Tom Freston

As DMW Predicted – Redstone Fires Viacom CEO Freston

Authored by Jay Baage on September 5, 2006 - 8:28am.

I asked this question a week ago: Does Sumner Redstone have the Guts to fire New Viacom Head Tom Freston? We now know that the answer is yes.

DING. DING. DING. Soon after midnight an insider posted a comment on DMW related to my story on Freston last week: "I predict that you will get a lot of site visits today." Then early this morning the bomb hit the wires – Viacom executive chairman Sumner Redstone is giving Tom Freston the boot.

ANALYSIS: Does Sumner Redstone Have The Guts To Fire New Viacom's CEO Tom Freston?

Authored by Jay Baage on August 28, 2006 - 9:49am.

MTV is slowly turning its ship to head in a new direction. The problem is not what the company has done in the past 25 years, I would argue it is what it has not done in the past 5 years. It missed a number of new media opportunities seized by Apple’s iTunes, News Corp’s MySpace and YouTube. The man responsible for that is New Viacom CEO Tom Freston. But MTV’s new President Christina Norman finally promises new initiatives “in the next couple of months” including a social network of their own.