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Sumner Redstone: Paramount Television
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Sumner Redstone is one of the most powerful media moguls of the late 20th century. In his capacity as owner and chief executive officer of Viacom, Inc., Redstone lords over Hollywood's Paramount Pictures television and motion picture factory; a handful of cable TV networks including MTV, The Movie Channel, Showtime, Nickelodeon, and VH1; several radio and TV stations; and a TV production and syndication business that owns the lucrative syndication rights to Roseanne, A Different World, I Love Lucy, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, and The Cosby Show. Viacom ... has produced such prime time fare as Matlock and Jake and the Fatman.
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Still smarting from the missed chance at MySpace, Redstone is trying to hit his stride with Web entertainment. Overdrive, the online purveyor of MTV’s cable content, has failed to make a splash, as have most of Redstone’s internet properties. He’ll ... have to work harder to integrate DreamWorks. The film studio is his most important recent acquisition, and a tug of war for creative control has gotten the Paramount-DreamWorks relationship off to a strained start.—Megan Angelo
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Redstone, meanwhile, required that Paramount make movies developed by its Viacom cousins, MTV and Nickelodeon, against initial opposition from the reluctant partners. But the arrangement worked, and Paramount and MTV made a string of profitable movies, while Nickelodeon did very well with its Rugrats movies.
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In August 2006 Redstone ended a lucrative contract with actor Tom Cruise due to "behavior unacceptable to Paramount". This surprised some, as Cruise was their number one box office star. Some say it is because the film Mission: Impossible III underperformed at the box office, although it was still a hit at close to US$400 million worldwide revenues. Others say this is a warning to what some see as spoiled and overpaid actors.
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Speaking of changing behavior, Redstone thinks Tom Cruise has changed his. In August 2006, Redstone cut Paramount's 14-year relationship with the actor, calling his couch-bouncing on "Oprah" and other emotional displays "unacceptable."
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The 1993 takeover of Paramount Pictures, for instance, was nearly derailed by a rival bid from Mr Redstone's so-called "best friend on the West Coast", Barry Diller. The acquisition became a vicious contest of bid and counter-bid, lawsuit and counter-lawsuit, with allegations of wiretapping, insider dealing and office break-ins that Mr Redstone later described as the "deal from hell".
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