MTV president Bill Roedy has taken his music channel from the Berlin Wall to SpongeBob SquarePants (The Telegraph)

“From missiles to music. From the iron curtain to the red carpet.” Bill Roedy says he has finally “coined” his unconventional career as he exits MTV after spending three decades masterminding the music channel’s global expansion.

The outgoing president of Viacom’s MTV Networks International, began his working life as a platoon leader in Vietnam - having studied at US military academy West Point. He later became a NATO missile commander.

“One of the first issues I had to deal [in Vietnam] with was a firebase overrun by a chemical attack. A US soldier had taken a drug overdose. I didn’t know what it was, I wasn’t trained for that. I called the medic back in and I was scalded the next day for jeopardising a helicopter crew who told me this was the norm.”

From this harrowing insight into the state of morale in Vietnam in the 1970s, to discussing his exit from the global business he built, Roedy appears almost emotionless.

Forty years on and he has kept the soldier-like qualities he probably acquired to survive in an environment where death and destruction is pervasive.

He talks like a US commander – articulate and controlled – whether discussing having a five-hour lunch with Fidel Castro or Warren Buffet giving him “some winning poker tips”.

His background could not be more different to the glitz of the television and music industry. Although he has come to realise his military training was useful in commanding MTV’s global expansion.

Roedy, 62, has somehow found a way of bringing his two lives together.

“Command and control, decentralise and keep your communication lines open. Design a local force and give them autonomy and accountability, so they can react to the enemy or competition and make decisions and do it quickly – as long as you keep your supply lines and communication lines open,” he says of his strategy at MTV Networks. MTV famously launched in the US in 1981 with the Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star.

MTV Europe, as it was originally known, launched in the UK in 1987. MTV Network’s International is now in 161 territories outside of the US and aired in 34 languages.

Roedy has built MTV Networks International from virtually nothing to a business that had revenues in excess of $1.3bn in 2010, not including merchandise sales.

Roedy’s office, off London’s Oxford Street, is a museum filled with memorabilia and artefacts featuring global leaders, world-changing events and cultural icons that have characterised the past three decades.

There are photos he took of Castro; pictures of him in Afghanistan holding up his BlackBerry alongside an Afghan solider posing with an AK47; numerous pictures of Roedy beside everyone from Nelson Mandela to the Rolling Stones and Bono; and then there is the large piece of the Berlin Wall on his coffee table.

In stark contrast, there are Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants cushions on the sofa - Roedy also has charge over the Nickelodeon international children’s channels. On Sky in the UK, MTV Networks has around 20 channels, including nine dedicated to music and six for children.

However, taking pride of place in one corner of the room are photos of his hero, Winston Churchill.

He cracks a rare smile as he tells how he bought a London flat where Churchill lived and wrote his Wilderness Years speeches, which overlooks Westminster Cathedral. He tried to buy the flat once before but it was too expensive first time round.

MTV Network’s content is about entertainment, not politics. However, Roedy has seen his tenure at MTV take him to war-torn countries, launch the channel in countries in the midst of political upheaval and use it to help combat HIV and AIDS. He works for six not-for-profit organisations, including the Staying Alive Foundation. In 2005, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed him founding chair of the Global Media AIDS Initiative Leadership Committee.

“Music breaks down barriers,” he says. This poignant message is written on a plaque beside the piece of Berlin Wall in his office.

Roedy sees the fall of the Berlin Wall as one of the most significant moments in MTV’s history.

In November 1989, he was asked to give a speech at a conference in East Berlin about "East meeting West".

“It just happened to be the same week the wall came down and we were going to a reception with the politburo, but they didn’t attend,” he says, explaining that the politburo happened to resign just as MTV launched in East Berlin. We got a great picture of an East German soldier on the wall holding an MTV umbrella.”

Roedy collected “suitcases and suitcases” of Berlin Wall fragments, labelled them with “MTV, breaking down barriers” and “gave them to anyone who would have them”.

Still just a fledgling operation, having launched just two years before in the UK, the fall of the Berlin Wall kick-started a drive into eastern Europe and Russia, where the desire for Western capitalism was seeping through.

“Behind the Iron Curtain, there was tremendous interest in buying these dishes [Astra satellite dishes]. This is the first time they had exposure to something like this. I’m convinced it wasn’t so much about the rock 'n' roll programming. I think it was even more about the commercials. They saw how the other side lived,” he says.

One of his proudest moments was doing a deal with the Chinese government to launch a branded MTV channel in homes – a rarity in China, where most Western channels have a presence only in hotels and compounds.

“We negotiated with the Chinese government and we did a deal. We agreed to launch CCTV9, their English language 24-hour news channel, in US hotels. In exchange, we would get a 24-hour MTV-branded channel along the Pearl River Delta.

He says negotiations were helped along by him arranging a much-wanted tour around West Point for Wang Keman, who was the managing director of Chinese cable company Southern Media Corporation. Wang had previously attended the Chinese military academy.

Another favourite story is when Lithuania started to break away from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Vytautas Landsbergis, the Lithuanian politician, had barricaded himself in the parliament building. Roedy, who describes a scene of fire and destruction, visited him behind the barricades.

He tells how the Soviets took over the national TV channel in Lithuania and, in an attempt to voice freedom against the Soviet Union, the politician started a competing TV signal by taking remote trucks with him to the parliament building. MTV took a starring role on the secondary channel.

“I decided I wanted MTV to be everywhere. I adopted a concept of aggressive, creative and relentless distribution. If cable didn’t exist, we would use direct-to-home,” he says. To this day, some countries, including Italy, Russia, Indonesia and Brazil, receive MTV on terrestrial television. There is not the dual revenue stream of advertising and subscription, but “by the flick of a switch you have the whole country”.

Despite launches in countries which some others would have deemed impossible, Canada was ironically the last “hold-up”.

MTV in Europe has seen the most dramatic change. It originally launched as MTV Europe featuring VJs (video jockeys) who spoke English as a second language.

“It was based on the coming together as Europe as a whole. However, in the 90s, that went up and down,” he says.

He suggests the concept was flawed - with music tastes so varied from one European country to the other - but says the channel was still profitable. As the infrastructure improved, MTV soon became country specific in Europe.

The stories of the past are fascinating - we have spoken for two hours. So where now for MTV Networks?

The music channels, he says, need “constant reinvention”.

“It’s hard to stay at number one or at the highest level of trend or coolness for a long period of time,” he says.

The father of four children under 20 says the children’s brands are a money-spinner, with sales of Dora the Explorer merchandise reaching $2bn, overtaking SpongeBob SquarePants.

Exploitation of the children’s brands through cruise ships and theme parks is also part of the plan. The next venture, he says, will see its characters embedded into a Blackpool theme park.

The "tween" market has been a merchandising success - with brands such as iCarly and Victorious - although industry experts say Disney dominates the tween market, with Hannah Montana and High School Musical.

Acquisitions in the children’s space are key, although at the right price. He admits considering a purchase of Thomas the Tank Engine’s Hit Entertainment at the time Apax Partners looked at it. With Hit soon up for sale, he quashes speculation that Viacom is taking another look at the assets.

He also admits to taking a passing look at ITV in the past, but says the numbers did not stack up.

It is clear the deal making is not what makes Roedy tick. He is the politician, the former soldier turned humanitarian and the man who made MTV a success outside the US and helped music cross boundaries.

There are many defining moments for MTV - he cites the success of Nirvana in the early 90s, Madonna and Michael Jackson.

Listening to Chinese Enya-style music as we speak, Roedy is most excited about how MTV played a role in promoting international music. His “epiphany” was once hearing German techno in a Korean nightclub.

— Amanda Andrews for The Telegraph