Sumner Redstone


Sumner Murray Redstone is an American businessman and media magnate. He is the majority owner and chairman of the board of the National Amusements theater chain. Through National Amusements, Redstone and his family are majority voting shareholders of ViacomCBS. According to Forbes, as of September 2015, he was worth US$5 billion.
Redstone was formerly the executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom. In February 2016, at age 92, Redstone resigned both chairmanships following a court-ordered examination by a geriatric psychiatrist. He was ultimately succeeded by Les Moonves at CBS and Philippe Dauman at Viacom.

Early life and education

Redstone was born to a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts, to Belle and Michael Rothstein. In 1940, at Sumner's behest, his father agreed to change the family surname from "Rothstein" to "Redstone". Michael Rothstein owned Northeast Theater Corporation in Dedham, Massachusetts and the Boston branch of the Latin Quarter Nightclub.
Redstone attended the Boston Latin School, from which he graduated first in his class. In 1944, he graduated from Harvard College, where he completed the studies for his baccalaureate in three years. Later, Redstone served as a 1st lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II with a team at the Signals Intelligence Service that decoded Japanese messages. After his military service, he worked in Washington, D.C., and attended Georgetown University Law Center. He transferred to Harvard Law School and received his law degree in 1947.
After completing law school, Redstone served as special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark and then worked for the United States Department of Justice Tax Division in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, and thereafter entered private practice. In 1954, he joined his father's theater chain, National Amusements and in 1967, he became CEO of the company. As the company grew, Redstone came to believe that content would become more important than distribution mechanisms: channels of distribution would always exist, but content would always be essential. He invested in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures, all of which turned over huge profits when he chose to sell their stock in the early 1980s.
On March 29, 1979, he suffered severe burns in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel, in Boston, but survived after thirty hours of extensive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Though he was warned that he might never be able to live a normal life again, eight years later he was fit enough to insist on playing tennis nearly every day and to launch a hostile takeover of Viacom. Redstone has discussed the story of surviving the fire as a reflection of his strong determination and will to live.

Career

Viacom

Looking for a new business venture, he set his sights on Viacom International, a company which he had already been buying stock in as an investment and was a spin-off of CBS in 1971 after the FCC ruled at the time that television networks could not syndicate programs following their network run. Viacom syndicated most of CBS's in-house productions, but also found syndicating other programs highly lucrative, including most of Carsey-Werner Productions' shows, as well as syndicating shows for other companies, and cable channels.
Viacom also owned MTV Networks, which owned MTV and Nickelodeon. In addition, other properties included Showtime Networks and The Movie Channel. Viacom acquired MTV Networks in 1985 for $550 million from Steve Ross' Warner Communications.
After a four-month hostile takeover in 1987, Redstone won voting control of Viacom and led a series of acquisitions to make Viacom one of the top players in modern media along with Bertelsmann, News Corporation, Time Warner, Sony, Disney, and NBC Universal.

Paramount Pictures

Redstone's next acquisition was the purchase of Paramount Communications, parent of Paramount Pictures in 1994. He engaged in a bidding war with Barry Diller and John Malone, and had to raise his bid three times. Some say that Redstone overpaid, but after he shed certain assets — the Madison Square Garden properties to Charles Dolan's Cablevision and Simon & Schuster's educational publishing units to Pearson PLC — for almost $4 billion, Redstone turned Viacom's expenditure into a substantial profit. Under Redstone's leadership, Paramount went on an almost ten-year streak of record performance, producing such films as Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Braveheart, and Forrest Gump and the creation of the hugely successful series of pictures.
Redstone replaced the team of Jonathan Dolgen and Sherry Lansing in 2004 after their nine-year winning streak ended. Along with the strong slate of films they oversaw, Dolgen and Lansing's accomplishments included: doubling the size of Paramount's music publishing division, Famous Music; expanding UCI Cinemas into 13 foreign countries; creating the Digital Cinema Initiatives standards body for the new digital film technology; and launching the UPN Network. The current Paramount Pictures consists only of the movie studio, the other groups having been sold or parceled out to other divisions.
Since arriving at Paramount in 2005, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brad Grey has led a return to fortune at the box office. He has overseen the creation or revitalization of several major franchises, including Transformers, Star Trek and Paranormal Activity. Paramount has also forged productive relationships with top-tier filmmakers and talent including J.J. Abrams, Michael Bay and Martin Scorsese. The 2010 Paramount slate achieved much success with Shutter Island and a True Grit remake, reaching the biggest box office totals in the storied careers of Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers, respectively. In addition, during Grey's tenure, Paramount launched its own worldwide releasing arm, Paramount Pictures International, and has released acclaimed films such as An Inconvenient Truth, Up in the Air, and There Will Be Blood.
The Paramount acquisition was only the tip of the iceberg. He purchased Blockbuster Entertainment, which included Aaron Spelling's production company and a huge library of films, much of which has been merged into Paramount Pictures. Blockbuster has now been spun off into its own independent entity. Redstone acquired CBS Corporation in 2000 and then spun it off as a separate company in 2005, taking with it all of Paramount's television shows and catalog. Following the CBS and Blockbuster Spinoffs, Viacom consists of MTV Networks, music publishing and Paramount Pictures.
In December 2005, Redstone announced that Paramount had agreed to buy DreamWorks SKG for an estimated $1.6 billion. The acquisition was completed on February 1, 2006. A subsequent financing brought Viacom's investment down to $700 million. The animation studio, DreamWorks Animation, was not included in the deal as it has been its own company since late 2004. However, Paramount had the rights to distribute films by DreamWorks Animation until 2013.
On June 1, 2012, Paramount Pictures renamed the Administration Building on the studio lot the Sumner Redstone Building in a dedication ceremony attended by employees of Paramount Pictures and Viacom.

CBS

One of Redstone's largest acquisitions came in the form of Viacom's former parent, CBS. Former Viacom President and COO Mel Karmazin proposed a merger to Redstone on favorable terms and after the merger completed in 2000, Viacom had some of the most diversified businesses imaginable. Viacom had assets in the form of broadcast networks, cable television networks, pay television, radio, outdoor advertising, motion pictures, and television production, and King World Productions, among others.
After CBS and Viacom split in 2006, Redstone remained chairman of both companies but two separate CEOs were appointed for each company.

Succession

Redstone's trusts made it clear that his daughter, Shari Redstone, was set to assume his role upon his death. However, a November 22, 2006, New York Times article indicated that Redstone was reconsidering his daughter's role. In 2007, they feuded publicly over issues of corporate governance and the future of the cinema chain.
Documents were made public which verify that, as part of a settlement from Sumner's first divorce, all of Sumner's stock is in irrevocable trusts that will be left for his grandchildren. On March 1, 2010, Sumner publicly confirmed that all of his stock would be left for his five grandchildren.
Redstone made arrangements to step down as CEO of Viacom in 2006. After Mel Karmazin resigned in 2004, two heirs apparent were named: Co-President and Co-COO Les Moonves and Co-President and Co-COO Tom Freston. After the Viacom split was approved by the board on June 14, 2005, Moonves headed CBS, and Freston headed the new Viacom, Inc.
On September 5, 2006, Redstone removed Freston as president and CEO of Viacom and replaced him with director and former Viacom counsel Philippe Dauman. Redstone also brought back former CFO Tom Dooley. This was surprising to many, as Freston had been seen by many as Redstone's heir apparent, and Redstone had touted that Freston would run the company after he retired. Redstone publicly stated that he let Freston go because of Viacom's lack of aggressiveness in the digital/online arena, lack of contact with investors, and a lackluster upfront at MTV Networks.
In February 2016, at age 92, after a court-ordered examination by a geriatric psychiatrist whose findings were not publicly disclosed, Redstone relinquished the chairmanship of CBS to Moonves and the chairmanship of Viacom to Dauman. In May 2016, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Redstone was mentally incompetent, although the judge stated it was "not in dispute that Redstone suffers from either mild or moderate dementia"; in addition to this, his speech is now severely impaired due to a bout with aspiration pneumonia in 2014. Two weeks later, another such lawsuit was filed in Massachusetts.

Holdings

Currently, Redstone owns over seventy percent of the voting interest of ViacomCBS. ViacomCBS is controlled by Redstone through National Amusements. Redstone sold his holdings of Midway Games, of over 89 percent, in December 2008.

Books

Redstone's autobiography, A Passion to Win, was published in 2001 by Viacom's Simon & Schuster. This book details Redstone's life from a young boy in Boston to the difficult takeover of Viacom and the problems he overcame in purchasing and managing both Blockbuster Video and Paramount Pictures. The book also recounts the CBS merger.
Viacom's broadcasting properties at the time of A Passion to Win's release included several radio stations and two TV stations: WBZ CBS 4, which had just become a CBS O&O through a merger with Westinghouse four years before Viacom and CBS merged, and WSBK UPN 38 in Redstone's hometown, Boston.

Political views

A longtime Democratic supporter, with a history of donating to many Democratic campaigns, including regular donations to Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Redstone endorsed Republican George W. Bush over Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election, allegedly because he argued that Bush would be better for his company and the economy. Despite this public endorsement, he donated money to Kerry during the primaries and was involved in the Rathergate scandal meant to hurt Bush's reelection.

Philanthropy

Sumner Redstone has contributed over $150 million to various philanthropic causes.
In 1947, he married Phyllis Gloria Raphael. In 1999, they divorced. They had two children: Brent Redstone and Shari Redstone. Three years after his divorce, he married Paula Fortunato, a former primary school teacher 39 years his junior. Sumner Redstone filed for divorce from her on October 17, 2008. Their divorce was finalized on January 22, 2009. Redstone owns a house in the Beverly Park area of Los Angeles, which he purchased in 2002 for $14.5 million.
In July 2010, Redstone was caught on tape trying to find the source of an apparently embarrassing leak within MTV. Redstone offered money and protection to a journalist if he would give up his source. Redstone had been pushing MTV management to give more airtime to the band the Electric Barbarellas. On the message, Redstone tells the reporter that "we're not going to kill" the source, adding "We just want to talk to him". The 87-year-old Redstone also told the reporter he would be "well rewarded and well protected" if he would reveal the source. Peter Lauria told NBC's Today show he would not do it. Viacom Inc. spokesman, Carl Folta confirmed to Today that it was Redstone's voice on the message and said he had made a mistake. A Viacom source told the New York Post, "Sumner wants to be consequential. Sumner is really proud of what he did. This guy is loving it… He likes people to know he's still alive".
In August 2015, Redstone split with his live-in girlfriend, Sydney Holland, after five years together.
In January 2019, Redstone and his family settled with his former live-in companion Manuela Herzer. According to MarketWatch, "Herzer agreed to pay back $3.25 million of the tens of millions of gifts that Redstone gave her", and "the wide-ranging agreement ends all litigation between the two sides, who have been battling in the courts since the fall of 2015, when Redstone kicked Herzer out of his Beverly Hills mansion, replaced her as his health-care agent and wrote her out of his estate planning."