Ken Solomon - Rally For Good
- LaFern Cusack
- Jan 14, 2020
- 1 min read
Triggering your imagination
Ken Solomon Phil's in the Blanks
Career Highlights
At 19 years old, Ken started as an intern in the research department of TV syndication business on at Paramount
Ken tells story about how he dressed starting out with Gucci Loafers
Greg Meidel guided him to first “real” job
Came up through syndication and then went to network
Content is King: Television Then and Now
What makes Ken feel good about the new media?
1. This is a people business
2. You have to be entertaining... fundamentally the art of it isn’t going away
“Encore Telecast”
1. Relentless pursuit of best talent we can get to do it
2. It’s just hard to know where to go now a days to find things...
Tennis Channel is the opposite of forced scarcity
The Future of Sports Betting/Gambling
“ Fantasies are a big part of what we do on the air during the US Open.”
Be The Change In The World: 4 things in common among mass shooters since 1966
1. Childhood trauma
2. Personal crisis at the time
3. Examples that validate their feelings
4. Access to a firearm
DP 80% of school shooters tell someone what they are going to do and when
70% tell two or more
If you see something, say something and do something - Dr. Phil
The bit about it being “hard to know where to go now to find things” feels like the truest media critique—there’s more content than ever, but fewer shared maps. That’s why curators and strong programming still matter even in the algorithm era. This also weirdly reminds me of how simple systems can still work if you know the rules, like caesar cipher—not because it’s advanced, just because it’s legible.
What I liked here is how it jumps between media business stuff and the heavier “be the change” segment—kind of a reminder that entertainment doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The “if you see something, say something” message is simple, but the hard part is making reporting feel safe and not like you’re ruining someone’s life over a vibe. Totally unrelated, but the imagination theme made me think of those photo-to-art things like ghibli ai and how quickly our brains buy into a story.
The tennis/broadcast side of this was fascinating—sports is one of the few places “live” still forces everybody to be in the same moment, which is why betting talk keeps creeping in. But I do wonder how much that shifts the storytelling away from the actual match. Random aside: the “fantasy” angle made me think of low-stakes identity play like hairstyle ai, just in a totally different context.
Ken’s “relentless pursuit of the best talent” line is the part I keep circling back to—distribution changes, but people still show up for voices they trust. Also love the “hard to know where to go now to find things” point; discovery feels like the real bottleneck. When I’m stuck doomscrolling I’ll randomly reset my brain with something dumb like blockblast, which is basically the opposite of discovery chaos.
That list about mass shooters is chilling, especially the “examples that validate their feelings” part—copycat dynamics are real and the internet accelerates it. The stat about most school shooters telling someone beforehand makes me think schools need a clearer “what happens next” process so kids aren’t afraid to speak up. Weird tangent, but pattern-matching stuff like cipher identifier always reminds me how much of prevention is just noticing signals early.