Shari Redstone Says ViacomCBS Has Enough Scale to Compete -- Update
October 22 2019 - 02:08AM
Dow Jones News
By Joe Flint
Shari Redstone said the combination of Viacom Inc. and CBS
Corp., the companies that make up her family's media empire, will
create a content giant that can compete with larger industry
rivals, even if she doesn't pursue additional mergers.
CBS and Viacom announced a deal in August that is expected to
close late this year, creating a new company, ViacomCBS Inc. Ms.
Redstone, president of National Amusements Inc., the holding
company that controls Viacom and CBS, dismissed concerns that
ViacomCBS will be too small compared with Walt Disney Co., Netflix
Inc., AT&T Inc.'s WarnerMedia and other media giants.
"We can compete with the best of them--not only do we create a
quantity of content, we actually create content people actually
want to watch," she said, speaking at the WSJ Tech Live conference
in Laguna Beach, Calif.
Ms. Redstone said the companies spend a combined $13 billion a
year on content and have 22% of TV viewership in the U.S. "I don't
think we're given credit for what our future is," she said.
Investors haven't reacted well to the proposed merger. Viacom
and CBS shares are down some 23% since the August announcement,
which has shaved about $7 billion off the roughly $30 billion
valuation of the combined companies at the time of the deal.
Asked why Wall Street has punished the stocks, Ms. Redstone said
the traditional media industry in general is subject to a lot of
questions. "The landscape is changing for everybody," she said.
She also said ViacomCBS has to show that it can meld the two
cultures and get everyone on the same page.
"We have to prove that we can execute on that strategy in order
to get the confidence of the market," she said.
Asked about her favorite TV shows, Ms. Redstone mostly stuck to
those were created by her two companies or aired on their networks
including "Dead to Me," which CBS Studios makes for Netflix Inc.,
and the CBS show "All Rise." However, she also said she loves
"Fleabag" on Amazon Prime.
Ms. Redstone has had a dramatic rise over the past few years to
take effective command of the Viacom-CBS empire built by her
father, media mogul Sumner Redstone.
As his health deteriorated, she took on a greater role and
reshaped the upper ranks of the companies. Viacom's management and
board were overhauled. The same happened at CBS when Leslie Moonves
was ousted last year after he was accused of a pattern of sexual
harassment and assault, allegations he denied.
Media giants including Disney and WarnerMedia are focusing most
of their efforts on creating content for their own
platforms--including their new streaming video services. ViacomCBS
will be nurturing its CBS All Access streaming service, but it is
also aggressively looking to license programming to other
companies, making it something of an outlier.
"We now are going to be able to serve a need that a lot of these
third party platforms are going to have," Ms. Redstone said, noting
that both CBS Studios and Viacom's Paramount Television make shows
for Netflix. "We want to maximize the value of our content."
Even in cases like children's programming where Viacom's
Nickelodeon is dominant, Ms. Redstone said that would not preclude
the company from selling kids shows to others. Nickelodeon, she
said, reaches 40% of children aged two to 11. She said she wanted
to avoid leaving the rest of the audience "unattended by only
putting that content on our platform."
Ms. Redstone also said she would never put corporate interests
ahead of the creative business that she will be overseeing. Asked
about the potential issues that could arise from a recent plotline
on the Comedy Central show "South Park" that pokes fun at China,
she said, "I'm not going to censor people who make great content
that people want to watch."
Ms. Redstone dismissed a report that she was looking to launch a
news channel that would compete with Fox News and other
right-leaning platforms.
"I am not planning to launch a conservative news network," she
said. She said that Pluto, the ad-supported streaming service that
Viacom acquired, has recently added a conservative channel called
the First to its offerings. Ms. Redstone said that was already in
the works before Viacom bought Pluto.
Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 22, 2019 01:53 ET (05:53 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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