ViaSlow vs. ViaGrow: Sumner Redstone fine-tunes his plan to split Viacom.(MONEY TALKS)

Broadcasting & Cable, May, 2005 by Higgins, John M.

As Viacom divvies up its assets into two companies, a single piece has turned up as foster child: Showtime Networks Inc. Why is Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone taking billion-dollar cable network Showtime from cable czar Tom Freston and handing it over to Les Moonves, whose broadcast and radio operations don't have very much to do with the pay-movie network's? The answer reveals a lot about Viacom's grand plan to split into two and the challenge Moonves faces as Redstone loads him up with the slowest-growing parts of the company.

In the next several weeks, Viacom's board is scheduled to finalize the details of the split, which calls for spinning off the company's relatively spry divisions--cable and movies--in order to free the new entity from its...

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