The King of Content
Published on 9. August 2018
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-06-265409-0 (ISBN)
Description
The remarkable story of Sumner Redstone, his family legacy, and the battles for all he controlled.
Sumner Murray Redstone (1923-2020), who lived by the credo "content is king," leveraged his father's chain of drive-in movie theaters into one of the world's greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers designed to ensure his permanent control. Over the course of this meteoric rise, he made his share of enemies and feuded with nearly every member of his family.
In The King of Content, Keach Hagey deconstructs Redstone's rise from Boston's West End through Harvard Law School to the highest echelons of American business. The ninety-seven-year-old mogul's life became a tabloid soap opera, the center of acrimonious legal battles throughout his vast holdings, which included Paramount Pictures and two of the largest public media companies, Viacom and CBS. At the heart of these lawsuits was Redstone's tumultuous love life and complicated relationship with his children. Redstone's daughter, Shari, has emerged as his de facto successor, but only after she ousted his closest confidant in a fierce power struggle.
Yet Redstone's assets face an existential threat that goes beyond his family, disgruntled ex-girlfriends, or even the management of his companies: the changing nature of media consumption. As more and more people cut their cable cords, CBS, with its focus on sports and broadcast TV, has held steady, while Viacom, with its once-great cable channels like MTV and Nickelodeon, has suffered a precipitous fall. As their rivals merge, the question is whether Shari's push to undo her father's last big strategic maneuver and recombine CBS and Viacom will be enough to shore up their future.
A biography and corporate whodunit filled with surprising details, The King of Content investigates Redstone's impact on business and popular culture, as well as the family feuds, corporate battles, and questionable alliances that go back decades-all laid bare in this authoritative book.
Sumner Murray Redstone (1923-2020), who lived by the credo "content is king," leveraged his father's chain of drive-in movie theaters into one of the world's greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers designed to ensure his permanent control. Over the course of this meteoric rise, he made his share of enemies and feuded with nearly every member of his family.
In The King of Content, Keach Hagey deconstructs Redstone's rise from Boston's West End through Harvard Law School to the highest echelons of American business. The ninety-seven-year-old mogul's life became a tabloid soap opera, the center of acrimonious legal battles throughout his vast holdings, which included Paramount Pictures and two of the largest public media companies, Viacom and CBS. At the heart of these lawsuits was Redstone's tumultuous love life and complicated relationship with his children. Redstone's daughter, Shari, has emerged as his de facto successor, but only after she ousted his closest confidant in a fierce power struggle.
Yet Redstone's assets face an existential threat that goes beyond his family, disgruntled ex-girlfriends, or even the management of his companies: the changing nature of media consumption. As more and more people cut their cable cords, CBS, with its focus on sports and broadcast TV, has held steady, while Viacom, with its once-great cable channels like MTV and Nickelodeon, has suffered a precipitous fall. As their rivals merge, the question is whether Shari's push to undo her father's last big strategic maneuver and recombine CBS and Viacom will be enough to shore up their future.
A biography and corporate whodunit filled with surprising details, The King of Content investigates Redstone's impact on business and popular culture, as well as the family feuds, corporate battles, and questionable alliances that go back decades-all laid bare in this authoritative book.
Reviews / Votes
"The power struggles that have surrounded Viacom and CBS are like the background noise of the business news pages -- seemingly always there, yet somehow not rising to attention unless you're closely listening for it. Yet it is an epic story that takes a book to examine, one filled with legal conflicts, boardroom battles, angry ex-girlfriends, family drama and a 95-year-old media mogul whose health, Hagey wrote in April in the Wall Street Journal, where she is a reporter, "has declined so significantly he cannot speak much beyond grunts." It also promises more than just the tabloid soap opera business story, but a look at how much media consumption and its industry is changing." - Washington Post"The power struggles that have surrounded Viacom and CBS are like the background noise of the business news pages -- seemingly always there, yet somehow not rising to attention unless you're closely listening for it. Yet it is an epic story that takes a book to examine, one filled with legal conflicts, boardroom battles, angry ex-girlfriends, family drama and a 95-year-old media mogul whose health, Hagey wrote in April in the Wall Street Journal, where she is a reporter, "has declined so significantly he cannot speak much beyond grunts." It also promises more than just the tabloid soap opera business story, but a look at how much media consumption and its industry is changing." - Washington Post
"I heartily recommend the colorful and rip-roaring life of Sumner Redstone...Hagey does an astute, energetic tale of how Redstone, about whom I wrote many articles for Forbes magazine, took a tiny drive-in movie theater company into highly profitable trades in publicly owned movie studio companies and then late in his business life, fought the battles that brought him control of Viacom, Paramount Studios and CBS, one of the largest media and entertainment complexes in the nation."
- Forbes
Hagey weaves together a narrative that holds the reader's attention and that is buttressed by astonishing reporting. I always thought Sumner was not an immediate candidate for heaven, and she doesn't disabuse me of this. But the level of greed and cowardice and perfidy of the supporting cast was unimaginable, at least by me. - Ken Auletta
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 158 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-06-265409-0 (9780062654090)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Keach Hagey
The King of Content
Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire
E-Book
06/2018
1st Edition
HarperCollins
from
€15.99
Available for download
Person
Keach Hagey is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, covering television and large media companies. Her team's reporting on the power struggle at Viacom won a "Best in Business" award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Previously, she covered media for Politico, the National, CBSNews.com, and the Village Voice. She lives in Irvington, New York.