Sumner Redstone, born Sumner Murray Rothstein, is Chairman of the Board and controlling shareholder of the Viacom and CBS Corporation media conglomerates. He is also the majority owner of Midway Games and of the National Amusements theater chain.
After completing law school, Redstone worked primarily in Washington, D.C., working at first for the U.S. Department then going into private practice. After a few years in practice, he chose to join his father’s theater chain, what is now known as National Amusements. As National Amusements grew, Redstone believed that content would become more important than distribution mechanisms. He made investments in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures, among others. He later took control of Viacom through a hostile takeover in 1987.
Redstone’s next acquisition came in the form of the purchase of Paramount Communications, parent of Paramount Pictures, in 1993. Redstone purchased Blockbuster Entertainment, which included Aaron Spelling’s production company and a huge library of films, much of which has been merged into Paramount Pictures. Blockbuster has now been spun off into its own independent entity. Redstone acquired CBS Corporation in 2000 and then spun it off as a separate company in 2005, taking with it all of Paramount’s television shows and catalog. Following the CBS and Blockbuster spin offs, Viacom consists of MTV Networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Noggin etc.), music publishing (Famous Music) and Paramount Pictures. In December of 2005, Redstone announced that Paramount had agreed to buy DreamWorks SKG for an estimated $1.6 billion. The acquisition was completed on February 1, 2006.
Source- Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumner_Redstone
