As CEO of Viacom, Phillippe Dauman was widely detested and probably incompetent, but he was the favorite son of controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, who, at 93 years old, has lately had his hands full with arranging threesomes before he croaks. Alas, today Dauman was potentially removed from Viacom’s board—but by…
• Tough times for Sumner Redstone: His debt issues haven't been resolved, he's feuding with his daughter, and he's a lot poorer, too. Once worth $8 billion, "today it is questionable as to whether he is worth even $1 billion." [NYT]
• It's about five years too late, but the music industry has finally decided to stop…
♦ Keith Olbermann has signed a new, four-year contract with MSNBC. He'll earn $7.5 million a year, which is 25 percent less than what his arch-nemesis Bill O'Reilly is collecting from Fox News. [TVDecoder]
♦ MSNBC's new slogan—"Experience the power of change"—has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama's…
Desperate mogul Sumner Redstone may be able pay off some of his $1.6 billion in debt before half of it comes due in December. The solution: Sell off Midway Games, money-bleeding maker of classic arcade hits like Rampage, Spy Hunter and Mortal Kombat. Some $800 million in cash infusions for Midway were a major…
Sumner Redstone was the first major media mogul to get slammed by the economic downturn, and the Viacom chief's troubles continue. His pending divorce and the comical failure of his video game business are mere distractions. His bigger problem is that his company has $1.6 billion in debt to deal with, and Redstone is …
Old Viacom overseer Sumner Redstone announced last week that he had to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of his company's stock, after the Wall Street crash left him short on cash to back a huge loan. Then this week, out of the blue, his daughter Shari Redstone, who runs the movie theater portion of National…
♦ How did Hank Paulson's negotiations with the CEOs of the nation's largest banks go down on Monday? There were no negotiations, actually. He handed them a term sheet and told them to sign it on the spot if they knew what was good for them. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ Whether or not the federal government make actually make money…
Have Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and daughter Shari resolved this summer's feud? Maybe not! "[A]ccording to several people close to the two, relations between father and daughter are anything but lovey-dovey, and their conflict appears very much alive." [LAT]
While we were secretly hoping that the ongoing feud between filicidal Viacom overlord Sumner Redstone and traitorous offspring Shari would end with an executive futilely attempting to pry the ageless patriarch's bony fingers from his rebellion-fomenting daughter's throat, it now seems that their battle might end…
