Viacom Inc. is an American global mass media company with interests primarily in, but not
limited to, cinema and cable television. It is the world's fourth largest broadcasting
and cable company in terms of revenue. Voting control of Viacom is held by National Amusements,
Inc., a privately owned theater company controlled in turn by billionaire Sumner Redstone. Redstone
also holds, via National Amusements, a controlling stake in CBS Corporation.
The current Viacom was created on December 31, 2005, as a spinoff from CBS Corporation,
which changed its name from Viacom to CBS at the same time. CBS, not Viacom, retains
control of the over-the-air broadcasting, TV production, outdoor advertising, subscription
pay television and publishing assets previously owned by the pre-split company. Predecessor
firms of Viacom include Gulf+Western, which later became Paramount Communications Inc.,
and Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Comprising BET Networks, MTV Networks, and
Paramount Pictures, Viacom operates approximately 170 networks reaching approximately 700 million
subscribers in 160 countries.
History Early years
In March 2005, the prior Viacom announced plans of looking into splitting the company
into two publicly traded companies because of not only a stagnating stock price but also
the rivalry between Leslie Moonves and Tom Freston, longtime heads of MTV Networks. In
addition, the company was facing issues after MTV was banned from producing any more Super
Bowl halftime shows after the Super Bowl Halftime Show controversy of 2004.
After the departure of Mel Karmazin in 2004, Sumner 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 was seen as a creative solution to the matter of replacing him. It was also intended
to provide alternative investments that would be more appealing to different investors:
one a high cash flow, lower growth company that could afford to pay a substantial dividend
and the other a growing company that would have greater investment opportunities and
therefore would not be expected to pay a dividend. A new company, the present Viacom, was created
and was headed by Freston. It comprises BET Networks, MTV Networks, and Paramount Pictures
Corporation. 2000s
2005 In June, Viacom announced its purchase of
Neopets, a virtual pet website, along with GameTrailers, GoCityKids, and IFILM. That
December, Paramount announced it would acquire DreamWorks. All indications were that the
whole of DreamWorks—both live-comedy film and TV studios, albeit not the DreamWorks
archive nor the animated unit—would remain owned by Viacom, even though CBS acquired
Paramount's own TV studio. 2006
On February 1, Paramount completed its long-awaited acquisition of DreamWorks. On April 24, Viacom
obtained Xfire. In August, just hours before announcing its most recent quarterly earnings,
Viacom announced that it had acquired Atom Entertainment for $200 million. In September,
Viacom acquired game developer Harmonix for $175 million.
2007 In February, Viacom ordered leaked copyrighted
video clips be taken off the videosharing service YouTube for copyright reasons. 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. On May 21, Viacom entered into a 50–50 joint
venture with Indian media company Network 18 to form Viacom 18 which will house Viacom's
existing channels in India: MTV, VH1 and Nick as well as Network 18's Bollywood movie business.
All future Viacom content for India and new ventures such as a Hindi entertainment channel
and a Hindi movie channel would be housed in this joint venture.
On December 19, Viacom signed a five year, $500 million contract with Microsoft that
included content sharing and advertisement. The deal allowed Microsoft to license many
shows from Viacom owned cable television and film studios for use on Xbox Live and MSN.
The deal also made Viacom a preferred publisher partner for casual game development and distribution
through MSN and Windows. On the advertisement side of the deal, Microsoft's Atlas ad-serving
division became the exclusive provider of previously unsold advertising inventory on
Viacom owned web sites. Also, Microsoft purchased a large amount of advertising on Viacom owned
broadcasts and online networks. Finally, Microsoft will also collaborate on promotions and sponsorships
for MTV and BET award shows, two Viacom owned cable networks.
2008 On December 4, Viacom announced layoffs of
850 personnel, or 7% of their workforce. At the end of the year, Time Warner Cable and
Viacom's MTV Networks could not come to terms for the renewal of any Viacom channel beyond
the end of year. Time Warner Cable's operations include New York City and Los Angeles, with
Bright House including the Tampa Bay and Orlando markets, both top-20 markets. This blackout
was narrowly avoided when a zero-hour deal was reached shortly after 12 Midnight ET on
January 1, 2009. 2009
On December 7, Viacom sold its stake in MTV Brasil to Grupo Abril along with rights to
the brand. Details on the deal were not disclosed. 2010s
2010 On May 5, 2010, The Hollywood Reporter revealed
that Viacom's Comedy Central "is developing a whole animated series around Jesus Christ"
who, according to the network, wants to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic
father". 2011
In February 2011, Hulu and Viacom announced the return of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
and The Colbert Report to Hulu, along with shows from the Viacom library. Nickelodeon's
shows are not part of this deal. Also that month, Viacom invested in Rainbow
S.r.l., an Italian children's animated and consumer products company best known for the
Winx Club franchise. Later, in October 2011, Viacom purchased a
majority stake in Bellator Fighting Championships. Spike TV plans to air Bellator in 2013, after
the rights to the UFC library ends in 2012. On December 1, the company stopped trading
on the New York Stock Exchange and began listing its securities on NASDAQ instead. The stock
ticker symbols are the same as that used while the company was on the NYSE.
2012 On July 10, 2012, during contract negotiations
over raising carrier rates the U.S. satellite TV provider, DirecTV's executives approached
Viacom with a new proposal and a request to continue broadcasting 17 of Viacom's television
networks during talks, but received no response and thus Viacom ceased transmission to DirecTV's
20 million subscribers. On July 11, in a counter response to DirecTV advising its subscribers
to view original programming from the affected networks online, Viacom scaled back access
to recent episodes of Viacom-owned program content available to the websites of its networks.
Viacom described this as a "temporary slimdown" until a new carriage deal with DirecTV was
reached. Viacom and DirecTV reached an agreement on July 20 to return the interrupted programming.
In 2012 CEO Phillip Dauman began to report Viacom's intentions to bundle past programming
and make it available on-demand via services like Hulu.
2014 On April 1, 2014, Cable One removed 15 channels
owned by Viacom off after the two companies failed to reach an agreement. Channels were
replaced with other networks including BBC America, Sprout, SundanceTV, IFC, Investigation
Discovery, TV One, National Geographic Channel, and TheBlaze.
On May 1, 2014, Viacom announced it had agreed to take over the British broadcaster Channel
5 from Northern & Shell, the media group owned by the British newspaper publisher Richard
Desmond. Viacom becomes the first American media company to take over a British broadcaster
with a public service remit.The Company officially took over Channel 5 on July 12, 2014.
Copyright complaints against YouTube
In February 2007, Viacom sent upwards of 100,000 DMCA takedown notices to the video-sharing
site YouTube. Of the 100,000 notices, approximately 60–70 non-infringing videos were removed
under the auspices of copyright infringement. On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a US$1 billion
legal claim 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. The complaint contended that
almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's programming were made available on YouTube
and that these clips had collectively been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
In July 2008, the case generated controversy when District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that
YouTube was required to hand over data detailing the viewing habits of every user who had ever
watched videos on the site. Judge Stanton rejected Viacom's request for YouTube to hand
over the source code of its search engine system, saying that the code was a trade secret.
Google and Viacom later agreed to allow Google to anonymize all the data before handing it
over to Viacom. On June 23, 2010, Judge Stanton ruled in Google's
favor in a motion for summary judgment, holding that Google was protected by provisions of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, notwithstanding evidence of intentional copyright infringement.
Viacom announced its intention to appeal the ruling.
On April 5, 2012, the ruling was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for
the Second Circuit. Writing for a two-judge panel of the Second Circuit, Judge José A.
Cabranes concluded that "a reasonable jury could find that YouTube had actual knowledge
or awareness of specific infringing activity on its website". Eric Goldman, a professor
at the Santa Clara University School of Law, expressed concern that the ruling would negatively
affect startups, by making them "more hair-trigger on taking down news or content, for fear that
failure to do so will be held against them by content providers".
Wiki-PR Viacom is one of the companies that uses the
services of Wiki-PR, a public relations firm specialized in editing of Wikipedia that is
accused of subverting Wikipedia content for business interest.
Viacom International
As with the old Viacom, the current company owns Viacom International, 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. Corporate governance
The previous board of directors of Viacom were George S. Abrams, David Andelman, Joseph
Califano, Jr., William Cohen, Philippe Dauman, Alan C. 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 S. Abrams, Philippe
Dauman, Thomas E. Dooley, Ellen V. Futter, Robert Kraft, Alan Greenberg, Charles Phillips,
Sumner Redstone, Shari Redstone, Frederic Salerno, and William Schwartz. As of 2010,
the Board consists of George Abrams, Philippe Dauman, Thomas E. Dooley, Alan Greenberg,
Robert Kraft, Blythe McGarvie, Charles Phillips, Shari E. Redstone, Sumner M. Redstone, Frederic
Salerno, and William Schwartz. Assets
Film production and distribution MTV Films
Nickelodeon Movies Paramount Animation
Paramount Pictures Viacom International
Television networks
Recording Labels Comedy Central Records
Nick Records Video gaming
GameTrailers New media
MTV New Media See also
List of conglomerates Viacom
Gulf and Western Industries
References
External links Official website
Ketupa.net – Viacom Viacom information by Hoover's
Viacom profile by Yahoo! Split documentation – SEC filing on Form
S-4 from October 5, 2005 describing the split.