Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...oddly enough, money may not be paramount in a field where four or five candidates insist on dividing the anti-Pat vote. That's because the rules for selecting delegates are different in the primary states that come later in the race. Until now, the primary calendar has been an almost quaint exercise in good government. Almost all the delegates apportioned so far have been handed out fair and square, one man, one vote--the candidate with 30% of the vote got about 30% of the delegates...
Diller almost owned Paramount, but in 1994 it slipped away. He nearly won control of CBS, but he lost that too in an abortive bid later that same year. This is what he does own, bought in quick succession last summer and fall: 1) Silver King Communications, whose main assets are 12 TV stations that comparatively few people want to watch; 2) Savoy Pictures, an independent film studio known for producing movies (Last of the Dogmen, for example) that comparatively few people went to see but a studio that owns considerable cash and a quartet of television stations...
...Diller was named CEO of Paramount Pictures. With Eisner, whom he installed as president, Diller made it the most profitable Hollywood studio, year in and year out. He was considered a lock for the chairmanship of Gulf & Western, Paramount's parent company. Then he lost a power struggle and jumped ship for 20th Century Fox in 1984. His reason for subsequently leaving Fox in 1992 was straightforward: "It's not mine," he said at the time. "I'm both young enough and old enough to want to own my own store ... It's the one thing I haven't done...
Instead, he bought about 13% of QVC, the cable-TV retailer that is the Home Shopping Network's prime competitor. But he hadn't quite shaken his yen for upscale properties and in short order was using QVC to launch the exhaustively chronicled bidding war for Paramount that he lost to Viacom's Sumner Redstone. By the summer of 1994, Diller was describing a projected takeover of CBS as his "destiny." But Comcast, a cable company that owned a 15.5% stake in QVC, squelched the deal and then tendered its own offer to buy out Diller's share...
...Viacom, was ousted by chairman Sumner Redstone, who said the company needed more aggressive leadership. Nine years ago, Redstone lured Biondi away from Coca-Cola, and in 1994 he awarded him $16.3 million in cash and stock-option bonuses for his role in Viacom's takeover of Paramount...