Unscripted by James B Stewart & Rachel Abrams

Author:James B Stewart & Rachel Abrams [Stewart, James B & Abrams, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

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The same day as the Aiello interview, Shari Redstone had lunch alone with Moonves at his office in Los Angeles. She laid out her long-term plans—CBS and Viacom would merge and then be in a stronger position to be acquired by another company. If necessary, National Amusements would give up its controlling interest once a deal was negotiated. As she’d said before, she didn’t want to be a media mogul—she was looking forward to focusing on her family and her other ventures. Was Moonves on board?

He said he was.

Moonves, she said, was essential to the strategy. What were his future plans, given that he was nearing seventy?

Moonves told her he was looking forward to the “next stage” of life and would probably leave in two years’ time. He said he understood she’d need to start thinking about a successor.

Shari also mentioned that some board changes would be necessary. After his offensive behavior toward her, Gifford was unacceptable. And she wanted to nominate Richard Parsons to the board. The grandson of a groundskeeper on the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, New York, the sixty-nine-year-old Parsons had retired as chief executive of Time Warner a decade earlier, served as chair of Citigroup for a few years, and then become a trusted adviser to many chief executives, as well as to Shari.

The choice of Parsons could hardly be faulted, but Gifford remained a sore spot with Moonves. Gifford was among his most loyal directors. An unusual provision in Moonves’s contract provided that he could resign for “good reason” and collect an enormous golden parachute if a current or former chief executive of a rival company was nominated to the board. He pointed out that naming Parsons would trigger that option.

Finally, there was the delicate issue of the #MeToo rumors, now the subject of Aiello’s investigation. Shari asked Moonves if there was any truth to them.

“Look me in the eyes,” Moonves told Shari. “There is nothing there.”

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