Three years later, and back in the real world, you can still track the chairman of the multimedia conglomerate Viacom by the trail of his corporate dead.
Last month Sumner drove Tom Cruise off his Paramount studio lot, verbally backing over him for good measure. Then, last week, he dismissed his heir apparent, Viacom chief executive Tom Feston.
So what is firing up the 83-year-old tycoon? Yes, there are solid business reasons for shaking things up. In January, Sumner hived off his “old media” assets (television and publisher Simon & Schuster) into stand-alone company CBS, and since then the “high-growth rump” called Viacom (MTV and the Paramount and Dream Works studios) has seen its share price drop by 10%. Over at CBS, by contrast, chief executive Les Moonves is finally staunching the flow of red ink.
Yet at a time when most tycoons might be thinking about their legacy, endowing arts or perhaps playing with their great-grandchildren, Redstone appears to be more full of voice and vigour than the Wall Street brokers who routinely underestimate his powers of regeneration.
This is the upper-class “Boston Brahmin” who won two commendations for cracking Japanese naval codes during the second world war; who, at the age of 56, survived a hotel fire by hanging onto a third-floor ledge with one arm while the rest of his body was engulfed in flames; and who published a video game called Gauntlet in which one of the characters is a wizard called Sumner.
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Friends date his renaissance to 1999 when he divorced Phyllis, his wife of 55 years, and, three years later, when he married primary school teacher Paula Fortunato, four decades his junior — but, then again, so were most people he met.
The former Sumner Rothstein has boasted about his commitment to family values: certainly his family controls 70% of Viacom’s stock.
Redstone surrounds himself with powerful women: Fortunato’s fury at Cruise’s outspoken attack on Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants was a factor in the decision not simply to allow the production deal between Cruise and Paramount to lapse quietly, but to humiliate the No1 box office star by saying he was unstable and overpriced.
And the sacking of Feston clears the way for daughter Shari not only to inherit the bulk of Viacom shares, which her father set down a decade ago, but also management of the company itself.
In 2002 Redstone boasted to Forbes that Shari, a former lawyer known for her smart grey suits and unmoving blonde locks, was a case of “like father, like daughter. She has no major weaknesses. She is a great businesswoman.” While building up the family’s 1,400 cinema chain, she told Business Week “missing sleep is something you can get used to, but a missed deal is lost for ever”.
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After that fanfare, however, little more was heard from Shari and a succession of potential heirs arose within Viacom. First came Mel Karmazin, a mouthy New Yorker who stoked up CBS in the 1990s but quit two years ago saying he could not stand working with Redstone: the feeling was mutual.
Sumner replaced Karmazin, now reunited with his old CBS buddy, “shock jock’ Howard Stern, at Sirius satellite radio, with the more emollient television programme-maker Feston.
It has been reported that Sumner dumped Feston because he was not aggressive enough in his acquisitions: losing the race to snap up the social networking site My Space to News Corporation, ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, was apparently the last straw.
Yet, in a high-octane mix of the personal and professional that hallmarks Redstone, there were also questions about whether Feston was simply too popular with his own staff for comfort. He protected underperformers. When Feston left MTV’s headquarters in Los Angeles, 2,500 staff packed the corridors to cheer and hug him.
Feston has been replaced by the more distant Philippe Dauman, a Yale-educated lawyer, who has built his career as a legal courtier in mergers and acquisitions.
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His £7m-a-year deal includes hitting targets believed to include buying up some hot internet companies — or maybe even another studio such as the independent Lions Gate Entertainment.
Dauman’s reign began with an analysis of why Viacom was recently beaten to the purchase of BMG Music Publishing by Vivendi. “It was not fast enough, because everything had to go up through Sumner,” said a source. “Sumner has agreed to allow Dauman to streamline management, but whether this means streamlining him out of the loop is another matter.”
The bloodletting is not over: Feston loyalists are expected to depart in the next few weeks, potentially hitting production at the MTV, Showtime and Comedy Central channels at a time when cable-channel revenues are already suffering from discounted rates. The Hollywood rumour mill says Brad Grey, chief executive at Paramount, is not comfortable either.
“Brad told pals he was happy Sumner did the dirty on Cruise because he preserved his own relationship with Tom, but it still made him look weak. Also Cruise produced a third of Paramount’s revenues: Grey needs product volume to mix up the hits and misses, but he no longer has such a schedule,” said an executive at a rival studio.
Redstone is said to be more interested in Wall Street than movies, but it’s a one-sided love affair: the money men are split between those who feel Viacom should go private, and those, like former Viacom executive Sir Howard Stringer, who predict that the forthcoming pressure will be to break up all the media monoliths.
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In many ways a further splintering of Viacom might suit the most important person in the room, Shari Redstone, who said she never really wanted to join a “something so big”. Maybe it’s time for the giant to start thinking small.