Word: viacom
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...ousting Tom Freston as CEO of Viacom and replacing him with a hand-picked confidante on Tuesday, Chairman Sumner Redstone has sent a message to Wall Street and Hollywood, for the second time in less than a month, that he's running the show at the entertainment conglomerate he controls. But that news didn't seem to hearten many folks in either quarter about Viacom's outlook...
...during a Tuesday morning conference call with investment analysts and journalists. "We were not moving as entrepreneurially and aggressively as we should. Our communication with Wall Street was deficient and the stock price reflected it, suggesting that maybe Wall Street lacked confidence in management." He called Freston's replacement, Viacom director and former senior company executive Philippe Dauman, the right person to fulfill the vision he had when he announced the split of CBS and Viacom nine months ago. "We are on the right track but we need to move to the fast track," said Redstone. "Philippe will enable...
...That last comment was interpreted by several analysts as a reference to News Corp.'s purchase of MySpace.com, a deal that Viacom was seen as having missed. Though Redstone was equally impatient with Viacom's lagging stock price, which is down 10% this year - compared to sister company CBS, which is up more than 10% - his muscle-flexing didn't immediately cheer investors. Just after the announcement, Merrill Lynch's Jessica Reif Cohen, an influential entertainment industry research analyst , issued a critical report downgrading her rating on Viacom to "neutral" from "buy" because she said "significant uncertainty" remains about...
...with Tom Cruise and his Cruise-Wagner production company. (The star's partner, Paula Wagner, insisted that she and Tom had jumped out of their contract before they could be pushed.) "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount," harrumphed Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount's parent company Viacom, as if he were the provost of a starchy boys' school and Cruise a rambunctious pupil...
...Officials from Paramount and Viacom declined requests to elaborate on Redstone's comments to the Journal, or to react to Wagner's version of events. However, when told about her contention that she and Cruise walked away before being cut loose, a source close to the studio responded dismissively, "Whatever...