From $90 A Week Underground To Co-Founding E! Entertainment | Larry Namer

Larry Namer is the Co-founder of E! Entertainment. He started his career splicing cable wires under the streets of Manhattan for $90 a week. A few years later he cofounded E! Entertainment.

Everyone told him and his partner Alan Mruvka that regular people don't start TV networks. You had to be Disney or Fox. They heard no around 157 times.

The going rate to launch a network back then was $60 to $100 million. After three and a half years, they got $2.5 million.That wasn't enough to buy real cameras, so they bought used sales training gear, hired 11 employees and 31 interns, and climbed the fence at the Academy Awards when they got denied press credentials. Three years later they had 1,100 employees. Today E! Entertainment is in 142 countries.

What we covered:

→ How E! Entertainment launched on a fraction of what every other network spent

→ Climbing the Oscars fence and asking Tom Cruise about his shoes

→ Putting cameras in Howard Stern's radio studio while everyone laughed

→ The television.com failure where more viewers meant bigger losses

→ Why Larry is betting vertical video becomes the main way we watch by 2030

Larry didn't know the rules, so breaking them never slowed him down. A lot of what E! Entertainment became started right there.

If this episode got you thinking about where TV is headed, Larry wrote the whole thing down. His new book, Two Minute Television: The Future of Television Fits in Your Pocket, lays out why he's betting vertical video will become the main way we watch by 2030.

Larry, thank you for taking the time to do this.