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Sumner Redstone: Empire Builder for the MTV Generation - The New York Times
Aug 12, 2020 2 mins, 9 secs

He embodied the impolite era of the media mogul, a time before streaming, when movie theaters and cable TV were all the rage.

Redstone belonged to the Age of the Media Mogul, a time before Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google, when street-smart executives like Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller and John Malone brawled in a bid to dominate the world’s screen time.

The swashbucklers have essentially ceded the Hollywood stage to a group of coolheaded executives who like to give the impression that they earn their billions more through their knowledge of algorithms than with the brutal tactics of corporate warfare.

But the executives who run the digital businesses that have come to dominate the entertainment world would not have gotten very far without the programs and films that were brought to market by ferocious moguls like Mr.

Redstone started with a string of drive-in movie theaters and became the main architect of ViacomCBS, the media giant that includes the CBS broadcast network, the cable channels Showtime and MTV, and the Paramount film studio.

By the time the younger Redstone joined the family business in 1954, car culture was king and drive-ins were all the rage.

The entertainment executives with alpha status were not mere exhibitors, but owners of the films that made the theaters come alive.

Its chaotic Times Square headquarters, a brightly lit playground filled with record execs and veejays, made him feel younger, he said.

Diller, the onetime chief executive of Paramount and the founding executive of the Fox television network.

Redstone arranged a merger with the video-rental chain Blockbuster and got some help from NYNEX, the company that eventually turned into Verizon.

14, 1994, he had taken control of Paramount in a $10 billion deal.

For the son of a onetime linoleum salesman who had grown up in a Boston tenement, Paramount epitomized American success.

Redstone eventually lived out the fantasy, holding court at his Beverly Park compound when he was not dining at the clubby Italian restaurant Dan Tana’s on Santa Monica Boulevard, where New York strip steak was served with a side of pasta.

If you were an executive in Redstone world, you agreed to a certain bargain: You would get a big title and the money to match it, but he would get the credit.

And so he went through executives like water: Frank Biondi, Tom Freston, Mel Karmazin ….

Viacom eventually had to get out of the home-video business; it was a disaster.

And then there is Paramount, which has often languished in last place among the major studios, with an anemic production slate and few major franchises

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