Interview with Richard Hankey

        For this interview/my station profile assignment, I interviewed Richard Hankey who is the executive producer of VH1's Top 20 Video Countdown. He works for the VH1 network (which is owned by viacom). I'm lucky enough to know somebody who works for VH1. My cousin's fiance is also an executive producer on several shows there and I told her about my assignment, and she said she could get me in contact with anybody that I wanted. I always had an interest in the Top 20 Video Countdown so I told her about that one. She spoke to him for me, and together we set up the interview. As I said before, I used this program for my station profile assignment because it was a show that I watch a lot and always took interest into how it was produced.
          As I mentioned Richard is the executive producer this show and others as well. He recently did casting for MTV's Jersey Shore. He said he got started doing internships in various places until he was hired at VH1. He became the executive producer of the Top 20 Video countdown in 2000. He loves the experience that comes with his job. He loves getting to meet new people and he loves his the crew and the people that he works with. He talked a lot about how this show has a very strong and great staff and how he loves working with all of them. Also, as far as this show he enjoys how simple it is. It's not too complicated to produce and put together. Something that he doesn't like about the job, is having to cast the host of the show. He said there was a period of time when it seemed like they had a new host every few months. He said casting the host for this show is the hardest thing he has ever had to do (casting-wise) and that he stresses out a lot whenever a host leaves for whatever reason, because he knows that it's going to be a long and difficult process to find a new one.
          He says the new technologies in the media may help make producing the show easier. Half of the experience of the show takes place online (voting for your favorite videos), so he doesn't seem to think that the growth of online content is going to affect this particular show very much. It was something I was actually wondering about since my group's webisode was about online content, but he doesn't seem to think that the show itself will go online anytime in the near future.
         Richard stressed how very important internships are. 75% of people who work at VH1 were once interns. They start as a production assistants and work their way up. He said while they like seeing that you got experience at schoo, he said doing an internship is extremely important and gets you more professional experience. He says it's important to not only have the skill and the knowledge, but to also have confidence and drive to want to work in this industry.

Here is the link to the Top 20 Video Countdown (the show that Richard is currently executive producer of)

Logo

In addition to playing music videos, the VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown also does interviews with various artists on their show. Here is a video with the host interviewing American Idol Season 7 Runner-up, David Archuleta. In the video you also get a taste of how the countdown works as well.