Good morning.
Jim Stewart is the author of two of the best business narratives ever written—Den of Thieves and Disney War—so I have eagerly awaited his new book, Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy. It came out last week, and I used the long weekend to dive in.
It doesn’t disappoint. The book is a page-turner—an over-the-top tale of money, power, sex, and relentless scheming to wrest billions away from an old man who in his final years seems to have lost the capacity for just about anything except sex. It is literally made for television. Stewart and his coauthor, Rachel Abrams, helpfully divide it into four “Seasons” and 33 “Episodes,” just in case the Netflix producers miss the point.
But here’s the thing: it’s not about business. There is very little about the business struggles of Viacom, Paramount, or CBS to be found in here. I make a brief cameo appearance in Season 2, where in an interview I ask then-Viacom-CEO Philippe Dauman the question everyone should have been asking had they not been so distracted by the epic drama around Sumner Redstone’s senility and sexual behavior: Given the company’s poor performance in recent years, why should shareholders want Dauman to stay? Dauman doesn’t answer the question, nor does the book. There’s too much juicy personal intrigue and way too much sex to waste time on boring business details.
In the end, the only hero in this story is Redstone’s daughter, Shari. She was endlessly demeaned and disparaged by her own father, the two women who all but abducted him, Dauman, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, and the boards of both Viacom and CBS. Yet in the end, she seems to emerge as the only one in the sordid story who was able to keep her mind intact and her libido in check. If there’s anything to learn here, it is from her. As chair of Paramount Global—the name assumed by the merger of Viacom and CBS—she and her CEO, Bob Bakish, still have a long way to go to demonstrate that the company can compete in the same league as Amazon, Disney, and Netflix. But don’t count her out. She is a survivor. (That may be why Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway loaded up on the stock in the fourth quarter.)
By the way, whose strange idea was it to release Stewart’s book on Valentine’s Day? There’s sex on nearly every page, but not a hint of romance. It won’t be a Hallmark movie.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
