The main guy just bounced.
Breaking: What’s Going On Over At Viacom??!!?!!??
For those of you who don’t follow the business, Viacom, owned by uber-powerful Sumner Redstone…
…has an assortment of divisions under its umbrella, including Paramount, Simon & Schuster Publishing, MTV, VH1, CBS, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central, The CW, CBS Radio (formerly Infinity Broadcasting), Showtime, King World, and a boatload of other stuff (probably including you, if you check the fine print in the crack of your ass).
Up until late last year, Viacom was co-run and co-chaired by Les Moonves…
At the beginning of the year, Sumner officially divided Viacom into two companies separately traded on Wall Street.
Moonves got the newly-renamed CBS Corp. (which includes CBS, some affiliates, and the radio stations), and Tom Freston got Viacom (which included Paramount and the cable channels like MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, etc.)
Well, Tom Freston just split. (Or, as Variety loves to say, “ankled“).
This is big news in Hollywood, and probably for a lot of employees who loved Tom Freston.
*Sigh*
Another day in La-La Land. I guess summer really is over.
The Lo Zone 