New York media executives are still howling over Wednesday’s roast of Tom Freston. The ex-CEO of Viacom — honored by New York’s Center for Communications – was mercilessly ripped into by friends and talent including Comedy Central’s Steven Colbert. Freston was fired by Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, angry in part that News Corp. bought MySpace and Viacom did not. The roast included lot of referencs to drugs and Freston’s years importing clothing from Afghanistan and India in the 1970s. "Were those smokable clothes?" Colbert asked.
We offer some audio recordings – not the highest quality — of the event. Freston goes through a lenthy riff on his new MySpace page, which has a lot of visual schtick but he’s funny enough you’ll get most of the jokes.
–News Corp. president Peter Chernin:"How bad it must feel for Tom to be screwed over by a man so old that he needed a little blue pill to do it," said to a big laugh.
–Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert called Frestong "one of the secular, uber-tolerant, liberal, anything-goes, me-first, who-cares-what-my-country-wants, I-want-my-MTV-istas who are tearing America apart."
–Freston: "I've been using these last few weeks of unplanned vacation I've had to develop my own, personal digital strategy. The first thing I did when I got canned was to go out and buy a computer. I'd been meaning to do it, but thought, I work in global media, who needs a computer?
