Word: deale
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Time Warner, parent company of TIME, is currently the biggest media company in the world, with assets including cable, broadcast, a movie studio, book publishing, a magazine division and the fledgling WB network. And the Viacom-CBS deal has again piqued the longstanding yearning of Time Warner vice chairman Ted Turner (who once made a run at CBS) to buy NBC, the only major network not affiliated with a Hollywood studio. That's not likely to happen, since Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin seems satisfied with the WB and the company's collection of cable networks...
Karmazin hasn't been completely satisfied with CBS since he's been there, which is one reason he went to see Redstone in his Broadway offices in early August. "The fact that he had me come over to his office means he didn't think any deal was going to happen," says Karmazin, noting that real negotiations take place on neutral turf. But after getting reacquainted with Redstone and discussing a swap of some stations, Karmazin says he began to realize that a bigger deal might be possible...
...agreed that if any deal were to happen, it would be a merger of equals, although Viacom is clearly the acquiring party. "I had always thought of CBS as a network," says Redstone. "But it's much more than that." Redstone saw a good fit. CBS was strong domestically; Viacom was growing fast internationally. And shareholders had long expressed concerns that Redstone, who remains in fine fettle, had no clear successor. Karmazin, a darling on Wall Street for driving up the stock price of CBS, and of Infinity Broadcasting before that, would neatly resolve that issue...
...depose long-standing corporate kings, while Redstone has a scalp collection any corporate warrior would be proud to own. Recent additions include those of his top lieutenants, deputy chairmen Philippe Dauman and Thomas Dooley, who got the blade (and a pile of money) as soon as the CBS deal was concluded...
...brought in no-nonsense lawyers. Redstone retained control of the majority of the class-A voting shares, and thus the company. Karmazin can't be fired unless 14 of 18 board members vote against him--and he gets to select eight of them. "I wouldn't have done this deal without keeping [voting] control," says Redstone. Should Redstone step down, or die, in the next three years, Karmazin becomes...