Mel Karmazin, President & COO of Viacom resigned yesterday. There's lots of coverage in the business news outlets, but the rumors have been for months that he & Sumner Redstone (Viacom's CEO, founder, and biggest stockholder) haven't been getting along. Redstone (who is in his 80s) has promised Wall St. that he'd put a succession plan in place and retire in the next three years. Apparently, he'd been dropping hints that Karmazin would NOT be his replacement. Karmazin is rumored to be on Roy Disney & Stanley Gold's short list for a replacement CEO if they can oust Eisner from Disney...

So, what does this mean for PKI? Probably nothing. Viacom's stock barely moved on news of Karmazin's resignation. (Which is somewhat odd, because he'd always been highly respected on Wall St.) Karmazin apparently is/was fanatical about keeping costs down, and one of the rumors is that Redstone wants to increase Paramount's film budget to help solve the problems the studio has had over the last few years. (So...maybe he'll want to increase new attractions budgets as well <G>). There are also rumors that Viacom may want to get rid of the Infinity radio network because of ongoing weak performance.

Anyway...not 100% on PKI topic, but some interesting news on the business side of things.

Joel

Thats interesting. Even though I didn't understand a word I read.

basically the owner pof viacom (who owns PKI) resigned so we're all expecting some stuff to cahnge soon (atleast i am) but probably not any MAJOr changes.

Actually...the "owner" is still there (that's Sumner Redstone). It was his #2 guy who quit.

I get all geeked up about the business side of things :-)

Joel

That is interesting. Prehaps we will in fact be seeing more changes, depending on who takes up #2 spot.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/06/0...z_biz2vcom.html

I don't believe anything will change due to this. They aren't directly involved in making the decisions here, just the issuance of the money.

As a brief follow-up to this topic... It looks like Tom Freston (President of MTV Networks) will be responsible for Paramount Parks as part of his expanded role of co-President & COO of Viacom. From everything I've read about him, this should be a good thing. He's said to be very creative and an "outside the box" thinker when it comes to doing new and innovative things. (He's also rumored to be the top candidate to replace Sumner Redstone when he retires in a few years...)

Here's a link to the memo...

http://www.internalmemos.com/memos/memodet...hp?memo_id=2288

Joel

While that will probably bring in good new rides aimed towards teens, hopefully he won't try and do anything like Rockin' Rollercoaster and associate the horrible mainstream music with the rides.

In all honesty, I doubt if Freston will spend a lot of time at all thinking about the parks. Redstone has made it known that he'd like to see a lot more hits coming out of Paramount Studios, and since that's one of the new areas reporting to him, I imagine that will be the chief focus.

Also, all current management which run the Paramount Parks division stay in place. So, everyone's daily life will probably change very little.

Mel Karmazin is known for his focus on cutting costs (no judgements...a strict adherence to the bottom line has been a huge part of his success). So, maybe (just maybe) budgets for new park attractions might be a little more liberal. (The "finishing touches" on TR:TR's theming come to mind...)

Joel

Yeah I think the head of CBS, Les Moonves or something, is the other co-COO. Hopefully this will at least mean that Paramount will be able to make a movie that doesn't flop within the next year or so. The Perfect Score was their last good movie, I think.

^I don't know of anyone who went to see The Perfect Score. Titanic was certainly a big hit way back when. It seems like Paramount had the entire entertainment industry by its fingers in the 90s, however today it seems as if they're having problems finding what the people want to see.

Maybe the Stepford Wives will be a big hit.

Good...he was a loser