believed that the music video would become an integral part of the future of cable television, the duo parted ways.

Lack pushed his idea to a somewhat doubtful executive at Warner, who finally relented and gave John the go ahead.  HBO and USA networks were already on the air with single programs of videos.  On August 1, 1981, John Lack appeared before a television camera and launched his dream, MTV, by uttering those immortal words, “ Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.”  The first video shown on the new music channel was appropriately, ironically and purposely, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” MTV in its first two decades of existence has become an American institution with teen-agers and the “X” Generation,” more popular than John Lack could have ever dreamed.



Lack left Warner to found ESPN-2.  From 1992-1995, Lack served as  Executive VP of Marketing and Programming at ESPN. John went on to serve as CEO of Stream Telecom, Italy’s pay television network. In November of 2000, John Lack was appointed President and CEO of i3 Mobile, a leading provider of wireless communication services.  Once again, John Lack is there on the forefront of the future, beyond the land line based communication industry which he helped to become an integral part of our lives today, working to provide America and the World with new and improved forms of communication and entertainment for the future with companies such as Stream, ACTV and FireMedia Partners