Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...HIGH-FLYING, HIGH-VISIBILITY world of media moguldom, Frank Biondi has always been the rare bird: a quiet one. As the president and CEO of Viacom--the conglomerate that owns the Showtime and mtv cable networks, Simon & Schuster publishing, the Blockbuster video chain and Paramount's movie and TV empire--he has been regarded as a smart, low-key executive who stresses teamwork over autocratic rule. But being a team player is not always an asset when the reigning autocrat--in this case, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone--wants to run the show. Last week, in a move that surprised practically...
Redstone has been especially concerned with the performance of Paramount Pictures, the glamorous centerpiece of Viacom's $10 billion acquisition of Paramount Communications in 1994. The studio has had a string of box-office disappointments lately--including Sabrina, Jade and A Vampire in Brooklyn--and Redstone complained that too many films were put into production with subpar scripts. The Viacom boss has been spending a growing amount of time in Hollywood, attending marketing meetings and consulting on details as small as what promotional knickknacks to send to video stores overseas to help push Paramount product...
...Paramount executives maintain that the studio actually exceeded its financial targets in 1995, thanks to successes like Congo and Clueless. Indeed, top Paramount executives Jonathan Dolgen and Sherry Lansing were just given new contracts, and Redstone seems eager to work with them--closely. "Sherry said to me, 'I promise you I won't make a picture unless I'm in love with the script,'" Redstone relates. "That was the problem with Jade. I liked the picture, but I didn't know who was killing whom...
...media executives on both coasts were startled by the abrupt ouster of Frank Biondi as chief executive of Viacom late Wednesday. Biondi, a former HBO executive long viewed as the heir apparent to billionaire Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, was widely respected for his management of an empire that included Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster Books, Blockbuster Entertainment and MTV. In a terse statement issued after the financial markets concluded trading for the day, Viacom said that Redstone, 72, had taken over Biondi's responsibilities and would be forming an executive committee of seven Viacom executives to assist him in running...
...China's leaders await the death of Deng Xiaoping. The 91-year-old patriarch, reportedly living in a military hospital, is said to have suffered several strokes and can barely speak. Deng has chosen Jiang as the man to follow him, but no one can supplant Deng as "paramount leader" until he dies, and his death will unleash a succession struggle. In the meantime, China is in a nerve-racking state of limbo, facing grave problems, such as rampant official corruption and widely divergent income levels, and fretting over a whole generation that remembers the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre...