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Workshop Registration
The Reynolds Center has announced its 2009-10 free workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
Online Seminars
The Reynolds Center registration for Fall 2009 free online seminars.
Storytelling that Sticks
By Jeff Bailey
Proxy Digging
By Chris Roush
Savvy Spending
By Jennifer Hopfinger
Takeaways from the Cramer Interview
By Andrew Leckey
Faces of the Crisis
By Alec Klein
Executive Soap Opera
By Jennifer Hopfinger
January 14, 2009 01:29 PM
It seems even the executives in the entertainment business lead soap-opera lives - or at least one very big honcho does. Sumner Redstone, who controls Viacom and CBS, is profiled in a perversely entertaining article in the February issue of Condé Nast Portfolio.
The teaser copy for the cover story, “Sumner’s Discontent,” by Lloyd Grove, couldn’t be juicier: “the besieged media magnate is drinking, trashing his rivals (and employees), fighting with his daughter, and dissing the CBS board,” and “his company’s stock is diving, the debt is mounting, and the legendary 85-year-old chairman of Viacom and CBS may now be forced to sell off chunks of his empire. But even more painful for Sumner Redstone may be the rift dividing his family. The tale of a latter-day King Lear.” Who could resist reading the ensuing story?
And it delivers. The stocks of his companies have tanked. He’s divorcing his 47-year-old second wife after five years of marriage. His relationship with his 54-year-old daughter - who is president of the family’s private holding company, which owns controlling interests in Viacom and CBS - is contentious. And his estranged 58-year-old son has sued him for denying him his inheritance.
And yet, according to the article, Redstone “refuses to acknowledge anything approaching failure, much less the prospect that he’ll run out of time before he can reverse his fortunes.”
But it’s hard to feel sorry for him. “If it were anyone else, the spectacle of an elderly man flailing in the face of such a public shaming might inspire a sense of pathos,” Grove writes. But Redstone “is widely derided as a megalomaniac who takes credit for everything and blame for nothing, regularly throws his employees under the bus to save his own skin, and seems to take pleasure in humiliating them.” It sounds like readers won’t be the only ones who enjoy the sordid story.
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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism
The Reynolds Center has announced its 2009-10 free workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
The Reynolds Center registration for Fall 2009 free online seminars.
By Jeff Bailey
Proxy Digging
By Chris Roush
Savvy Spending
By Jennifer Hopfinger
Takeaways from the Cramer Interview
By Andrew Leckey
Faces of the Crisis
By Alec Klein
Executive Soap Opera
By Jennifer HopfingerJanuary 14, 2009 01:29 PM
It seems even the executives in the entertainment business lead soap-opera lives - or at least one very big honcho does. Sumner Redstone, who controls Viacom and CBS, is profiled in a perversely entertaining article in the February issue of Condé Nast Portfolio.
The teaser copy for the cover story, “Sumner’s Discontent,” by Lloyd Grove, couldn’t be juicier: “the besieged media magnate is drinking, trashing his rivals (and employees), fighting with his daughter, and dissing the CBS board,” and “his company’s stock is diving, the debt is mounting, and the legendary 85-year-old chairman of Viacom and CBS may now be forced to sell off chunks of his empire. But even more painful for Sumner Redstone may be the rift dividing his family. The tale of a latter-day King Lear.” Who could resist reading the ensuing story?
And it delivers. The stocks of his companies have tanked. He’s divorcing his 47-year-old second wife after five years of marriage. His relationship with his 54-year-old daughter - who is president of the family’s private holding company, which owns controlling interests in Viacom and CBS - is contentious. And his estranged 58-year-old son has sued him for denying him his inheritance.
And yet, according to the article, Redstone “refuses to acknowledge anything approaching failure, much less the prospect that he’ll run out of time before he can reverse his fortunes.”
But it’s hard to feel sorry for him. “If it were anyone else, the spectacle of an elderly man flailing in the face of such a public shaming might inspire a sense of pathos,” Grove writes. But Redstone “is widely derided as a megalomaniac who takes credit for everything and blame for nothing, regularly throws his employees under the bus to save his own skin, and seems to take pleasure in humiliating them.” It sounds like readers won’t be the only ones who enjoy the sordid story.
Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism