Sumner Redstone is one of the most powerful media moguls of the early 21st century. In his capacity as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Viacom, Redstone controls Hollywood’s Paramount Pictures television and motion picture factory; the CBS and UPN networks; a handful of cable TV networks, including MTV, the Movie Channel, Showtime, Black Entertainment Television, The Nashville Network, Comedy Central, Country Music Television, Nickelodeon, and VH-1; several radio and TV stations; and a TV production and syndication business that owns the lucrative syndication rights to Roseanne, A Different World, I Love Lucy, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, and The Cosby Show. Viacom has also produced such prime-time fare as Matlock and Jake and the Fatman.

Redstone’s father, Michael, first sold linoleum from the back of a truck, later became a liquor wholesaler, and finally purchased two nightclubs and set up one of the original drive-in movie operations in the United States. By the time Sumner Redstone graduated from Harvard University in 1943, his father was concentrating on the movie industry. One of a number of struggling owners in the fledgling drive-in business, he was unable to book first-run films because the vertically integrated Hollywood giants promoted their own movie theaters.

Sumner Redstone graduated first in his class from the prestigious Boston Latin School and then finished Harvard in less than three years. Upon graduation, he was recruited by Edwin Reischauer, a future U.S. ambassador to Japan, for an ace U.S. Army intelligence unit that would become famous for cracking Japan’s military codes. After three years of service, during which he received two Army commendations, Redstone entered Harvard Law School.

After graduating from Harvard Law in 1947, he began to practice law, first in Washington, D.C., and then in Boston, but he soon was lured into the family movie-theater business. Two decades later, Redstone became president and chief executive officer of the family firm, National Amusements, Inc. (NAI) and he took on the additional role of chairman of the NAI board in 1986. Indeed, even with his move to Viacom, Redstone has continued in the movie-exhibition business. At the end of the 20th century, National Amusements operated 1,350 screens across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Latin America.

Redstone is a physically tough individual. In 1979, he survived a Boston hotel fire by clinging to a third-floor window with one severely burned hand. Doctors never expected him to live through 60 hours of surgery, but he did. Medical experts told him he would never walk again, yet Redstone began to exercise daily on a treadmill and to play tennis regularly, wearing a leather strap that enabled him to grip his racquet. Those who know the Boston tycoon say that his recovery spurred his ambition to succeed in the motion-picture and later television business.

As he recovered from his burns, Redstone used his knowledge of the movie business to begin selectively acquiring stock in Hollywood studios. In a relatively short time, he made millions of dollars buying and selling stakes in Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia Pictures Entertainment, MGM/UA Entertainment, and Orion. At first, Viacom represented simply another stock market investment, but soon Redstone realized that the company needed new management, and, in 1987, he resolved to take over and run the operation.

Redstone’s acquisition proved difficult. The company had rebuffed an earlier takeover attempt by financier Carl Icahn, and Viacom executives had sought to buy and protect their own company. Redstone became embroiled in a bitter, six-month corporate raid that forced him to raise his offer three times. Upon final acquisition, rather than break up Viacom and sell off divisions to pay for the deal as his bankers advised, Redstone slowly and quietly built the company into one of the world’s top TV corporations.

Redstone hired former Home Box Office chief executive Frank Biondi to build on Viacom’s diversity. For example, by the mid-1990s, Viacom had expanded its MTV music network far beyond its original base in the United States to reach more than 200 million house-holds in approximately 80 countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Redstone felt that his networks needed a Hollywood studio to make new products, and in 1993 he decided to acquire Paramount. He soon found himself in a battle with QVC Network, Inc., and in time he joined forces with video rental empire Blockbuster Entertainment to cement the deal.

Owning more than two-thirds of Viacom’s voting stock (as of 2002) means that Redstone controls a vast media empire second only to that of Rupert Murdoch. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Forbes ranked Redstone among the richest persons in the United States, with a net worth in excess of $4 billion. Yet Redstone has never “gone Hollywood.” At the start of the 21st century, he continues to operate his collection of enterprises, not from Paramount’s sprawling studio on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, but from his long-time NAI headquarters in Dedham, Massachusetts.

On September 7, 1999, Redstone announced the capstone deal of his life by taking over CBS Corporation for $37.3 billion. He was able to bend the Federal Communications Commission ownership rules, and the deal sailed past government regulators. Mel Karmazin of CBS became the chief operating officer of the whole company, but with Redstone owning controlling interest in the stock, it was clear who was the boss, the final decision maker. Thus, Redstone brought together the CBS and UPN television networks and Viacom’s cable channels under one roof, making Redstone one of the handful of the world’s most powerful media moguls. But as the advertising market soured at the commencement of the 21st century, the synergy of the merger did not increase profits. Overall, advertising sales were down, and it was uncertain whether Redstone, as he neared his 80th birthday, would spin off subsidiaries he deemed unnecessary for Viacom’s future.