He embodied the impolite era of the media mogul, a time before streaming, when movie theaters and cable TV were all the rage.
Sumner M. Redstone belonged to the Age of the Media Mogul, a time before Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google, when street-smart executives like Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller and John Malone brawled in a bid to dominate the world’s screen time. That era is all but done. The swashbucklers have essentially ceded the Hollywood stage to a group of coolheaded executives who like to give the impression that they earn their billions more through their knowledge of algorithms than the brutal tactics of corporate warfare. But the executives who run the digital businesses that have come to dominate the entertainment world would not have gotten very far without the programs and films that were brought to market by ferocious moguls like Mr. Redstone, who died on Tuesday at age 97. He wasn’t so much an innovator as he was a maximum opportunist. He didn’t invent new forms of entertainment; he used cagey maneuvers to build an empire. He had the gall to borrow ungodly sums to close a deal. He loved to buy things. He loved to sue his rivals. Mr. Redstone started with a string of drive-in movie theaters and became the main architect of ViacomCBS, the media giant that includes the CBS broadcast network, the cable channels Showtime and MTV, and the Paramount film studio. The former Army officer with flame-red hair (in later years it was dyed carrot) liked to say he was self-made, but he had a considerable head start, thanks to his father, who founded the drive-in chain in the 1930s. By the time the younger Redstone joined the family business in 1954, car culture was king and drive-ins were all the rage. Even his father, Mickey Redstone, had help, having started his career with $50,000 furnished by a Boston mobster, Harry Sagansky, known as “Doc.” “It was my father’s money,” Mr. Sagansky’s son, Robert Sage, recalled in “The King of Content,” a biography of Mr. Redstone by the journalist Keach Hagey. “The Redstones didn’t put any money in it.” Soon after Sumner Redstone came aboard, he developed a reputation as an irascible dealmaker who barked his way through transactions. In a less polite time, long before leadership coaches and Power Point presentations, he once yelled so loudly that one of his teeth shot across the room. Through the din of a blustery career, he expanded the drive-ins into a nationwide business of “multiplexes,” a coinage he claimed.
