Word: cbs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...shareholder, never about Mel," says Karmazin, folding his arms together over a mahogany conference table. "When you're a publicly traded company, your responsibility is to shareholders, employees, advertisers. It didn't matter if I was going to enjoy this deal or not. We didn't need this deal. CBS was a great company with terrific cash flow without Viacom." And Viacom, as company CEO Sumner Redstone will tell you, was doing just fine on its own, with $12.1 billion in 1998 revenue. The spry Redstone, 76, might also point out to you--and you too, Mel--that he will...
...CBS CEO Mel Karmazin, 56, wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt and red tie, wants you to believe. And when this former radio-advertising salesman who worked his way through Pace College tells you he didn't need to make this $70 billion deal to merge CBS with Viacom, for a moment you actually believe him. It's the way he leans into what he says and his disarming, wide-toothed smile and how hard he works to make you like him. That's how he does it. And in part, that's how he got to this corner...
...last week the opportunity to pair the largely fuddy-duddy CBS assets--broadcast television, radio and outdoor advertising--with Viacom's hipper, younger, cable and movie-studio properties--MTV, VH-1, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures--was a deal too good for Karmazin not to persuade Redstone to believe in. "Look, we didn't need a studio," Karmazin says, smiling. "But nobody in the world can tell me it's a bad idea to have...
...this case don't believe what Karmazin is saying. Believe what he's doing. CBS needed to make this deal. It makes sense. Relaxed regulations make it possible for a company to own both a TV network and a studio that creates its content. And until August, companies could own only one TV station in a market; now they can own two. This change sparked a new round of merger negotiations...
...roadside billboards and including just about anything and everything that can carry or broadcast an advertisement. That's what has Wall Street applauding the deal. "It will be a one-stop shop," says PaineWebber analyst Chris Dixon. "Ad buyers can come to them for TV time, billboards, radio ads." CBS has also developed a significant Internet presence. That kind of concentration will give Viacom pricing power too. Dixon, like most analysts, forecasts 18% to 20% increases in cash flow to $5 billion in 1999, and combined revenues above $20 billion. Both CBS's and Viacom's stock rose...