Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...CAPTION: PARAMOUNT...
...will some interloper top Viacom's $8.2 billion bid and try to make off with Paramount? The announcement was treated in Hollywood and on Wall Street like that moment when the minister says, Speak now or forever hold your peace. The first to clear his throat was Ted Turner, the freewheeling founder of CNN, who just last month struck a deal to buy two much smaller movie companies. On Friday he was given the go-ahead by his board -- which includes representatives from his big investors, TCI and Time Warner -- to explore a rival offer. Barry Diller, chairman...
...Paramount-Viacom deal can be completed, it would enable the combined company to move into new ventures that neither firm would have the means to undertake separately. For example, Paramount chairman Martin Davis said last week that the new company might develop a music business to record and market compact discs under the MTV label. And since Viacom and Paramount together own a total of 12 TV stations, the two companies could combine them into a fifth broadcast network. "If it presents an opportunity, we will clearly seize it," Davis says...
...while such synergistic ideas sound good at the outset, they could prove difficult to engineer. For instance, Viacom plans to award rights to a film based on MTV characters Beavis and Butt-head to Paramount instead of Warner Bros., as originally planned. But impresario David Geffen spent a good part of last week fighting Viacom's Sumner Redstone to keep the film at Warner...
While there is little overlap in the Paramount and Viacom lines of business, there is plenty of redundancy in the executive suite, which could trigger a management shuffle. Davis, who would move from chairman and chief executive of Paramount to CEO of the new company under Redstone, told TIME last week, "Let's face it, I've taken a step down in title, and I do expect others to follow...