Heads Up Hollywood

The former Viacom Group was the second largest media empire in the world, with a market value close to 100 billion US dollars!

It has four major business segments, all of which are well-known heavyweight assets: Blockbuster, Paramount, Viacom headquarters, and CBS Group.

However, in the past two years, Viacom and New Universal have had face-to-face fierce collisions, and the contradictions have deepened day by day, and it has become incompatible.

Last year, Blockbuster was forced to split.

Now, grand plans to revive Paramount are officially dead, too.

Viacom's MTV channel, Nickelodeon channel and Comedy Central channel all have good benefits, covering almost every household user in the United States.

However, CBS was affected by the scandal and the blockade of the content source of New Universal Group, and its performance was sluggish; Paramount's film was even more appalling and failed completely.

As a result, Viacom's stock price has been seriously dragged down.

It can be said that in the eyes of Redstone and many Wall Street brokers, Viacom's stock price is now severely undervalued, with a market value of only US$26.5 billion, which is ridiculous.

In the absence of any administrative measures to raise the stock price, financial means are the only way.

Either repurchase shares, or pay a large amount of dividends, or...asset split, and go public separately.

Buying back stock seems like a good option.

It's in Viacom's interest to have a lot of buybacks when the stock price is so low.

The point is, no money!

Paramount's film has suffered the worst fiasco in history. How can there be extra cash flow to buy back stocks?

Dividends are even more impossible.

For Viacom these days, it would be nice not to require shareholders to increase investment, and it is impossible to bring any returns to shareholders.

The only option left is to dismember the empire and split it up for listing!

Paramount has collapsed and is not eligible for a separate split.

The focus of the split is, of course, Viacom's headquarters and CBS Group.

However, once it is split, many problems will arise.

The main asset of Viacom is the cable TV network, and the main asset of CBS Group is CBS TV, which is a radio and television channel.

Since they are all TV stations, the content is the key.

Although Paramount's movies have collapsed, the film library still exists, with more than 1,000 movie copyrights and more than 80,000 hours of TV program copyrights.

This is very important to Viacom headquarters and CBS.

It's okay to split, but what about Paramount?

Dismember Paramount, let Viacom headquarters and CBS split equally?

As the winner of this game, Twain must of course enjoy the joy of being a winner. That night, he called Steve Burke, who had a very good relationship with him recently.

Steve Burke just stepped down as Comcast's president, but he remains Comcast's vice chairman.

Comcast also has a small stake in Viacom, and Comcast should know more about Viacom's decisions.

"Hey, Lei Shidong is old, he can't hold his breath anymore."

Steve Burke sighed again and again. In his opinion, dismembering Viacom was the stupidest choice.

Perhaps in the short term, it can raise the stock price and increase the total market value.

But in the long run, spinning off Viacom and CBS is a mistake!

Tang En said lightly: "I have already said that he is old and should retire. It's a pity that good words and advice have become a sworn enemy. Viacom's success today has nothing to do with me."

This is really true.

It's just that, in Steve Burke's view, it's too ridiculous.

If you, Dunn Walker, were not so powerful, would Viacom have fallen to the point where it is today?

First, Blockbuster was split up, which was not enough!

Right now, even Paramount and CBS are about to be split off.

It's too awful!

He originally thought that Sony's entertainment empire could be dismembered first by taking advantage of Michael Jackson. Unexpectedly, Tang En secretly attacked behind the scenes and killed Viacom first!

Hard enough!

Also powerful enough!

Looking at the whole world, besides Twain, who else can do this?

Even the White House can do nothing!

It was also for this reason that Steve Burke became more cautious and cautious towards Tang En, for fear of having some rift with him and making the same mistake as Redstone.

Not to mention that his entertainment empire has not been completed yet, even if one day, NBC really completes the acquisition of Sony Entertainment and establishes an entertainment empire, it still cannot compete with Twain!

The disparity in strength is too great!

The current New Global Group has not yet been listed, but Tang En has already become the richest man in the world. Once the New Global Group is listed... one can imagine how amazing Tang En's wealth will be.

Steve Burke sighed, "No matter what, Redstone dismembered Viacom with his own hands. From now on, no one in the entertainment industry...and even the entire media industry will oppose you again."

A hint of arrogance suddenly appeared in Tang En's heart.

Everyone else is "killing chickens to scare monkeys", but what about him?

He is "killing the tiger to scare the monkey"!

Even Lei Shidong was suppressed to death by him, and other industry insiders, who would dare to challenge him?

Tang En smiled, "By the way, what I want to ask is this matter, the splitting of Viacom, what is the main thing?"

Steve Burke said: "The main thing is to spin off CBS Group from the existing Viacom Group and go public separately. It's similar to the spinoff of Blockbuster last year."

"Where's Paramount?" Tang En was an industry insider after all, and explained the key point in one sentence.

Steve Burke was silent for a while, and said: "No specific solution has been researched yet, but Paramount's film library is too important to CBS. For example, "Crime Scene Investigation", this TV series It is currently the highest-rated TV show on CBS, but the copyright belongs to Paramount. At present, in order to complete the split as soon as possible, Redstone is likely to make great compromises, such as... splitting Paramount .”

Tang En's complexion changed, "Split Paramount?"

Steve Burke said "hmm", "Paramount has two core businesses: film and TV. The film business has little influence on CBS, but the TV business is too important to CBS. Back then, Via After Com completed the acquisition of CBS, in order to improve efficiency and save costs, he merged the TV production department of CBS and Paramount TV production department, which is now the Paramount TV production department. This has led to the current CBS does not have its own TV production department. Once split, CBS will face the dilemma of lack of content sources.”

Tang En understood, "You mean to split Paramount's film production department and TV production department?"

Steve Burke said: "This should be the final solution. Paramount's label name still belongs to the film production department, but the TV production department and Paramount's TV content copyright must be divided up with CBS. "

Tang En was surprised and said, "Wouldn't that mean that the copyrights of the TV series "Mission: Impossible" and "Star Trek" will be transferred to CBS?"

Steve Burke said helplessly: "There is no way. Redstone is too anxious. He can't bear the long negotiation time. He wants to spin off CBS as quickly as possible."

Tang En blinked his eyes a few times, and many things were figured out in that instant.

It's no wonder that Paramount will fall so quickly in later generations, and the top six are at the bottom. The core assets have been divided up, leaving only a shell, so it's no wonder the results are good.

It is simply the second MGM.

In addition, Tang En also understood the reason why Viacom would rather spend 3.5 billion dollars to acquire DreamWorks and merge into Paramount, but was unwilling to spend 4 billion dollars to acquire Marvel.

At first, Tang En just thought that Viacom's top management was too stupid.

Now it seems that it is also a last resort.

Paramount's TV production department was carved up, and it just so happened that DreamWorks had a complete business structure of a film and television company. DreamWorks has its own TV production department, and even produced classic TV series such as "Band of Brothers".

The combination of DreamWorks and Paramount can indeed greatly make up for Paramount's weakness of lacking a TV production department.

In contrast, Marvel's complementarity is much worse.

From a macro management point of view, DreamWorks is better.

"By the way, what about Brad Gray? He replaced Shirley Lansing and became the CEO of Paramount, but he didn't have any outstanding achievements." Tang En suddenly thought of something.

Steve Burke said: "There are still three years left in his contract with Paramount. At this time... it is impossible to terminate the contract, and Paramount can't afford that much termination fee. However, I really want to hear ..."

"What?"

"It seems that Redstone intends to put Philip directly in charge of Paramount."

"ah?"

Tang En was taken aback.

No way?

Lei Shidong is really out of his mind?

Philip Dorman, the vice chairman of Viacom and the number one confidant of Redstone, was born on Wall Street and has excellent financial means.

However, he knows nothing about movies, he is a complete layman.

Let him directly lead Paramount?

Isn't this nonsense?

Might as well empower Brad Gray!

In any case, Brad Gray is also a well-known gold medal producer in Hollywood.

Steve Burke said: "Last weekend night, I also met Redstone and talked about this specifically. Back then, he spent 10 billion US dollars to acquire Paramount, but in the past ten years, Paramount has Under the management of Hollywood people, it is getting worse and worse. He is disheartened. In other words, he has lost trust in Hollywood people."

Tang En sneered and said, "So you would rather appoint a financial butler from Wall Street? What a joke! If someone from Hollywood manages Paramount, at least it can maintain the dignity of the six giants of Paramount! Let Philip Dorman lead Paramount, that's a place to die!"

"Who knows?"

Steve Burke shrugged, a little helpless and a little absent-minded, "Hollywood broke his heart, in my opinion...he seems to never want to deal with Hollywood again. I heard that he is in Sell ​​the mansion in Beverly Hills and settle in New York later.”

The words are very euphemistic.

The actual situation is that Lei Shidong was taught too badly by Tang En.

He has no face to come to Hollywood again.