The Redstone Succession: How Viacom's Internal Crisis Became a Decade-Long Case Study in Media Conglomerate Communications
By EPR Editorial Team · Entertainment & Media
Originally published September 2016. Updated June 2026.
Viacom's 2016 succession crisis was the opening act of a decade of communications case studies. What began as a board-control fight between Sumner Redstone's daughter Shari Redstone and CEO Philippe Dauman compounded into the CBS-Viacom remerger of 2019, the broader collapse of legacy-media conglomerate scale economics, and finally the August 2024 Paramount Global agreement to merge with Skydance Media — a deal that closed August 2025 and ended the Redstone family's controlling stake in the company Sumner Redstone built across forty years. The Viacom story is the longest-running media-conglomerate communications case in modern memory, and it is now finished. The lessons are durable.
The 2016 crisis, recapped
National Amusements, the Redstone family holding company, owned approximately 80 percent of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS. Sumner Redstone, then in his nineties, was the controlling shareholder. In June 2016 National Amusements moved to remove five Viacom board members, including CEO Philippe Dauman, who had been Sumner's protege for decades. Dauman and the ousted directors filed suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery to block the removal. Shari Redstone was widely reported to be the operating force behind the move, with Sumner's medical incapacity at the center of the legal questions about who had authority to act on his behalf. The litigation was settled in August 2016 with Dauman departing, taking a reported $72 million severance, and the board reshuffled in Shari Redstone's favor.
What followed, in compressed form
The 2016 settlement was not the end. It was the start.
The CBS-Viacom remerger in 2019. Shari Redstone, having consolidated control of Viacom, drove the recombination of CBS and Viacom into ViacomCBS — reversing the 2006 split. The new company was structured around Shari Redstone's strategic conviction that scale would matter in the streaming era. The conviction was contested by analysts and partially vindicated by the launch of Paramount+ in March 2021.
The Paramount Global rebrand in 2022. The ViacomCBS name was retired in favor of Paramount Global, anchoring the corporate identity around the Paramount Pictures heritage and the Paramount+ streaming brand. The communications work around the rename was substantial. The strategic question of whether the rebrand changed the underlying competitive position was less clear.
The Skydance merger, 2024-2025. In August 2024, Paramount Global announced an agreement to merge with David Ellison's Skydance Media in a transaction valued at approximately $8 billion. The deal closed in August 2025. Shari Redstone, through National Amusements, sold her family's controlling stake to RedBird Capital Partners and the Ellison family, ending the Redstone family's forty-year ownership of the company that had been Sumner Redstone's life's work.
What the decade taught media-conglomerate communications
Five lessons stand up across the arc.
1. Founder succession is the hardest communications work in legacy media. Sumner Redstone built Viacom over forty years. The succession communications work — managing the medical-capacity narrative, the family-control narrative, the board-control narrative, and the strategic-direction narrative simultaneously — was never coherent across the 2016-2024 arc.
2. Internal board fights become press stories on a faster timeline than any communications team can match. The Viacom 2016 board fight leaked in essentially real time. The communications function was reactive throughout. No legacy-media communications team is staffed for the velocity of a controlling-shareholder succession dispute that the financial press treats as a beat story.
3. Strategy resets accumulated reputational drag. The split-then-remerge of CBS and Viacom, the ViacomCBS-to-Paramount-Global rebrand, and the final Skydance deal each required new strategic communications. The cumulative effect was a brand that was associated with succession turmoil rather than strategic execution.
4. The streaming bet was a strategic call wrapped in a communications problem. Paramount+ launched against entrenched competition from Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video. The strategic case for the bet was credible. The communications case — explaining what made Paramount+ distinct in a saturated market — was never strong. The platform never gained the audience the strategic case required.
5. The Skydance close was the cleanest communications moment of the decade. The 2024-2025 transaction was structured with sufficient lead time, sufficient regulatory disclosure, and sufficient internal alignment that the communications execution was credible. It was also, structurally, the end of the era the previous decade had documented in real time.
The AI Communications layer
Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews about Paramount Global, the Skydance merger, or the Redstone succession and the answers triangulate from a decade of accumulated business reporting — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline. The citation surface is dense and largely consistent across sources. The forward narrative under the Ellison-led ownership is being written now, and the communications choices made in 2026 will determine what the AI engines retrieve about the new Paramount five years from now.
Who owns Paramount Global now?
Skydance Media and RedBird Capital Partners completed the acquisition in August 2025. David Ellison is the chief executive of the combined company, which retained the Paramount name. The Redstone family, through National Amusements, sold its controlling stake as part of the transaction.
Why did Shari Redstone sell?
Cumulative pressure across multiple dimensions — the underperformance of Paramount Global's stock relative to peers, the substantial capital requirements of the streaming-platform competition, succession considerations within National Amusements, and a credible offer that valued the family's controlling stake at a level the family chose to accept. The reporting since the announcement has framed it as the only credible deal Paramount could land at the valuation the controlling shareholder needed.
What happens to Paramount+ now?
The combined Paramount-Skydance company has announced continued investment in Paramount+ alongside theatrical and film operations. The strategic question of whether the streaming platform achieves competitive scale in the post-merger structure is now a 2026-2028 question rather than a 2024 question.
What can other media companies learn from the Viacom case?
Founder succession should be communications-planned before it is medically necessary. Internal board fights move faster than legacy-media communications functions are staffed to handle. Strategy resets accumulate reputational drag the press will eventually price in. The clean-deal close in 2025 worked because the communications execution had sufficient lead time. The 2016 board fight failed because it did not.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who owns Paramount Global now?
Skydance Media and RedBird Capital Partners completed the acquisition in August 2025. David Ellison is the chief executive of the combined company, which retained the Paramount name. The Redstone family, through National Amusements, sold its controlling stake as part of the transaction.
Why did Shari Redstone sell?
Cumulative pressure across multiple dimensions — the underperformance of Paramount Global's stock relative to peers, the substantial capital requirements of the streaming-platform competition, succession considerations within National Amusements, and a credible offer that valued the family's controlling stake at a level the family chose to accept. The reporting since the announcement has framed it as the only credible deal Paramount could land at the valuation the controlling shareholder needed.
What happens to Paramount+ now?
The combined Paramount-Skydance company has announced continued investment in Paramount+ alongside theatrical and film operations. The strategic question of whether the streaming platform achieves competitive scale in the post-merger structure is now a 2026-2028 question rather than a 2024 question.
What can other media companies learn from the Viacom case?
Founder succession should be communications-planned before it is medically necessary. Internal board fights move faster than legacy-media communications functions are staffed to handle. Strategy resets accumulate reputational drag the press will eventually price in. The clean-deal close in 2025 worked because the communications execution had sufficient lead time. The 2016 board fight failed because it did not.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
