Unscripted

What happens when family control, personal passion, and immense corporate empire collide? The saga of Sumner Redstone, CBS, and Viacom is a study of the intersection between private trust and public governance, where boardrooms, bedrooms, and courtrooms become indistinguishable. The story is not only about one man’s dominance but also about how structures of control—trusts, contracts, and loyalty networks—shape multibillion-dollar companies long after their founders are gone.

At its core, this tale traces the rise, chaos, and eventual reform of a media dynasty spanning decades. From Sumner’s theater-chain beginnings to his control of Viacom and CBS, you watch how private family instruments, estate planning, romantic entanglements, and legal drama came to define corporate America’s limits and possibilities. (Note: Like Ron Chernow’s study of Rockefeller, this narrative treats corporate power as deeply human—driven by personality as much as profit.)

The architecture of control

Sumner’s control flowed through a family holding company, National Amusements, and a trust created after his 2002 divorce. Despite being publicly traded, Viacom and CBS were privately ruled: whoever commanded the trust commanded the companies. Trustees like Philippe Dauman and George Abrams served as both legal gatekeepers and political actors. When his daughter Shari Redstone later replaced them in 2016, the empire’s internal constitution shifted overnight—proof that ultimate authority could lie outside the boardroom.

The personal becoming political

Sumner’s romantic and personal relationships—his marriages, mistresses, and beneficiaries—spilled relentlessly into business decisions. Women like Manuela Herzer, Sydney Holland, and Heather Naylor influenced programming choices, appointments, and even financial transfers approaching tens of millions of dollars. At one point, MTV was pressured to promote Naylor’s pop group The Electric Barbarellas despite internal resistance. His desires altered the network’s output, stock price, and internal ethics.

Gifts, estate rewrites, and stock sales blurred boundaries between personal affection and fiduciary duty. When $90 million left his accounts in 2014—half to Holland, half to Herzer—accusations of undue influence and elder abuse emerged. The resulting lawsuits exposed how household politics and corporate governance intertwine when one fragile patriarch controls everything.

Family schism and governance conflict

As Sumner’s health failed, Shari Redstone began to assert control, positioning herself against former loyalists like Dauman. Through strategic trustee replacement and legal maneuvering, she blocked a proposed sale of 49% of Paramount Pictures to Dalian Wanda and realigned boards at both Viacom and CBS. Her actions illustrated how family shareholders can outmaneuver CEOs by leveraging private control rights embedded in trust documents.

The Struggle at Viacom’s board became a case study in control mechanics. When Dauman sued alleging Sumner’s incapacity, the courts turned into staging grounds for competing narratives—one insisting that Sumner was lucid, another stressing vulnerability and manipulation. For scholars and practitioners of corporate law, the case illuminated the fragility of independence in dual-class companies dominated by a patriarchal shareholder.

The reckoning at CBS and #MeToo

Parallel to the Redstone family wars came a broader reckoning in power and accountability: the #MeToo movement. The downfall of Les Moonves, CBS’s longtime CEO, mirrored Redstone’s personal chaos in a different register. Investigations spearheaded by journalists like Ronan Farrow and law firms like Debevoise & Plimpton revealed how misconduct, denial, and contractual loopholes allowed predatory behavior to persist inside one of America’s largest networks. This era transformed #MeToo from cultural outrage to a governance revolution that forced boards to define ethical leadership.

Legacy and transformation

Ultimately, Shari Redstone reconstructed the corporate empire her father built. She merged CBS and Viacom under new leadership (Bob Bakish) and pursued a streaming-focused, inclusive culture. Yet, even as reforms followed, the Redstone saga left a sobering lesson: control, unchecked, corrodes judgment. Whether through trust instruments or ego-driven contracts, concentrated power always bends governance toward personal theater.

Core takeaway

This story reveals how personal ambition, legal design, and cultural change interact. You see that power—whether in a patriarch’s hands or a board’s charter—is never neutral. It must be checked by transparency, independence, and humanity, or it will metastasize into crisis.

The Redstone family’s power drama illustrates how family control mechanisms can override traditional corporate governance. If you examine CBS and Viacom’s charters, you might assume independent directors ensure accountability. But the real authority flowed through National Amusements and its trust, which wielded 80% of voting shares. This made public shareholders mere spectators in a family play.

Trust design and dominance

After his 2002 divorce, Sumner Redstone placed control of National Amusements shares in a trust. Despite multiple trustees, he could replace any of them. That ability rendered board independence fragile. Inside this closed loop, Viacom’s division in 2006 and CBS’s later battles looked like corporate reorganizations but were really defensive maneuvers to preserve family rule.

The 2016 trustee coup

In 2016, Shari Redstone recognized that control over trustees meant control over everything else. By replacing Sumner’s allies (Philippe Dauman and George Abrams) with loyalists, she effectively reoriented corporate power. Instead of a hostile takeover in the market, she executed what business historians call an “internal control coup.” Trust law, usually invisible to investors, became the decisive weapon.

Key point

Control in public family companies can look ceremonial until one family member activates it through bylaws, trustee changes, or private instruments—and then it becomes absolute.

Sumner Redstone’s personal relationships didn’t just color his reputation—they altered the corporate map. When a founder conflates affection and authority, institutions absorb his emotional chaos. At CBS and Viacom, promotions, budgets, and internal politics often traced a line back to Sumner’s romantic life.

When intimacy drives investment

Sumner’s relationships with Paula Fortunato, Manuela Herzer, and Sydney Holland evolved into multimillion-dollar entanglements. He transferred houses, stock, and cash while also shaping programming in their favor. In one notorious case, Heather Naylor’s music act gained airtime and marketing muscle largely due to Sumner’s obsession, despite staff objections.

Corporate shockwaves

Executives like Les Moonves faced impossible balancing acts: respect Sumner’s personal whims or risk career damage. Even dinner bans, casting decisions, and press leaks reflected romantic fallout. The entanglement culminated in estate controversies—frequent changes to wills and beneficiaries injected instability into boardroom succession planning.

For corporate observers, Sumner’s example dramatizes the danger of unchecked founder control: private life becomes a public liability, and affection turns into litigation.

The theme of control reemerges inside Sumner’s home, where his caregivers and companions turned domestic life into a political arena. Allegations of elder abuse and undue influence were not abstract legal claims—they were grounded in observable patterns: isolation, surveillance, and the management of information.

How influence works

Sumner’s aides reported that Sydney Holland and Manuela Herzer monitored calls, installed cameras, and instructed staff to block Shari’s access. Nurses like Jeremy Jagiello and Giovanni Paz revealed orders to falsify reports and restrict communication. When one caregiver described being told to sedate Sumner, Adult Protective Services became involved. It was a case study in how isolation amplifies control.

Legal and medical fallout

Experts disagreed about Sumner’s capacity. Dr. James Spar found him lucid; Dr. Stephen Read described severe cognitive decline. The contradiction underscored a subtle legal truth: capacity and coercion can coexist. Someone may articulate a coherent sentence while still being manipulated into decisions. (Note: This reflects a broader problem in elder law worldwide—proof of free will is often indistinguishable from rehearsed consent.)

Lesson

For any family or advisor, this episode reinforces that guardianship, estate planning, and caregiver oversight must integrate medical and social scrutiny—not just legal formality.

Between 2015 and 2018, Viacom and CBS became twin battlegrounds between Shari Redstone’s family control and corporate executives’ autonomy. The sparks flew around two figures: Philippe Dauman and Les Moonves. Each believed he was preserving corporate integrity; each underestimated Shari’s resolve.

The Paramount dispute

Dauman’s plan to sell 49% of Paramount to Dalian Wanda aimed to modernize Viacom’s finances. Shari saw it as surrendering the family’s crown jewel. Her counterstrike—replacing trustees and reconstituting boards—stopped the sale cold. Dauman sued, lost control, and left with $72 million in severance. This was governance as chess: trustee by trustee, vote by vote.

The CBS 'nuclear option'

When Moonves feared Shari would force a CBS–Viacom merger, he and director Martin Lipton devised a radical defense: dilute National Amusements’ voting power by issuing a stock dividend that converted Class A governance power to the public. The board approved; Shari sued. The Delaware court declined to block her countermeasures, leaving both sides wounded and CBS immobilized. The word “nuclear” fit—the fallout left scorched alliances and pending litigation.

Governance insight

Corporate bylaws, when weaponized, can shift from fiduciary guardrails to tools of power warfare.

The fall of Les Moonves transformed the Redstone narrative into something larger: a microcosm of America’s corporate ethical crisis. The #MeToo wave, ignited by Weinstein’s exposure, swept through CBS with devastating force, forcing reckoning within an institution that had long thrived on star-driven masculinity.

Ronan Farrow’s exposé

In July 2018, Farrow’s New Yorker investigation named six women who accused Moonves of sexual misconduct spanning decades. The article combined detail, corroboration, and investigative rigor—qualities that converted rumor into corporate crisis. Moonves’s half-apology (“I may have made women uncomfortable…”) inflamed public response. CBS stock dropped immediately, signaling that ethics had become a market factor.

The internal struggle

CBS’s first response—a limited internal inquiry by Michael Aiello—proved too shallow. Under pressure from Shari Redstone and public opinion, the board hired Debevoise & Plimpton and Covington & Burling for independent reviews. These later uncovered evidence that Moonves had misled investigators and conspired with talent manager Marv Dauer to silence accuser Bobbie Phillips via casting offers.

Once forensic analysis retrieved 400 deleted texts, the board had grounds to declare he acted “for cause.” The #MeToo revolution thus became not just moral but procedural, redefining what corporate due diligence must include.

The final chapters dissect how legal language determines justice. Moonves’s contract shielded him with a narrow definition of “cause,” excluding prior misconduct unless proven to affect the company currently. This limited language—drafted by his HR director and accepted by a complacent compensation committee—nearly prevented accountability.

The cost of poor drafting

Because CBS’s “cause” clauses only applied to recent malfeasance, decades-old abuse seemed untouchable. Contractual structure thus dictated governance limits. When outside counsel confirmed Moonves had lied to investigators and used company resources to silence a potential accuser, the board had legal justification to fire him without severance—but only barely.

Reform through aftermath

The board placed $120 million in escrow—eventually forfeited—and committed to overhauling executive contracts. More importantly, the CBS case helped inspire corporate America to rewrite “cause” definitions and strengthen harassment provisions.

Broader takeaway

Contracts are culture in disguise: they signal whose interests the organization values and how seriously it defends accountability.

After years of internal turmoil, Shari Redstone emerged as the architect of renewal. Her persistence and strategic patience culminated in the 2019 merger of CBS and Viacom—now Paramount Global—creating a unified media company symbolically, if not financially, reunited.

Strategic persistence

Against resistant boards and skeptical investors, Shari advocated a merger that could compete in the streaming era. By insisting on independent investigations, bringing in diverse leadership, and appointing Bob Bakish as CEO, she recalibrated the empire toward accountability and modernization.

Cultural recalibration

In the wake of Moonves’s ouster, CBS adopted stricter codes of conduct, addressed gender representation, and aligned itself with the cultural shifts sweeping through media. While Paramount Global still faces competitive challenges, Shari’s commitment to ethical and transparent governance stands as both legacy and emancipation from her father’s shadow.

Final reflection

The Redstone family saga ends where modern governance begins: understanding that succession is not just inheritance—it’s reinvention.