Media magnate Sumner Redstone, former chairman of CBS and Viacom, dies at 97 

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Sumner Redstone, the media mogul and former chair of Viacom and CBS, whose legacy as a business titan was tarnished in his later years by public corporate battles and lurid claims from ex-friends, has died. He was 97.

Redstone, who often boasted that would live forever, died Tuesday, according to a statement from National Amusements released Wednesday morning. 

He was a media mogul who built his family’s drive-in theater chain into a global empire, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion. 

In his 90s, he became the center of a jilted lover’s lawsuit that nearly cost his family his financial legacy, when his ex-girlfriend claimed in court documents that he demanded a daily diet of steak and sex against his doctor’s orders, in a bid to call his competency into question.  

The long-running legal battle that ensued put him at odds with long-time confidante Philippe Dauman but reunited him with his daughter Shari, from whom he had been estranged. 

‘It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Sumner M. Redstone, the self-made businessman, philanthropist and World War II veteran who built one of the largest collections of media assets in the world,’ said the statement from National Amusements.

‘Sumner was a man of unrivaled passion and perseverance, who devoted his life to his belief in the power of content,’ the statement added. ‘With his passing, the media industry he loved so dearly loses one of its great champions.’

The company, which is parent company to ViacomCBS, said that Redstone ‘will be greatly missed by his family who take comfort knowing that his legacy will live on for generations to come.’

Redstone’s daughter Shari Redstone, the chairperson of ViacomCBS, said in a statement: ”My father led an extraordinary life that not only shaped entertainment as we know it today, but created an incredible family legacy.’ 

‘Through it all, we shared a great love for one another and he was a wonderful father, grandfather and great-grandfather. I am so proud to be his daughter and I will miss him always,’ she added.

ViacomCBS, which he lead for decades, remembered Redstone for his ‘unparalleled passion to win, his endless intellectual curiosity, and his complete dedication to the company.’ 

Sumner Redstone controlled about 80 percent of the voting stock of ViacomCBS through his private holding company, National Amusements, originally founded as a movie theater chain by his father in 1936.  

Redstone’s 80 percent stake will reportedly be divided in two on his passing, half for the benefit of his descendants, whose trustees will include Shari and her son as well as others with long ties to members of the family, including divorce lawyers for Redstone and his former wife, Phyllis, and a National Amusements executive. 

The other trust will be for the benefit of Phyllis. There could be legal battles over the estate to come, as Redstone married and divorced a second wife after splitting with Phyllis.

His fortune was most recently estimated at $3 billion in May of this year. 

In November 2015, Redstone’s ex-girlfriend, who was 42 years younger than him, filed a lawsuit challenging his competency, claiming he had become ‘a living ghost’ and that his conversations consisted of little more than grunts. 

Redstone’s lawyers called the claims ‘preposterous’ and a ‘despicable invasion of his privacy.’  

In May 2016, a judge dismissed the lawsuit after the billionaire asserted in videotaped testimony that he didn’t want the former girlfriend, Manuela Herzer, to play any role in his life, repeatedly referring to her as ‘f****** b****.’ 

Amid bitter disputes about his health and competency, Redstone was forced under shareholder pressure to resign as executive chairman of CBS on February 3, 2016 and CEO Les Moonves was appointed as his successor. 

The following day, Viacom named CEO Philippe Dauman as his successor as executive chairman. Redstone gave up his voting position on the Viacom board in February 2017.

Redstone has not appeared publicly for years, and his health had long been at the center of speculation.

As the CBS and Viacom merger was underway in 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Redstone had difficulty speaking, and relied upon an iPad that had buttons to play a recording of his voice saying ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘f*** you.’  

Sumner Murray Redstone was born on May 27, 1923, into a Boston family that owned a chain of drive-in movie theaters. He graduated first in his class at Boston Latin High School, went through Harvard in three years and worked with an elite U.S. Army unit that cracked Japanese codes during World War Two.

After the war, he earned a law degree at Harvard and successfully pleaded a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He joined National Amusements, his family’s theater chain, in 1954, and became chief executive officer in 1967.

Known for his blunt talk, Boston accent and audacious risk taking, Redstone was in his 60s in 1987 when he bought Viacom for $3.4 billion with mostly borrowed money. A few years later he acquired Paramount for more than $10 billion and added CBS to the portfolio in 1999 in a deal valued at $37 billion.

Before his health deteriorated, Redstone had claimed to swim naked every day and always liked to be surrounded by beautiful young women.

‘With a striking head of orange hair, Redstone is a vainglorious, old-school egomaniac who has an operatic personal life that has been largely kept out of the media undoubtedly because he controls so much of it,’ author Michael Wolff wrote in New York magazine in 2002.

After decades spent building his empire, Redstone’s participation at corporate events became minimal in 2014 and he spoke only a few words on earnings calls. Fortune magazine reported he attended his last board meetings that year and cited a witness who said he dozed and drooled during it, which raised the question about whether he was fit to run the company.

Despite the concerns about his health, Redstone hung on to his chairmanship as long as possible. In June 2015, he told Vanity Fair in an email correspondence, ‘You should know that I am never retiring!!!’

Later that year, the Wall Street Journal reported Redstone had suffered mini-strokes that made speaking difficult, although he remained mentally sharp.

Former girlfriend Manuela Herzer challenged Redstone’s mental competence in a lawsuit filed in November 2015, referring to him as a ‘living ghost.’

The suit was thrown out in May 2016 by a California judge who ruled that Redstone’s testimony had disproved Herzer’s claims. Herzer appealed the judge’s ruling, and the parties settled in 2019.

Redstone’s death, which comes at a time the media landscape is enduring wrenching changes, thins the ranks of a group of media executives, including Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, who changed the world of news and entertainment with the companies they built.

Redstone displayed a penchant for forcing out top executives, including Viacom President Frank Biondi; Mel Karmazin, the CEO of CBS; and Tom Freston, who was canned as CEO of Viacom after losing a deal to acquire the social media network MySpace to Murdoch.

Asked in his last interview, in January 2014, with The Hollywood Reporter, about who might succeed him, Redstone exploded, ‘I will not discuss succession. You know why? I´m not going to die.’

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