Sumner Murray Redstone (born on May 27, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts) is Chairman of the Board and controlling shareholder of the Viacom and CBS Corporation media conglomerates, and is also the majority owner of Midway Games and is the owner of the National Amusements theater chain. His father, Michael Rothstein, was the owner of the Northeast Theater Corporation in Dedham, Massachusetts. [1]
Redstone attended the prestigious Boston Latin School and graduated at the top of his class, which won him a position at Harvard College. He completed his B.A. in three years, and the Board of Overseers at Harvard conferred to him his degree. Later, Redstone served in World War II, decoding Japanese messages for the United States Army. Upon completion of his Army service, he worked in Washington, D.C. and attended Georgetown University Law School. He chose to transfer into Harvard Law School and received his LL.B. from that institution.
After completing law school, Redstone worked primarily in Washington, D.C., working at first for the U.S. Department of Justice in San Francisco and then going into private practice. However, after a few years in practice, he chose to join his father's theater chain management operation, what is now known as National Amusements.
As Redstone grew National Amusements, he believed that content would become more important than distribution mechanisms. There would always exist channels of distribution (albeit in varied forms), but content was always going to be necessary (his famous quote is "content is king!"). He then made investments in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (the latter of the 4 of which Redstone's Viacom would buy in the 1990's-see below), all of which turned over huge profits when he chose to sell the stock in the early 1980s.
