Word: viacom
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Redstone, 81, was quick to promote to co-president both Freston, 58, and Leslie Moonves, 54, who ran CBS, filling the vacancy left by Karmazin, 60. Redstone said he would finally call it quits within three years, setting up a horse race for the top job at Viacom, a la GE after Jack Welch retired in 2001. Critical to Redstone, Freston and Moonves are dyed-in-the-wool content guys. Freston, a free-spirited music lover who has served on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, engineered the phenomenal success of MTV. Moonves, a hard-charging...
Executives at the MTV networks stood and roared their approval at a budget meeting last November when Sumner Redstone, chairman and CEO of parent company Viacom, pledged $30 million of corporate cash to launch Logo, a gay channel that the MTV brass had regarded as a top priority. Under Viacom president and heir apparent Mel Karmazin, the channel had been delayed. But at this meeting, attended by Karmazin, Redstone openly said to MTV chief Tom Freston, "You want to do it? You have the money." Karmazin was silent. "It was a dramatic moment," Freston recalls. "All of a sudden...
This wasn't the only time Redstone took the lead in orchestrating a shift toward bigger risks on the content side of Viacom's media empire. At a meeting this year with executives at Viacom's Paramount Pictures, with Karmazin present, Redstone stunned his team with a commitment to bankroll more of the big-budget films that studio heads love but that Karmazin loved to avoid. The divide over how far to wade into expensive movies and risky programming was not gaping. Karmazin says he was eager, for example, to launch the gay network. But things weren't moving fast...
...will allow the pair to sell most of the company if they choose to, yet retain voting control. The stock that Page and Brin keep will have 10 votes for every one that common shareholders get. Dual-class stock is rare, though it exists at companies like Dow Jones, Viacom and Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Although some of these stocks perform well, activists dislike the structure...
...deal, approved by regulators in December, extends Murdoch's globe-spanning satellite empire to North America; bolsters his strategy of marrying distribution and content; and seems to have triggered, as his maneuvers often do, another tectonic shift in the communications landscape. Why is Comcast suddenly bidding for Disney and Viacom eyeing the cable industry? Because on the billiard table that is the media business, Murdoch is the cue ball. Everything he does creates a chain reaction, often leading to unexpected combinations...