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Voice-over: Fame. Fortune. Listmaking. Things that are associated with being the head of a music-television station. But behind these superficial glimpses lay a seamy underbelly of drugs, death, and sheep-buggery. Find out how the lists were made, and how it all fell apart.
Brian Mahdeup, CEO VH1 Networks: When we first started out, VH1 was the station that only lame adults would watch. And MTV would have the younger demographics, it was really painful. The competition was intense, you know? We just tried everything, but nothing worked.
Kelly Fekanema, Former VP of Marketing VH1 Networks: Yeah, back then it was very exciting, we had this new medium of Cable TV and we really had to define what it was and how it was going to work. But we didn't have the punchy shows that would bring in viewers.
Voice-over: But that was about to change.
Skip Jiffy, Former Programming Director VH1 Networks: Well, Pop-up videos was really the first. We'd been competing with MTV for some time, and I thought, ok, we could show the same videos, but that's not going to draw new viewers. It would have been like we were the same. So then I thought, hey, if we could show little bits of trivia about the band or the video, we could really keep viewers interested.
Brian Mahdeup: Actually, I thought of pop-up videos. Skip's just a sheep-fucking lowlife weasel who steals credit for ideas. You know, I heard he actually blew a goat once?
Voice-over: The new show brought in viewers, but the alleged sexual penchants of Skip Jiffy brought shame upon the network.
Kelly Fekanema: Well, at first we were thinking, maybe we could ignore Skip's, well, problem, because he did come up with a succesful show.
Brian Mahdeup: No, he didn't, that was me!
Kelly Fekanema: But then he bought a sheep farm in New Zealand, and the rumors just got too heavy...
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