Word: freston
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...have No. 1 market share because they only count the deals that they do. Similarly media moguls look like geniuses because they only talk about the deals that went well. The best example of that is when [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch bought MySpace - and it's rumored Tom Freston lost his job [as Viacom CEO] over not buying it - everyone talked about MySpace and how smart that was. But several weeks apart from MySpace News Corp. spent even more money on an Internet game company called IGN that nobody's ever heard of since. If you only count...
...muscle-flexing didn't immediately cheer investors. Just after the announcement, Merrill Lynch's Jessica Reif Cohen, an influential entertainment industry research analyst , issued a critical report downgrading her rating on Viacom to "neutral" from "buy" because she said "significant uncertainty" remains about the implications of the Freston firing for Viacom. "We think this move is likely to be regarded as an attempt by Mr. Redstone to reassert himself in an operating role, a development that is not likely to be warmly received in the investment community," she wrote. Viacom's widely held Class B shares fell...
...reaction calls into question the wisdom of Redstone's recent moves to exert more control over the company and especially its movie studio, Paramount Pictures. The unexpected decision to fire Freston, a longtime Redstone friend and lieutenant, comes just two weeks after the chairman surprised the entertainment industry and Main Street by kicking Tom Cruise's production company off the Paramount lot after 14 years, ostensibly for conduct unbecoming high-priced talent whose box-office receipts weren't as boffo as before. Reif Cohen, citing Freston's stellar record at the helm of MTV, predicted that moviemakers won't like...
...Even before Tuesday's news, trading stories about disorder at Paramount and handicapping the fate of the current management, notably studio chief (and Freston hire) Brad Grey, was already a favorite parlor game in Hollywood. A few days after Cruise was cut loose, the head of a leading agency - one that does not represent the actor or his company - told TIME.com that his agents repeatedly have been frustrated by the inability of lower-level Paramount executives to make even minor decisions, such as okaying story pitches and entering low-dollar scriptwriting agreements, without first getting approval from their bosses...
...However, Freston's firing, coming as the studio is still working to recover from the shockwaves Redstone created with his handling of the Cruise affair, will add grist to the mill. "It's sad," said one veteran Hollywood player, who requested anonymity because of his business relationships with several people close to the situation. "How could this do anything but add more uncertainty to the situation at Paramount...