ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 TAG: 9702120051
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: DAVID BAUDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Sykes is enough of a music fanatic to lovingly recall the smell of a just-opened record album. As a teen-ager, he hung posters to advertise concerts, and occasionally drove rock stars from an upstate New York airport to their gigs.
Now, as president of VH1, musicians like Don Henley and John Mellencamp come to him.
Sykes is overseeing the cable channel's transformation from MTV's slightly befuddled sister network into a force in its own right.
He calls himself a dictator for insisting that everything the network does be about music, whether it's the intimate new ``Storytellers'' series on songwriters or exhumed video of Madonna's debut on ``American Bandstand.''
Simple as that sounds, it wasn't a formula followed by Sykes' predecessors.
``Over the years, it had kind of drifted from its original mission,'' Sykes says.
Truth be told, however, VH1 was rushed into existence in 1985 without much of a mission, mainly to claim cable space after the success of MTV.
Sykes was there at the start of both networks.
Just out of Syracuse University in 1980, he was hired by Bob Pittman to help develop MTV. He was intrigued by the idea of combining his two loves: music and television. But after working at MTV for seven years, he drifted elsewhere - becoming a manager for Creative Artists Agency, running Chrysalis Records and working for EMI Music. Sykes took over VH1, which is owned by the same parent company as MTV, in 1994.
At the time, VH1 was a bit of a chameleon. It showed some videos, some stand-up comedy and some reruns. But in a cable television world where claiming a specific niche is important, it had little to make it unique.
VH1 was designed as a station for people who have outgrown MTV but still love music, but that can be a difficult concept to rally behind. Who, after all, wants to admit that they've outgrown anything?
Sykes, however, embraced the idea. At age 41, with CDs littering his office with the Times Square view, he typifies his target audience. He's essentially programming for the same people who turned on MTV in its infancy 15 years earlier, he noted.
He also arrived at a time when that original audience was searching for something different, because MTV's concentration on rap and alternative rock left many former fans disenfranchised.
Unlike MTV, VH1 kept up with the careers of veterans like Sting and Mellencamp when they were abandoned by MTV and championed Melissa Etheridge, Joan Osborne, Counting Crows and Hootie & the Blowfish when they had few other outlets.
``My goal was to make it mass appeal,'' Sykes said. ``MTV does a fine job on the cutting edge.''
VH1's growing influence in the music world explains why Sykes was able to persuade Henley and Mellencamp to fly to Denver last month to protest a decision by financially troubled TCI, the nation's largest cable operator, to knock VH1 off the air in 62 markets early this year.
Even more impressive: TCI backed down the morning of the news conference.
Before Sykes signed on, the music industry had a widespread perception that ``MTV was cool and VH1 was not,'' said David Sonenberg, manager of Osborne and the Fugees.
Sykes gave VH1 rock 'n' roll credibility, and the network's support was crucial to Osborne's success, Sonenberg said.
``There's a sense of style to it that is fun and truthful,'' said Judy McGrath, MTV's president. ``It's not like MTV - it has its own thing. It's not MTV lite anymore.''
VH1 heavily mines nostalgia. Old ``American Bandstand'' episodes are played frequently, sometimes in marathon fashion. And Suzanne Somers hosts ``8-Track Flashback,'' which features music from the 1970s.
But Sykes also has pushed the network into producing original music-oriented programming.
Some don't completely work. ``Duets,'' a program that sometimes awkwardly pushes together artists who normally wouldn't work together, has disappeared from the schedule for long periods, and on ``Pop-up Videos,'' trivia about musicians merely ``pop up'' on screens while their videos play.
Better are a series of documentaries that have featured Marvin Gaye and Janis Joplin, and ``Storytellers,'' which brings songwriters like Sting, Garth Brooks and Lyle Lovett before small audiences, encouraging them to explain the origins of their music.
The network's turnaround is showing both in the ratings and in the bottom line. The network's Nielsen Media Research ratings hit a three-year high in December, an increase of 26 percent over the previous year.
VH1's annual revenue will grow from less than $70 million in 1994 to an estimated $115 million this year, said Jessica Reif, a cable analyst for Merrill Lynch.
``It's a really profitable network,'' she said.
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