The King of Content

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.

How did one man build a global media empire from scratch, and what will it take for his legacy to survive the battles from both inside and outside the boardroom?

• A Media Empire’s Origin Story: Follow Redstone’s audacious journey from his father’s drive-in movie theaters to the audacious takeovers of Hollywood giants like Paramount Pictures, Viacom, and CBS.
• Explosive Family Feuds: Delve into the litigious and deeply personal conflicts that pitted Sumner against nearly every member of his family, including the dramatic rise of his daughter, Shari Redstone.
• High-Stakes Boardroom Drama: Go behind the scenes of the acrimonious lawsuits and fierce power struggles that defined his reign and shaped the modern media landscape.
• An Industry in Turmoil: Uncover the existential threat facing Redstone’s assets as cord-cutting and new technology challenge the very foundation of the "content is king" philosophy.