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It may be a long and winding road to profitability for The Beatles: Rock Band.On a conference call with analysts today, Viacom executives said that their Rock Band video game franchise, whose only new product last quarter was the Beatles...
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Viacom Inc.'s cost-cutting measures, along with stronger results from its Paramount Pictures film unit, paid off in the third quarter as the media company posted a 15% jump in profit despite lower advertising and home video sales. For the quarter...
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Move over SpongeBob SquarePants, some mutant ninja turtles are headed your way. Viacom Inc.'s kids cable network Nickelodeon has struck a $60-million deal with The Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment to acquire the rights to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which...
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Usually when the chairman of a company dumps nearly $1 billion in stock, share prices tumble off a cliff. But apparently not when it's Sumner Redstone. Wall Street has dubbed the phenomenon the "Redstone Overhang." For the past year, investors...
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It just got a little sunnier in Philadelphia. No, we're not talking about the Phillies being on the verge of making the World Series for the second year in a row. News Corp.'s Twentieth Television has just sold reruns of...
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Apparently, love isn't all you need. The Beatles: Rock Band, Viacom Inc.'s highly anticipated and pricey video game based on the music of the biggest-selling rock band of all time, drew a healthy but hardly standing-room-only crowd. In September, its...
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In addition to selling close to $1 billion in stock in CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. to help pay down his family-held company's excruciating debt, Sumner Redstone will unload 35 of National Amusement Inc.'s 79 U.S. theaters, including its only...
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Sumner Redstone's family-controlled firm, National Amusements Inc., this morning said it was selling nearly $1 billion in stock in CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. to help retire the enormous debt that once threatened to upend the 86-year-old mogul's media empire...
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Lauren Corrao, the longtime Comedy Central head of programming and development more recently responsible for ushering in "The Sarah Silverman Program," is leaving the cable channel. In a memo sent to staffers Monday, MTV Networks Entertainment Group President Doug Herzog...
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It was 10 years ago yesterday that Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin walked down the aisle together at the tony St. Regis Hotel in Midtown Manhattan and unveiled the $36-billion marriage of their respective companies, Viacom and CBS. "Our union...
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After spending over $325 million, Viacom is ready to start making money on video games. That's exactly what the conglomerate will start doing, executives say, with this fall's The Beatles: Rock Band, a pricey and high profile new addition to...
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Can you have too much love? That's what VH1 is starting to wonder. The Viacom-owned cable network, whose top five shows this year all have the word "love" in the title, is reassessing its heavy reliance on dating and relationship...
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Viacom Inc.'s second-quarter profit fell 32% as a tough economy battered its cable networks around the globe and video-game sales for Rock Band dropped. For the quarter ending June 30, Viacom posted earnings of $277 million, or 46 cents a...
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Investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein on Wednesday released a new pessimistic report on media company earnings. “The recent run-up in media stocks suggests investors are looking past the horrid near-term trends to a happier place off in the horizon,” said analyst Michael Nathanson in a report. “However...
Posted to
The Business of Television
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News
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Wed, Apr 8 2009
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Filed under: Broadcast, Cable, Digital, Advertising, CBS, Viacom, Syndication, Research, Earnings, Time Warner, News Corp., Economy, Walt Disney Co.
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Viacom units Comedy Central and Paramount Vantage acquired the rights to develop the Trey Hamburger book “Ghosts/Aliens” into a television pilot and film script, respectively. Comedy Central has brought in Phil Johnston, whose screenplays include “A Friggin’ Christmas Miracle,” to write the pilot script...