Contributing Author | Li Ran Editor | Yang Puding
Produced | Prism·Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
Focus on:
1, including Viacom and Pella In the three century acquisitions between Mongolia and CBS, the most brilliant story of Redstone's life happened after the age of 50. Before that, his business territory was only in his hometown of Boston, operating chain theaters.
2. Lei Shidong proudly shouted the slogan that has been handed down to this day: Content is king. Channels are not the most important thing. Whoever masters high-quality content has the right to bargain. To this end, he spent more than $10 billion to acquire Paramount.
3, Lei Shidong can be said to defend his daughter day and night, always worried about being replaced. During this period, under the responsibility of Redstone himself, Viacom and CBS missed many opportunities.
4. After missing Marvel, Paramount is now reduced to working for Netflix. The famous MTV used to be the vane of global popular culture, but now all young people are lost to YouTube and TikTok.
Hollywood raised his ears and finally heard the sound of the giant falling to the ground.
On the afternoon of August 11th, US time, Sumner Redstone died of illness in his mansion in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 97.
At the beginning of this century when information transmission was still underdeveloped, the Chinese media once blew Redstone’s skills to the sky: this Jewish billionaire not only controls Hollywood’s oldest Paramount, but also controls half of the United States. Television stations and newspapers can be upset with just one hand, and only Murdoch, another tycoon, can be compared.
These are no longer true.
Lei Shidong’s media empire has been left behind by the times. Paramount, who filmed "Forrest Gump", "Brave Heart", and "Titanic" 20 years ago, lost Marvel, and now is reduced to working for Netflix. The famous MTV used to be the vane of global popular culture, but now all young people are lost to YouTube and TikTok. CBS is still a major public station in the United States, but young people have long stopped watching TV. Although
was nominally the largest shareholder during his lifetime, Redstone has been isolated from the world for many years. In 2014, he lost his swallowing function due to inhaling food in his lungs, and he could only rely on human feeding. In the following years, he lost the ability to speak and walk, and he couldn't do without a half step in his side care.
In the last few years of his life, Lei Shidong only relied on a tablet computer to communicate with others. Three sentences were recorded in advance: Yes, No and Fuck You.
Including Viacom, Paramount, and CBS three century acquisitions, the most brilliant story of Redstone’s life happened after the age of 50. Before that, his business territory was only in his hometown of Boston, operating chain theaters.
In order to firmly control the country he had worked so hard to lay down, Lei Shidong kept breaking with those around him in the second half of his life: divorced his ex-wife, severed relationship with his son, fell out with Tom Cruise, and rebelled against his subordinates who had followed for many years. In his later years, he went to court with his girlfriend who took care of him. Even his only daughter, Sally, was scolded by him as a bitch deliberately trying to seize power.
Fighting against the sky and people are endless fun. Lei Shidong practiced this sentence to the last moment of his life.
Rebirth from the fire, marching upstream
Lei Shidong took the hero script for the first half of his life.
In 1923, Samler Redstone was born in a Jewish family in Boston. His father and relatives in the family ran a car theater company "Northeast Cinema". The family was related to black and white.
Redstone High School graduated with the first grade, entered Harvard University for three years and finished his undergraduate degree. After graduation, he joined the US Army and was responsible for deciphering the Japanese military code. After retiring, Lei Shidong returned to Harvard Law School to complete a doctorate in law, and later became an assistant to the attorney general of the US Department of Justice.
Until 1954,Redstone's enthusiasm for serving the country finally faded and joined the family's theater business. At this time, the family company has been renamed National Amusements. In 1972, Redstone, who was nearly 50 years old, became the CEO of the family company.
The turning point of fate occurred on March 29, 1979. This evening, 56-year-old Redstone attended a movie premiere and stayed at the Copley Square Hotel in Boston. A dismissed dishwasher set fire to vent his anger, and the fire burned all the way to the suite on the third floor of Lei Shidong. He finally hung on the window sill of the room upstairs before he managed to escape. When
was sent to the hospital, Lei Shidong suffered burns to nearly half of his skin, his right wrist was almost completely burnt, and his legs were not human-shaped. The doctor determined that he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
But after 60 hours of rescue, Redstone miraculously saved his life, and quickly resumed walking after two months. A few months later, he persisted in attending the industry conference with sequelae. The legendary experience of being reborn from the ashes has made Redstone a well-known name in the industry.
The immortal Redstone put his energy back on the business and led the National Entertainment to continue to expand. But the more stores opened, the more Lei Shidong realized that the business of cinema is really difficult to do-cable television stations are prospering, the frequency of audience patronage to cinemas is decreasing, but the operating costs of cinemas are still rising.
Lei Shidong turned his attention to the upstream. After working with Hollywood studios for more than 20 years, he realized that mastering high-quality content is far more important than controlling channels. "Each film made in Hollywood is actually equivalent to an additional asset, and the appreciation of these assets far outperforms inflation."
So in the 1980s, Redstone bought the Hollywood studio in a big way. Through borrowing, he successively bought shares in 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., MGM and Columbia Pictures, and made a lot of money.
In 1984, Redstone’s wife Felix sued for divorce for the first time. At that time Redstone had already bought MGM’s home video assets and half-footed into Hollywood. Once divorced, half of his assets will be divided by his wife.
Lei Shidong persuaded him for more than half a year before Feilisi reluctantly agreed to withdraw the lawsuit. After more than ten years, this kind of plot happened twice, but because of the continuous increase in the scale of Lei Shidong's assets, the price of divorce was getting higher and higher.
"Content is king", crazy acquisitions
In the late 1980s, Redstone, who was over 60, finally waited for a new peak in his life.
In 1985, Warner sold MTV and its Nicklodeon and VH1 to Viacom (Viacom) because of a huge loss in video games.
At this time, MTV is soaring like a rocket, with annual revenue increasing at a rate of 50%. Michael Jackson dressed as a zombie in the MV, Madonna wandered around on the VMA stage in a wedding dress... Various performances that seemed "horrifying" at the time made MTV famous and became the benchmark of youth pop culture.
Viacom itself has Lifetime, Showtime and other cable stations, which has long been targeted by Redstone, not to mention MTV now. Before Viacom bought MTV, Redstone was quietly increasing its holdings. In 1987, he bet on the wealth of National Entertainment, and sought loans from the bank to initiate the acquisition of Viacom.
After more than four months of tug-of-war, Viacom’s shareholders were finally “moved” by Redstone’s plan, and National Entertainment swallowed Viacom, which was five times larger than its own. Redstone continues to control real power through National Entertainment.
This year, 63-year-old Redstone suddenly changed from the head of a local family business to a pivotal American media tycoon, and joined Murdoch and Trump on the "Forbes" Billionaires list.
The golden age of cable TV stations just kicked off at that time. Redstone discovered that the programs of its cable stations are very valuable, and there are often other cable stations willing to buy copyrights at high prices. Viacom’s stock price has risen, driving Redstone’s assets to triple.
Seeing the surge in assets, Lei Shidong proudly shouted the slogan that has been handed down to this day: Content is king. Channels are not the most important thing. Whoever masters high-quality content has the right to bargain.
Following the idea of "content is king", Redstone quickly aimed at the next target: Hollywood.
The "Paramount Act" promulgated after the "World War II" determined that companies engaged in theaters could not be engaged in film production at the same time. As a result, Hollywood studios have successively separated their theater chains. However, after Reagan took office, the U.S. government has relaxed its control over enterprises in many aspects, including the relaxation of antitrust restrictions, believing that vertical integration will not harm market competition.
Various capitals quickly set off a panic buying wave in Hollywood: first Murdoch bought Fox, then Time Group and Warner announced a merger, Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures were sold to Japan. Sony and Panasonic.
Disney does not sell it. Only Paramount is left to Redstone, Hollywood's oldest film company.
Paramount was larger than Viacom at the time, with a market value of nearly 7 billion U.S. dollars, and the latter less than 6 billion U.S. dollars. In 1993, Viacom offered US$8.2 billion, hoping to buy shareholders at a premium.
But unexpectedly, the Hollywood godfather Barry Diller, who once served as the CEO of Paramount, came out halfway and offered $9.5 billion. And the investors behind this acquisition are also Paramount's major customers.
In order to spend more cash to complete the acquisition, Redstone found the video tape company Blockbuster to discuss the merger. In 1994, with the help of Blockbuster’s sufficient cash flow, Viacom acquired Paramount at a price of more than 10 billion US dollars.
Fate once again favors Lei Shidong. After being acquired by Viacom, Paramount successively launched "Forrest Gump", "Brave Heart", "Saving Private Ryan" and other masterpieces that won Oscars, and also launched the later successful "Disc "Mission Impossible" series, and cooperated with Fox "Titanic", ushered in a full decade of glory.
During this period, MTV has also soared from more than 3 billion US dollars in market value to more than 30 billion US dollars. Together with Paramount, MTV has become Viacom's two core businesses.
Redstone, who is over 70 years old, has reached the pinnacle of Hollywood power as he wished.
Troubles continue, and all the people betrayed
The movies have been selling in succession, making Redstone ignore the important question: Is it worth it to buy Paramount at such a high price?
Viacom has tens of billions of dollars in debt due to its acquisition of Paramount. Blockbuster, which was bought for more than US$8 billion, lost its market value by half in just three years as video tapes will soon be replaced by DVDs. Viacom first sold nearly 20% of Blockbuster’s shares for less than 500 million in 1998. Since then, seeing that the video tape has gone, it completely sold off in 2004, accounting for more than a billion US dollars in asset impairment.
Although the business of Paramount and MTV is improving, Blockbuster's market value plummeting is directly reflected in Viacom's stock price, Redstone's assets have shrunk by half.
CBS came here at this time. CBS and Viacom were originally the same company. Due to the requirements of the US antitrust law, Viacom was forced to separate from CBS, one of the three public stations in the 1970s, leaving only TV production and cable stations .
Regain control of channels does not conform to Redstone’s idea of “content is king”, but he has no choice at this time: the capital market requires Viacom to take advantage, and the TV station happens to have a steady stream of advertising revenue. In 1999, Viacom announced the acquisition of CBS for US$37.3 billion, making it the second largest media group in the world after Time Warner.
The acquisition of CBS has brought a lot of trouble to Redstone.
Due to the competition between cable stations and the emerging Internet, the advertising revenue of the TV industry has entered a downward cycle. The acquisition of CBS has brought scale, but it has also dragged down Viacom's stock price. Some executives proposed to Lei Shidong: spin off the company.
So, just five years after reunion, Viacom and CBS were separated again: Redstone cares mostParamount Pictures and MTV TV networks (including BET, Comedy Central, Nicklodeon and other cable stations) stayed in Viacom, and the slow-growing but stable radio and Paramount TV businesses were assigned to CBS.
Later facts proved that this was another wrong decision. With the growth of Internet platforms such as YouTube, MTV’s youth audiences have rapidly lost, and Paramount’s glory has also disappeared at this time. Watching Warner, Fox, and Sony put out "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings", For blockbuster films such as "Star Wars", "X-Men", and "Spider-Man", Paramount only has "Mission Impossible".
In contrast, CBS benefited from the higher stability of the TV business, and its performance was better. After the spin-off was completed, Viacom's stock price fell, and CBS stock price started to rise instead. So that when Viacom and CBS merged again in 2019, CBS, which has a higher market value, in turn acquired Viacom.
The battered Lei Shidong still faces his wife's attack. As soon as Viacom's acquisition of CBS was announced in 1999, his wife Felix filed a divorce lawsuit in the court again, accusing Redstone of derailment and emotional oppression for many years, and demanded that half of his property be divided.
And this time, she has Lei Shidong's derailed real hammer.
Lei Shi is nearly 80 years old, and the women around him are still in droves. Felice, who heard the news, hired a private investigator and photographed him and his lover walking hand in hand in Paris.
Finally the two reconciled and divorced. Instead of taking away half of the property, Felice agreed to withdraw half of Redstone's after-tax income every year, allowing him to retain control of Viacom and CBS.
Feilisi made a concession but also made a request: Redstone would put his shares in National Entertainment into a new trust. If Redstone dies, half of these shares will be owned by Felice, and the remaining half will be left to a pair of children and their offspring. If Felice dies, her part will enter the Redstone Family Trust.
In 2002, Redstone established a new trust as required. But Feilis didn’t know that the shares he “generously” took out were part of what his children deserved. When Redstone’s father set up a family trust more than 20 years ago, he left part of the shares to his grandchildren and paid back Lei Shidong was asked to put one-third of his shares into his children, with the goal of letting the company pass on from generation to generation.
It was not until a few years later that the people of the Lei Shidong family searched the family information and found out that Lei Shidong took advantage of his children and nieces to be minors, and through a private agreement, quietly got his own shares that belonged to the next generation. Hands.
First, Lei Shidong’s brother went to court and demanded that his children’s part be taken back. The brothers who had suspicions were even more at odds. Later, he and Redstone's son Brent took him to court, demanding a share of 1/6 of the shares of National Entertainment that he deserved.
In order to prevent the empire from being divided, Redstone finally agreed to reconcile, and Brent received 240 million US dollars in compensation, and the father and son broke off contact for more than ten years.
Media Empire, Sunset West Mountain
Now Lei Shidong is gone, acting most like his daughter Sally, inheriting Lei Shidong's surname, guarding the embarrassed media empire.
In 2016, Redstone was found to be mentally disabled by the court and was forced to resign from the board of directors of CBS and Viacom. Sally spent the next three years. First, she survived the two management struggles between CBS and Viacom, and then squeezed her father's confidant for many years. In 2019, she finally merged Viacom and CBS together. , Became the head of this new media empire.
But she came to power too late.
Although Sally has been on Viacom’s board of directors in the 90s and has always been the only candidate to inherit the family business, Redstone is day-proof and night-proof for his daughter and has been worried about being replaced. During this period, under the responsibility of Redstone himself, Viacom and CBS missed many opportunities.
Paramount, the first company to cooperate with Marvel, gave this gold mine to Disney. The series of blockbusters in his hand are lacking, and now it has fallen intoThe film can barely be maintained by selling it to Netflix. After losing Marvel, Paramount sold the DreamWorks animation and lost the family-oriented film.
The only blockbuster series that Paramount can sell at present is "Mission Impossible". But in the past ten years, everyone knows the contradiction between Lei Shidong and Atang. After the release of "Mission Impossible 2", he publicly criticized Tom Cruise, blaming him for his hype about Scientology and jumping on the Oprah show and other behaviors that drag down the box office. Later, before the shooting of each "Mission Impossible", the contradiction in dividends between the two would make headlines.
In the field of television, CBS has been criticized for the elderly, and MTV has also lost the hearts of young people. Viacom had the opportunity to invest in Facebook and Twitter, but both were missed by Redstone.
In the past two years, Disney, Warner, and Universal have all woke up to invest heavily in streaming media. But Viacom CBS still does not have an overall streaming media program.
The consolidated Viacom CBS has annual revenue of more than 28 billion U.S. dollars, but its pre-interest and tax profit in 2019 is only 6.1 billion U.S. dollars, and debt is as high as 23.7 billion U.S. dollars. According to the statistics of the "Hollywood Reporter" in March this year, Viacom CBS has the greatest debt pressure among major Hollywood media groups.
In response to the epidemic, Viacom CBS delayed its plan to sell its Blackstone Building, and at the same time continued to promote the combined layoff plan, and issued a new debt of US$2.5 billion.
Maybe something went wrong from the beginning.
After the acquisition of Viacom in 1987, Redstone summoned employees to host a welcome banquet, but he himself was disappointed at the grand event. For the sake of his start-up career, he withdrew the divorce lawsuit he had initiated, intending to continue to consume it in a loveless marriage with his original partner.
that day he asked a subordinate in private, "Do you think we are lonely in this world?"
"We have parents, lovers and children. You have your family. Of course you are not alone."
"No. Life is lonely." Lei Shidong said.
References:
King of Content, Keach Hagey, Harper Collins;
CBS, Viacom Strike Deal to Recombine, THR;
Hollywood's Growing Debt and Earnings Risk: "mid the Pandemic" It's All About Liquidity",THR
Inside A Media Moguls Closet, A Son Sees Dirty Laundry,NYT;
Who is Shari Redstone?; Los Angeles Times
