Marc Juris, President of Fuse

This is a partial transcript from Your World with Neil Cavuto, May 19, 2003, that was edited for clarity. Click here for complete access to all of Neil Cavuto's CEO interviews.

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NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: I want my Fuse TV? In an audacious assault on industry giant MTV, upstart rival music channel Fuse is getting in Viacom’s face, quite literally, promising a channel with the kind of music you to hear, than what the MTV folks say you should hear. But is that enough to make you hear and watch? Let’s ask Marc Juris, he is Fuse’s president.

Mark, good to have you.

MARC JURIS, FUSE PRESIDENT: Thank you, glad to be here.

CAVUTO: All right. Now how are you going to distinguish yourself from MTV fare?

JURIS: Well, first of all, I very much liken it to FOX, which is all about having a different voice, a different attitude, a different point of view. So in essence what we are doing is we are giving the viewer the opportunity to pick the music they hear on our network, very different promise than MTV makes.

CAVUTO: How is that different than, let’s say, a lot of top 40 or 50 or 60 stations that say, all right, call in and pick the music you want, when in fact it is part of a rotation anyway?

JURIS: Well, you know, it really isn’t part of our rotation, because we have a show called Oven Fresh, which is where we premiere new music videos. And it starts online, viewers go online, with clips of their video - of the new song, which may or may not even be getting airplay. And then they select if they would like to keep that song on our network or not. It moves to the air.

CAVUTO: How do they do that? How do they.

JURIS: They do it Online.

CAVUTO: So it is a digital platform to begin with, right?

JURIS: Correct. We’re basically the one network that truly believes in convergence and taking the online experience and really connecting it in a meaningful way to the on-air experience.

CAVUTO: Let’s say you dominate the digital and the convergence area, but MTV dominates everything else, so is it just going to be you’ll be a little mini player in your area, but never hoping to amass the magnitude of MTV?

JURIS: Well actually, Neil, I think MTV has become a different kind of network. I liken them to a general entertainment network for a very young audience. They have lots of reality shows. They do movies. They do a lot of things. Their brand has become very, very broad.

CAVUTO: So you want to be all music all the time.

JURIS: We are all music. We’re a music network all about music 24-7.

CAVUTO: OK. But also about artists and musicians who you might not have readily heard about?

JURIS: Sure, in fact we have many times we have played videos they will not play. And we have also had artists on that had no airplay, no radio play, nothing. They just sort of were out here. They weren’t being played by MTV. We presented them to our viewers. Our viewers picked them. And today they are in the top 10 on the modern rock charts like Chevelle or Simple Plan.

CAVUTO: All right. Now you are part of Cablevision, right?

JURIS: Correct.

CAVUTO: Could Cablevision come back in a tit-for-tat, say, all right, we are not going to have MTV on our system?

JURIS: I don’t think they would do that. I don’t think it would serve anybody’s best interest. I think this is actually a fun way to differentiate both brands and to really get music back out on television where it has sort of vanished somewhat.

CAVUTO: How do you pay for yourself?

JURIS: Well, we have great advertising support. And we are very important to our affiliates, because we really do help them leverage and promote and platform their broadband product. So because we are about interactivity, our cable modems are very much a part of our promise to our affiliates. And then they make that a part to their viewers.

CAVUTO: Well, in a very FOX move, Marc, I like you did the billboard or poster right opposite MTV on a Viacom billboard, on a Viacom billboard.

JURIS: Thank you.

CAVUTO: Marc Juris, thank you, best of luck to you. He is the Fuse president.

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