Word: viacom
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Certainly there are other potential pitfalls for this deal, including considerable regulatory hurdles. Under current law, one company can't own two networks. That might cause Viacom to divest its half-share of the struggling UPN. Turf battles will arise between the bosses who head the various jewels in the Viacom empire, as well as in areas in which there are duplicate functions--the new company has three syndication arms, as well as three prime-time television-show suppliers...
Karmazin has no problem with the free flow of information in a democracy. In fact, he's all for a diversity of voices: CBS has long owned competing news-radio stations in the same markets. But in the modern American media world--Viacom's world--the free flow of information had better be accompanied by the free flow of cash...
...done now?" he asks rhetorically. "I can't see any deal on the horizon that approaches the implications for future growth at Viacom [that the] CBS [deal does]. But, of course, nothing is certain." That's the same basic message that Redstone, Viacom's CEO and controlling shareholder, delivered in the wake of his $10 billion acquisition of Paramount Communications in 1994--a stunning deal in its day, one that kept Redstone busy for the next four years selling pieces of Martin Davis' empire to pay down a heaping pile of debt. Last year, when I spoke with Redstone...
...theaters. He is often credited with inventing the concept of the multiplex. Something of a late bloomer, Redstone didn't hit the big time until 1987, when at age 64 he put virtually all the assets of his company at risk in a bidding war that won Viacom, then a cable company, for $3.4 billion. Ironically, Viacom had been split off from CBS 16 years earlier as a syndicator of TV shows and movies...
Redstone has always taken big risks. The Paramount bidding went $2 billion higher than his target, but he spent the money anyway. He now says he'd never burden Viacom like that again and notes that the CBS deal, a stock swap, was done without paying a premium or adding debt...