Viacom

Encyclopedia : V : VI : VIA : Viacom

''This page is about the post-2005 Viacom. For the company known as Viacom prior to 2006 (and now known as CBS Corporation), see Viacom (1971-2005).

Viacom is an American-based media conglomerate with various worldwide interests in cable and satellite television networks (MTV Networks and BET), video gaming (part of Sega of America), and movie production and distribution (the Paramount Pictures movie studio and DreamWorks). Tom Freston is the President and Chief Executive Officer; Sumner Redstone is the Chairman and, through National Amusements, majority shareholder of Viacom. The new Viacom is considered to be the "high-growth" side of the much larger former Viacom. The former Viacom was renamed CBS Corporation, from which this firm was split off in 2006.

Contents

1 History
2 Corporate governance
3 Assets
4 Footnote
5 See also
6 External links

History

In March 2005, the prior Viacom (now known as CBS Corporation) announced plans of looking into splitting the company into two publicly traded companies. The company was not only dealing with a stagnating stock price, but also the rivalry between Leslie Moonves and Tom Freston, longtime heads of CBS and MTV Networks respectively. After the departure of Mel Karmazin in 2004, Redstone, who served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, decided to split the offices of President and Chief Operating Officer between Moonves and Freston. Redstone was set to retire in the near future, and a split would be a creative solution to the matter of replacing him.

The split was approved by Viacom's board June 14, 2005, approved December 31, 2005, and effectively undid the Viacom/CBS merger of 1999. The original Viacom changed its name to CBS Corporation and is headed by Moonves. It now includes Viacom's "slow growth businesses", namely CBS, UPN (Which will merge with The WB in the 2006-07 television season, forming The CW Network), CBS Radio, Simon & Schuster, Viacom Outdoor, Showtime, and most television production assets. These, according to some analysts, were suffocating the growth of the MTV Networks cable businesses. (The split was structured such that CBS Corporation is actually the company previously known as Viacom.) At the time of the split, CBS Corporation also was also given control of Paramount Parks. CBS sold Paramount Parks to amusement parks management company Cedar Fair, L.P. on June 30, 2006.

A new company, the present Viacom, was also spun-off and is headed by Freston. It is comprised of MTV Networks, BET Networks, Paramount's movie studio, and Paramount Pictures' home entertainment operations. These businesses are categorized as the high-growth businesses (MTV Networks and BET Networks in particular), and if they were split into a separate company, it could infuse new capital to allow for future acquisitions and expansion. Sumner Redstone still controls 71 percent of the voting stock of both companies and is the chairman of both companies.

In June 2005, Viacom announced its purchase of Neopets, a virtual pet website. That December, Paramount announced it would acquire DreamWorks. All indications are that the whole of DreamWorks - both film and TV studios, albeit not the DreamWorks archive, which was sold to a group lead by George Soros in March 2006 - will remain owned by Viacom, even though CBS acquired Paramount's own TV studio. On February 1, 2006, Paramount completed its long-awaited acquisition of DreamWorks, welcoming them to the Viacom family. As of April 24, 2006, Viacom has obtained Xfire.

The new Viacom still uses the moniker Viacom International Inc., which was previously used by the old Viacom, on its copyright notices on Viacom's corporate website and its cable networks.

Corporate governance

The previous board of directors of Viacom were George Abrams, Vincent Erazo, David Andelman, Joseph Califano, Jr., William Cohen, Philippe Dauman, Alan Greenberg, Charles Phillips, Shari Redstone, Sumner Redstone, Frederic Salerno, William Schwartz, and Robert D. Walter.

Following the Viacom/CBS split, the Viacom board consisted of George Abrams, Philippe Dauman, Thomas E. Dooley, Tom Freston, Ellen V. Futter, Robert Kraft, Alan Greenberg, Charles Phillips, Sumner Redstone (Chairman), Shari Redstone (non-executive Vice-Chair), Frederic Salerno, and William Schwartz.

Assets

This is a summary of the main Viacom divisions. For detailed assets see List of assets owned by Viacom.

Film Production and Distribution: Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Republic Pictures
Television Networks: MTV Networks (including MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, VH1, CMT, Spike TV and others); BET
Television Production and Television Distribution: DreamWorks Television
Video Gaming: Sega of America, Xfire

Footnote

External links

[Viacom website]
[Ketupa.net - Viacom]
[Viacom information] by Hoover's
[Viacom profile] by Yahoo!
[Split documentation] - SEC filing on Form S-4 from October 5, 2005 describing the split.

Viacom Inc.

Annual Revenue: .3 billion USD ( 10% 3Q 2005) | Employees: 38,350 | Stock Symbol: NYSE: [VIAB] | Website: [www.viacom.com]

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.