Playboy's 20Q: Carson Daly

Three years ago, MTV plucked Californian Carson Daly from radio and moved him to the Big Apple, handed him a studio overlooking Times Square and charged him with reviving the network's sagging ratings. Daly's first days in New York were spent ''talking to executives about the plan for making MTV cool again. We were at our worst.'' Daly and the MTV brass (''the young hip suits,'' he says, ''even if they're not wearing suits'') hit upon the formula of playing audience-requested videos and featuring celebrity drop-ins--amplified by all that street noise. It worked. The cable network's ratings surged.

Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker and Daly recently watched from the studio as the barricades that control the crowds of teenagers who assemble outside for his broadcasts were dismantled and evening rush hour traffic clogged Broadway.

Kalbacker reports, ''Despite the day-old stubble, earring and black leather jacket, Daly comes across as a wholesome guy. He's also a true broadcasting professional who likes to talk about audience demographics. He insists his viewers aren't exclusively the teens represented by the throng in the street below. Plenty of 20-somethings tune in, he says, and so do his father and his friends. 'They might not like the videos, because they're like 60 years old or whatever. But when we're on with Bill Murray or Madonna, they get into it a little.'''

1

Playboy: Care to analyze the current status of sex, drugs and rock and roll?

Daly: Sex, drugs and rock and roll are why most people get into this business. Most guys in bands who have tons of sex, drugs and rock and roll weren't getting any in high school. But I don't think it's anywhere near what it used to be. Pop culture and music in general now are in a much cleaner, safer environment. With AIDS, sex can kill you. And the drugs have gotten so strong. We're not talking about a hallucinogenic that enhances cool writing. These drugs are ruining the music, screwing up the whole point, which is for a band to play live and connect with fans. A lot of my favorite artists from the early Nineties are in rehab. No one was more bombed than Scott Weiland. Stone Temple Pilots had to cancel a lot of tours. I'm a huge fan of theirs. I'm one of the rare people who didn't get into the business for sex or drugs, only for the rock and roll. I was a total geek. I was a golf fanatic. I really just wanted to have a nonnormal job. I wasn't motivated by whether I could get laid.

2

Playboy: You debuted on air as a disc jockey. Tell us tales of Carson Daly's radio days.

Daly: It was a party every night. I got so many weird phone calls. The big thing when you're a DJ is that when a girl calls, you try to hit on her if she has a sexy voice. We had a poster of this really unattractive, disgusting woman holding a phone. The caption said, ''This is who you're talking to right now.''

I turned down a lot of opportunities. Most people in radio are desperate. A lot of them are losers. I was socially Ok. I had tons of girlfriends and guy friends. I didn't really need my job to hook up. If you're drug free and you show up to do your shift every day, you're a god in radio. You'll be program director. That's why I moved up so fast. I got a job at KROQ in LA when I was 22. The job of disc jockey changed in the early Nineties, when grunge became popular. It represented angst. It wasn't the big, big voice. It was a normal dorky voice. I never went to broadcasting school. For four hours every night I invited my friends to the studio. I never scripted anything. I'd invite listeners up. I did a lot of contests. You get a tattoo guy to come in. Hey, 20th caller, you get a tattoo. I did a lot of piercings on the air. I had my nose pierced. MTV made me take the stud out. The hole is still there. I feel like poking through it again.

3

Playboy: Are you concerned about the care and feeding of the screaming 14-and 15-year-old kids who wait patiently on the street in front of your studio?

Daly: When it rains, or when it's really cold in the winter, we'll bring in as many as we can legally. Why are they all out there? I don't know what's the attraction, especially on a day when we don't have a Madonna, a Jim Carrey, an Adam Sandler or somebody else they'd like to see. Unlike Today or Good Morning America, they don't get the best view. They can't even hear the show. Maybe it's just routine now. If they're in the area and can get down here, they know that every day at 3:30 there's a possibility of being on MTV. So they come down here with odd signs and gimmicks. Maybe young people today don't have a lot of things that are constant. Parents are divorced. Kids are doing some pretty whacked stuff. It's my job to entertain them for a bit. I'm still curious why they line up.

4

Playboy: World-class peep shows and porn theaters dominated Times Square not so long ago. Can we pin their loss on MTV?

Daly: Times Square does have a Disneyland feel to it now. But we thought it would be a good place to broadcast. We started it. ABC just came in. So did the ESPN Zone. The WWF theme restaurant came in after we did. This is a safe area now. If you're upset about not getting hookers and drugs, you can blame us. But there are other places you can go.

5

Playboy: The school day ends at three o'clock. Total Request Live airs half an hour later, and young fans queue up early in the day. You wouldn't suspect at least a few are cutting classes?

Daly: I'm sure they are. I used to ditch school myself, to go to the beach or hang out with my friends. If they are cutting school, you know, what can you say? What parents wouldn't have missed school to get as close as they could to the Beatles? Today they're coming down to TRL to catch a glimpse of the Backstreet Boys. Pretty decent reason to ditch. I would like to bring up 40 students who ditched--we've had that happen before--and call the school and get the principal on the phone. ''Mr. So and So, this is Carson on MTV. I just want you to know, I have your kids. They're safe. They'll make up the time. We have a really cool Rage Against the Machine world premiere. It's socially aware. And they're going to hang out with me. No problem.''

6

Playboy: Your young audience is remarkably blemish free. Have prescription drugs such as Differin and Accutane eliminated acne as a teenage rite of passage?

Daly: Absolutely. Look at the kids today. Some of the girls are 15 and look like they're 30-year-old supermodels. Kids today have better medical care, a remedy for everything. And maybe something in the genes. Kids grow up so fast now. When I had acne, it wasn't that big of a deal, because everybody had it. My choices were Clearasil and tetracycline. If it was really bad you might get Retin-A. I think we should bring acne back, because it's a part of growing up. It builds character. You need to get picked on.

7

Playboy: One newspaper reporter referred to you as the ''dreamy Carson Daly.'' Have you stopped to consider the adjectives they're teaching in journalism school nowadays?

Daly: I think she meant that young girls think I'm cute or whatever. I consider it facetious, so I've stopped reading about myself.

8

Playboy: The music video: ultimate triumph of lip-synching or a firmly established art form?

Daly: If you're an artist, you can fill a canvas with only so much paint. You come to a point where your work is done. What the music video has done is enable musicians to further their art. Videos provide another artistic outlet. I think it's very cool--it has married music and film. And now the directors of these videos are doing films and actors are doing videos. It has opened a million doors in the entertainment business.

9

Playboy: Madonna recently appeared on Total Request Live. Does she deserve her rep as a legend?

Daly: What's cool about Madonna and why I think she's a legend is that she was on TRL. What we fight with most are artists who worry about their image and who say the show isn't cool because it's only the popular stuff. But Madonna is big today because she has the courage to come on a show that she might not like--she'd never seen TRL. But she knew an awful lot about our show and pop culture the day she came on.

10

Playboy: Is this MTV gig a whole lot better than a dot-com start-up for Carson Daly?

Daly: We're not whoring out this project yet. I came into this to fulfill my own needs and my love for music. And I think it's contagious. We never set out to have the highest ratings of any MTV daily show. We never set out to be powerful enough to pull Madonna or to be called the epicenter of pop culture or to be compared to American Bandstand. It just happened.

11

Playboy: You sought out Dick Clark. Did he offer you advice on how to make a career last? Can we look forward to Carson Daly hosting quiz shows and New Year's Rockin' Eve?

Daly: Yes. That's why I went to visit Dick Clark's house. I'm driving around LA, I'm thinking about my career and how I don't want to just do this MTV thing, and boom, I'm a has-been. How can I be smart and take full advantage of the opportunity? Dick Clark popped into my head. So I called him. The receptionist put me on hold for a moment and then told me to come in. I cruised over to the shack with my résumé in hand, because how would he know who I am? And Dick walks in and says, ''You're the Carson Daly I'm hearing so much about.'' It was like seeing a shrink. We sat in two big chairs and I just said, ''Here's where I'm at in my life and this is where I want to go.'' We talked about day-in-day-out decision making, coming to an understanding of why you want to do things. Being smart. Building from within. Moving slowly. Not caring about quick success. He said he'd worked his ass off, going to New York and shooting six $10,000 Pyramid shows a day. So I'm taking this in. And now when my days get packed and I start to think I should take some time off, I go back to what Dick told me in that meeting: Have a successful work ethic. I begged him to let me host the American Music Awards. And he said maybe next year.

12

Playboy: You've hosted a couple of beauty pageants in the past year. Do you prefer the swimsuit or evening gown competitions?

Daly: I didn't even pay attention to the beauty contests or the evening gowns. I only did the beauty pageants to test my range as a host, to see if I was capable of hosting a two-hour, big-time network show. All I'd ever done was MTV. I was such a production whore. I'm trying to be a sponge right now and learn everything in the business. The scenery wasn't bad at all. Absolutely not. But the last person to hook up with one of the girls is the host. All eyes are on you. The contests were different. The Miss Teen USA girls were young and scared and happier to see 'N Sync, who performed on that telecast, than they were about winning. They were squealing and--oh my God--had lots of energy. I was like a big brother, telling them to relax and making them feel at home while we were on the air. The Miss USA girls? A whole different ball game. Those chicks are opportunists. They all want to make it. They worked the environment. They're like, ''So who's your agent?''

13

Playboy: You've been interviewed by Regis Philbin. Did you feel a need to reach out to a lifeline?

Daly: I remember being nervous. We talked about my career. And I've been back three times since. Regis has the whitest teeth you'll ever see. Regis works out where I do. I'm on the treadmill and there's George Stephanopoulos to my right, Regis to my left, Peter Jennings doing stretches in the corner. And maybe Ed Bradley doing a little cardio. I couldn't even afford a gym membership two years ago. Regis invited me to his house for a Christmas party. He sent me a handwritten invitation: Joy and I want you to cruise by and hang out. He's one of the coolest guys in the business today. Peter Jennings has never invited me anywhere.

14

Playboy: Have you discovered the joys of golf on the East Coast?

Daly: St. Andrew's up in Westchester is a great place to play. Those old courses are short, but they're tight. I grew up at the Riviera Country Club in LA. These are courses with a sense of tradition, and that's what I love. Golf is a traditional sport. Nothing pisses me off more than all the electronics now. They have a global satellite positioning system in golf carts now at resorts in Hawaii so you can drive right to your ball. It's ridiculous. I like to go out on the golf course and be respectful. I played with wooden woods for a long time. The putter should be the most traditional old thing in the bag. I had an old Ben Hogan putter. It was raggedy and even had a leather grip on it. I called my putter Old Faithful before tournaments. I would clean it and talk to it and sleep with it. Golf is very vibey. What separated me from succeeding or not succeeding in golf was putting. If I had the short putts, I was going to shoot 65. If I didn't, I wasn't going anywhere. Tiger Woods was responsible for my getting out of golf. He was at a lot of the events I was at and we played several times. He kicked everybody's ass. He is the Michael Jordan of that sport and was destined to be great.

15

Playboy: We wouldn't be surprised to learn that you were an altar boy. Did you ever don a cassock and surplice?

Daly: I was a good altar boy. Everybody else was screwing around. I took it seriously. At one point in the mass--the consecration of the host--the priest says to the congregation, while he's offering the host, ''Do this in remembrance of me.'' That's your cue as an altar boy to ring the bells. I was an altar boy with another kid who just wanted to go out and skateboard. And he rang the bells at the wrong time. Man, that was a big mistake. He's going to hell and I'm not. I was so excited about being in a church. It was like being in a painting. I was drawn to the dramatics of it. It was a really cool cultural thing for me. It was better than sitting at home watching reruns of Happy Days.

16

Playboy: Surely it was the long theology studies rather than the vow of celibacy that persuaded you to choose a career in entertainment over the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Daly: I think my job is harder than being a priest. I fight more temptation than I would have if I had taken those vows. When I was in high school there were a couple of priests who were really cool, young and hip. But I've created my own spirituality. Religion, not necessarily Catholicism, is intriguing. Now I'm obviously in a different line of work. Spirituality has always been my reality check. It's the one thing that's constant to me. It's what I bounce things off of. But if I say I'm Catholic, and that I'm a spiritual person and have ethics and morals and that's why I'm not doing drugs or acting like a complete asshole, that doesn't get conveyed. The writers aren't articulate, or they're not smart enough to understand where I'm coming from, or the readers have short attention spans--''This guy is a Jesus freak.'' It's sad. Howard Stern read that I prayed when my mother had breast cancer. He called me a Jesus freak.

17

Playboy: Carson Daly and Jennifer Love Hewitt. What went wrong?

Daly: That would be a great question to ask her. If you find the answer, tell me. She dumped me. Howard Stern said it was because she met someone else. The guy on the E channel said it was mutual, which it wasn't, because I didn't know anything about it. We dated for two years. When we started dating, I wasn't anything and she was so famous. Then it was ''Who's this guy Jennifer's dating?'' During our relationship my popularity rose a little. The reason can sit here and talk about it is that I'm in a better place now than during our relationship. I consciously did everything I could do as a man to be the right person. I did everything. I flew to Los Angeles every frigging weekend just to see her for a day. I have no regrets. I didn't do anything wrong. That helps with recovery. I got dumped. Her loss.

18

Playboy: Did Dick Clark warn you about the temptations of payola?

Daly: No. I respect him too much to go there. What's funny is that TRL's popularity has made it such an important part of the success plan for bands and artists now, and because of its relentless ratings people have assumed that something must be going on. Frankly, Madonna needs to stop by TRL if she wants to sell a lot of records to young hip people in America. After we started playing Kid Rock's first single, Devil Without a Cause, he sold 7 million records over a year. I'm not saying that's all because of TRL. But he would tell you himself that it was at MTV's Fashionably Loud in Miami where it started for him. But there's nothing going on. We open up the phone lines and take e-mail. And the kids pick the videos. I'm friends with people in record companies and I'll tell you straight up that no one has ever propositioned me. I'm wondering what happened to payola and plugola. Maybe the government's too involved now.

19

Playboy: Press reports indicate that after winning her Grammy for best new artist, Christina Aguilera called her mother and then Carson Daly. How busy is your social life?

Daly: We're friends. Christina was one of the co-hosts for New Year's last year. We have on-air chemistry and flirt a little. She performed on my show at the Superbowl and she happened to be there when I hosted the Miss USA pageant. We were at these different events and the country was just going nuts. The events were strictly coincidences. We hang out and go out to dinner.

20

Playboy: Would you ever suspect you're not being loved for your good looks and native intelligence?

Daly: I might be consensually used up to a point where I was uncomfortable. I think I'd be smart enough to pick up on it, but if there were a win-win situation involved I might let it go as far as I thought it would be safe. But I've seen so much now. You have to be defensive about why people are involving themselves in your life. People want stuff.