Word: viacom
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...There's no question that the worsening economy is prompting some belt-tightening in the entertainment industry. NBC Universal is cutting $500 million from next year's budget and Viacom's Paramount Pictures is shrinking its slate from 25 movies a year to 20. But how bad the industry is hurt and which sectors are hit hardest will depend in part on an important calculation that consumers make - how much is an hour of fun worth...
Sumner Redstone filed for divorce on Oct. 17, when his more than 16 million Viacom shares were at $18.85, down from $39.40 six months ago; his CBS shares had dropped about $288 million in value in the same period. Redstone and his wife Paula reportedly have a prenuptial agreement, so it's unlikely the market has much to do with timing, but Mrs. Redstone divorces a poorer man than she would have six weeks...
...credit in these trying economic times? Don't feel bad, so is Steven Spielberg. His DreamWorks SKG is waiting for a $500-million deal with Indian entertainment conglomerate Reliance to close. It would allow the company behind movies like Tropic Thunder and Transformers to abandon an unhappy partnership with Viacom's Paramount Pictures and produce six films a year at another studio. The hitch keeping DreamWorks and Reliance from sealing the deal is the challenge of raising an additional several hundred million dollars in debt financing at a time when Wall Street is feeling pretty stingy about extending credit...
...Commune,'' Pan and Zhang, his elegant CEO/spouse, hosted 1,000 of their closest friends. Robin Li, the young CEO of Baidu, China's Google, was there. So, too, was Chao Yang, one of the smartest young bankers in Beijing, and his wife Li Yifei, who for years ran Viacom China for Sumner Redstone; Wendi Deng and her older husband - a guy named Murdoch... As at Jianfu, the list went on. Movie stars (Maggie Cheung); models, foreign media big shots - this was a celebration of the Next China, at an event, the Beijing Olympics, that will forever demarcate past from future...
...unit of Time Warner that owns, among other things, cable outlets in 36 states. Southwestern Bell spent $650 million in February for just two suburban cable systems in Washington. The Bell Atlantic-TCI deal dwarfed the bidding war between Barry Diller's QVC shopping network and MTV-owner Viacom for Paramount Communications, which had held Hollywood and Wall Street spellbound in recent weeks. It also thickened the plot, since TCI-controlled Liberty Media has been a chief backer of Diller's, whose nearly $10 billion bid for Paramount tops Viacom's by about $2 billion. While Malone stressed his continued...