Viacom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

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 Inc.

Type	Public (NYSE: VIAB, VNV)
Founded	2006^[1]
Headquarters	New York, New York, USA
Key people	Sumner Redstone, Executive Chairman & Founder (through National Amusements, owns a controlling amount of voting shares) Philippe Dauman, President & CEO
Industry	Cable TV, Motion Pictures
Products	MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, more...
Revenue	$9.609 Billion USD (2005)[1]
Net income	$1.256 Billion USD (2005)
Employees	9,500 (2006)
Website	www.viacom.com

Viacom (NYSE: VIA) (NYSE: VIAb) is an American media conglomerate with various worldwide interests in cable and satellite television networks (MTV Networks and BET), and movie production and distribution (the Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks movie studios). Sumner Redstone is the Chairman and, through National Amusements, the parent of Viacom, majority shareholder.

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 on December 31, 2005. CBS, not Viacom, retains control of the over-the-air broadcasting, TV production, and publishing assets formerly owned by the larger company. However, National Amusements remains the common majority shareholder of both firms.

1 History
- 1.1 2007
2 Copyright compliants against YouTube
3 Joost
4 Viacom International
5 Corporate governance
6 Assets
7 Footnote
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] 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, The CW (formerly The WB and UPN), CBS Radio, Simon & Schuster, CBS Outdoor, Showtime, CBS Records, CBS Paramount Television 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 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 was 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 led by George Soros in March 2006 - (nor the animated unit, which was not part of the deal) 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. As of April 24, 2006, Viacom has obtained Xfire. In September 2006, Viacom acquired game developer Harmonix for $175 million dollars. In August 2006, just hours before announcing its most recent quarterly earnings, Viacom announced that it had acquired Atom Entertainment for $200 million.

[edit] 2007

In February Viacom ordered leaked copyrighted video clips be taken off of the videosharing service YouTube due to claims of noncompensation for the violation of their own copyright. On February 21 Viacom publicly announced they would be offering free online access to their own material through Silicon Valley's distributor Joost thanks to a thorough content licensing deal.

[edit] Copyright compliants against YouTube

In February, Viacom sent upwards of 100,000 DMCA takedown notices to the video-sharing site YouTube, alleging large-scale copyright infringement. Of the 100,000, approximately 60-70 non-infringing videos were erroneously removed under the auspices of copyright infringement.^[2].

On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a US $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube alleging massive copyright infringement, alleging that users frequently uploaded copyrighted material to YouTube - enough to cause a hit in revenue for Viacom and a gain in advertisement revenue for YouTube.^[3] Some view Viacom as conflicted since Viacom's own iFilm property has been displaying others' copyrighted works without compensation/permission as well. However, according to the company, video uploaded to iFilm is "screened by iFilm employees prior to posting, to ensure that copyrighted, pornographic or other restricted content is not posted to the site".^[4] In its suit, Viacom is asking for implementation of similar screening by YouTube.

[edit] Joost

This free service, which requires the consumer to download a program for viewing material on their computer, is set to launch internationally by the summer of '07.

According to the New York Times online publication site, among the Viacom networks that will provide programming to Joost are MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Spike TV, Logo and BET. Paramount Pictures, another division of Viacom, will provide full-length movies.

Apart from the Viacom offerings, programs from the National Geographic Channel and music from the Warner Music catalog will be available. At present, it is also known Joost is currently negotiating with other media companies to acquire additional content.

[edit] Viacom International

As with the old Viacom, the current company owns a subsidiary, Viacom International Inc., which is the formal owner of copyrights associated with Viacom's corporate website and its cable networks. This division now owns the rights to a majority of Elvis Presley films made for Paramount Pictures, such as Blue Hawaii and King Creole.

It also continues to focus on its own in-house productions made for its various networks (MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, etc.) -these programs include Dora the Explorer, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, LazyTown, SpongeBob SquarePants, Catscratch, The Hills and Behind The Music.

[edit] 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.

As of September 5, 2006 Tom Freston has resigned from the company. He is replaced by Philippe P. Dauman.

On February 2, 2007 Viacom demanded that Youtube remove more than 100,000 videos for violation of Viacom's copyright. Later that month, the company entered into a deal with Joost to distribute content from properties including MTV Networks, BET and film studio Paramount Pictures.