|
|
| Birth Name(s) : Sumner Redstone |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
|
Partner:
|
| Profession:
Public Figure |
| << Add Sumner Redstone To Your Favorites |
Sumner Redstone Listing
|
Full Sumner Redstone Biography
Sumner Murray Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein on May 27, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts) is majority owner and Chairman of the Board of the National Amusements theater chain. Through National Amusements, he is majority owner of Midway Games, Viacom and CBS Corporation.
After completing law school, Redstone worked primarily in Washington, D.C., working at first for the U.S. Department of Justice in San Francisco and then going into private practice. However, after a few years in practice, he chose to join his father's theater chain.
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 that television networks could not syndicate programs they produced. Viacom syndicated most of CBS's programs, but also made a lot of money from syndicating other programs, including most of Carsey-Werner Productions' shows (The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and A Different World), as well as syndicating shows for other companies (Columbia Pictures Television's All in the Family was one notable example), and cable channels (Nickelodeon's Double Dare and Finders Keepers (co-syndicated with Fox Television Stations) were two examples).
Viacom also owned MTV Networks (formerly known as Warner-AMEX Satellite Entertainment), which owned MTV and Nickelodeon. In addition, other included properties included Showtime Networks (a similar pay-television network to HBO and Cinemax) and The Movie Channel. Viacom acquired MTV Networks in 1985 for $550 million from Steve Ross' Warner Communications. (WCI bought American Express' share and then sold the entire entity to Viacom, as they felt that they could not make a lot of money from the venture and the bias of a studio owning cable channels would be a conflict of interest. The studio's stance changed in 1995, when as Time Warner it bought Turner Broadcasting.)
After a 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, General Electric & Vivendi's NBC-Universal, News Corporation, Time Warner, Sony, and The Walt Disney Company).
One of Redstone's largest acquisitions came in the form of Viacom's former parent, CBS. Former Viacom President & COO Mel Karmazin (who was then the President of CBS) 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 (CBS and UPN), cable television networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, MTV2, Comedy Central, BET, Nick at Nite, Noggin/The N, TV Land, CMT, and Spike TV), pay television (Showtime and The Movie Channel), radio (Infinity Broadcasting, which produced the immensely popular Howard Stern' radio shows), outdoor advertising, motion pictures (Paramount Pictures), and television production (Spelling Entertainment, Paramount Television, and Big Ticket Entertainment), and King World Productions (a syndication unit, which notably syndicates the runaway daytime hit, The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as Dr. Phil, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy!), among others.
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 & Co-COO Leslie Moonves (who was #2 to Karmazin at CBS; he was the former head of Warner Bros. Television and before that, Lorimar Television) and Co-President & Co-COO Tom Freston (who had been President & CEO of MTV Networks since 1987 and had been with the company since the formation of MTV Networks' precursor company, Warner-AMEX Satellite Entertainment). Since the Viacom split, Moonves has headed CBS, and Freston had headed the new Viacom, Inc.
However, the Midway holdings has drawn the ire of the National Football League, as Midway's "Blitz: The League", a game using a fictional league (previous versions had an NFL license), featured gratuitous violence, excessive amounts of sex, and material which the NFL would have rejected, all while CBS has NFL rights.
In 2006 CBS Corporation's CBS Radio unit sued Howard Stern and Sumner has become the butt of criticism on his show along with CBS CEO Leslie Moonves. Redstone has acknowledged that Stern saw him in a restaurant in New York, and said "I'll be back," but added that Stern was joking.
Sumner is a noted philanthropist. He recently contributed $500,000 to the Cambodian Children's Fund, a nonprofit program that provides a wide range of critical health and educational services to impoverished and abused children in the capital city of Phnom Penh. Redstone's contribution will be used to create the Sumner M. Redstone Child Rescue Center, a stand-alone facility scheduled to open this fall for children 5 to 16.
In 1979, at the age of 56, Sumner survived a Boston hotel fire by hanging onto a third story ledge with one arm while badly burned over most of his body.
Corporate directors: David R. Andelman · Joseph A. Califano, Jr. · William S. Cohen · Philippe Dauman · Charles K. Gifford · Bruce S. Gordon · Leslie Moonves · Shari Redstone · Sumner Redstone · Ann N. Reese · Judith A. Sprieser |
|
Sumner Redstone Promotions
|
| Add Sumner Redstone Biography (SuperUSERS) + |
| Add Sumner Redstone Review/Comment
|
HQ Sumner Redstone Pictures (1) | Random Sumner Redstone Picture
|
| << Back to the Sumner Redstone Homepage |
|
