Media mogul built empire that included CBS, Viacom

Sumner Redstone, who joined his family’s drive-in movie chain in the 1950s and used it to build a vast media empire that included CBS and Viacom, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97.

Viacom would became one of the nation’s media titans, home to pay TV channels MTV and Comedy Central and movie studio Paramount Pictures. ViacomCBS Inc., which he led for decades, remembered Redstone for his “unparalleled passion to win, his endless intellectual curiosity and his complete dedication to the company.”

Redstone built the company through aggressive acquisitions, but many headlines with his name focused on severed ties with wives, actors and executives. In multiple interviews, he said he would never die.

His tightfisted grip on the National Amusements theater chain, which controlled CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. through voting stock, was passed to his daughter, Shari Redstone, who battled top executives to re-merge the two entities that split in 2006.

The elder Redstone’s battles with his family were dramatic. Son Brent Redstone once sued his father to break up his media empire — then settled for a princely sum to give up his voting shares.

Redstone often told interviewers that “content is king.” And he was right. Despite sagging TV ratings at Viacom, his vast shareholdings in Viacom and CBS led Forbes magazine to estimate his net worth at $4.6 billion.

Redstone was also known for dogged determination. In 1979, he survived a fire at Boston’s Copley

Plaza Hotel by gripping a third-floor window ledge with his right arm still inside. He suffered thirddegree burns over half his body, his right wrist was nearly severed, and he was told he would never walk again. But he recovered, and was able to play tennis by strapping the racket to his wrist.

Born in 1923 in Boston, Redstone was the oldest son of Michael and Belle Rothstein, who changed the family name to Redstone.

Redstone completed his education at Harvard in less than three years. He was selected to work on an Army intelligence team during World War II that cracked Japan’s military codes.

After three years in the Army, he went to Harvard Law School and became a partner at a Washington law firm. He gave it up to join his father’s drive-in movie business in 1954. Redstone grew it into a major chain of multi-screen movie houses.

The privately held company became the base for his media empire, and the source of all his family’s feuds.

He made a killing trading in the stocks Hollywood studios and by of in 1987 bought Viacom in a hostile takeover for $3.4 billion, most of it borrowed, ousting founder Ralph Baruch as chairman.

Critics said that a cable network based on music videos was doomed, but Redstone disagreed and rebuffed efforts from the company’s bankers to unload the fledgling MTV. He expanded its reach, bringing it into Europe, Asia, Latin America and Russia.

Redstone next went after Paramount Pictures, a fouryear process that ended with a friendly offer from Viacom for $10 billion in 1993. He scooped up the Blockbuster video rental chain for its then-healthy cash flow.

Viacom then swallowed CBS Corp. for $34.5 billion in 1999, then the largest media merger at the time.

The deal brought Redstone together with CBS chief Mel Karmazin, another tough-talking executive from humble origins. By June 2004, Karmazin was out, later to become head of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. CBS and Viacom were split into two public companies under his control in 2006.

By 2010, Redstone’s hand in the business became unwelcome. He shepherded onto TV a show featuring a scantily-clad girl group over protests from within. The day it aired, MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath resigned. Then he was scandalized further after reporter Peter Lauria made public a voicemail in which Redstone offered to bribe him to reveal the leaker of the story about his meddling.

Redstone was married and divorced twice — first to Phyllis Gloria Raphael, mother of his children — then to schoolteacher Paula Fortunato.