Will Sumner Redstone Ever Grow Up?

Quote: In the ongoing discussion over whether or not Sumner Redstone is growing too old to run his media empire, add this: A rambling attempt to get Daily Beast writer Peter Lauria to tell him the source of a story about Redstone's attempts to get MTV to air a reality TV show about "The Electric Barbarellas," a hot girl band trying to make it big in Hollywood. On a voicemail he left Lauria (well worth a listen), the 87-year-old chairman of Viacom and CBS, pulls out his best Michael Corleone, telling Lauria that "You may be reluctant, but we have to have [for the lawsuit] the name of the person who gave you that story," Redstone says. "We're not going to kill him. We just want to talk to him. We're not going to fire him. We just want to talk to him." Obviously this isn't the first time Redstone's ended up generating ink with his antics, and part of the fun of being a media mogul is discovering hot girl bands less than half your age and pretty much getting what you want all the time, no matter who it hurts (as Lauria reminds us, a couple years ago Redstone, then 84, detailed the shortcomings of his daughter Shari for Forbes' Bob Lenzner amid a generational battle for control of his company). It would all just be good slimy fun during the annual summer news lull if it wasn't for the fact that both Viacom and CBS are struggling to recover from the worst recession to hit the industry in a generation or more. As Forbes' Lacey Rose detailed earlier this year, CBS is doing a great job of outpacing its anemic broadcast rivals, but that hardly makes it a media powerhouse or a good bet for the future. Viacom is rebounding from the implosion of the last couple years, but its shares still trail the returns you would have had with a simple S&P index fund for five years, with no game-changing, MTV-size idea on the boards to turn that performance around. Meanwhile, Lauria says the Electric Barbarellas fiasco is start...
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