Sumner Redstone - Biography

Last Editor: darkfire_is				Sumner Redstone Biography -   Name : Sumner Redstone Profession : Chairman of the Board and controlling shareholder of the Viacom and CBS Corporation media conglomerates Birth name : Sumner Murray Rothstein Personal quotes : "Possessions don't count. Achievement counts. Winning counts." "Success isn't built on success; it's built on failure, frustration and Spouse : Paula Fortunato (6 April 2003 - present) Phyllis Gloria Raphael (1947 - 26 July 2002) (divorced) 2 children

Sumner Redstone Trivia -

He owns the Showcase Cinemas theater chain. Chairman/CEO, Viacom Children: Brent Dale, and Shari Ellin. Harvard University, B.A., 1944, LLB., 1947. In 1979, he survived a Boston hotel fire with burns over half his body by clinging to a third-floor window with his severely burned right hand until firefighters could reach him. His right arm hangs loosely, and the hand is gnarled with purplish skin. Graduated first in his class from public prep school Boston Latin. Originally attended Georgetown University Law School but transferred to Harvard Law School and received his LL.B degree from that institution. Has an autobiography, co-written with Peter Knobler, titled A Passion To Win, ISBN 0684862247 (published by Simon & Schuster) He left Harvard College after only barely completing three years of study when he was recruited by Professor Reschauer (later a U.S. Ambassador to Japan) to decode messages of the Japanese during World War II. When he finished his tenure with the U.S. Army, the Harvard Corporation granted him his Bachelor's degree. Was recruited by Robert D. Reischauer (a Harvard Professor and future U.S. Ambassador to Japan) while an undergraduate student at Harvard University to decode Japanese codes during World War II. Was originally a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice before he left to join his father's theater chain, which evolved into National Amusements, the present-day parent holding company of Viacom.

Sumner Redstone Detailed Biography -

Sumner Murray Redstone, born Sumner Murray Rothstein, May 27, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts, is Chairman of the Board and controlling shareholder of the Viacom and CBS Corporation media conglomerates. He attended the prestigious Boston Latin School and graduated at the top of his class, which won him a position at Harvard College. He completed his B.A. in three years, and the Board of Overseers at Harvard conferred to him his degree. Later, Redstone served in World War II, decoding Japanese messages for the United States Army. Upon completion of his Army service, he worked in Washington, D.C. and attended Georgetown University Law School. He chose to transfer into Harvard Law School and received his LL.B from that institution. 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 management operation, what is now known as National Amusements. As Redstone grew National Amusements, he believed that content would become more important than distribution mechanisms. There would always exist channels of distribution (albeit in varied forms), but content was always going to be necessary (his famous quote is "content is king!"). He then made investments in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth-Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (the latter of the 4 of which Redstone's Viacom would buy in the 1990's-see below), all of which turned over huge profits when he chose to sell the stock in the early 1980s. Looking for a new business to develop, he set his sights on Viacom International, a company that 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 that a studio owning cable channels would be a conflict of interest, which would change when Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting in 1995). 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 General Electric & Vivendi's NBC-Universal, News Corporation, Time Warner, Sony, and The Walt Disney Company). Redstone's next acquisition came in the form of the purchase of Paramount Communications, parent of Paramount Pictures, in 1993, which he fought over with Barry Diller (former board member of Vivendi Universal and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp) and John Malone (president of TCI/Liberty Media), where he had to raise his bid three times. Some say that Redstone overpaid, but after he shed certain assets (the Madison Square Garden properties to Chuck Dolan's Cablevision and Simon & Schuster's educational publishing units to Pearson plc for almost $4 billion), Redstone turned Paramount's expenditure into a substantial profit. The Paramount acquisition was only the tip of the iceberg. Redstone 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. In December of 2005, Redstone announced that Paramount was going to buy Dreamworks SKG for an estimated 1.6 billion dollars