%26#8220;I guess I%26#8217;d like to be known as a loving and supportive father and grandfather,%26#8221; Mr. Redstone said.This was an uncharacteristically wistful note for Mr. Redstone, the chairman and controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, which together represent one of the world%26#8217;s largest media empires. Despite Mr. Redstone%26#8217;s sentiments, his relationships with family and business associates remain complicated. Like many who have risen to preside over large business empires, Mr. Redstone, who turns 85 next month, has left a trail of tattered relationships %26#151; with family members, executives and, in his case, one very famous movie star. Nearly three years ago, Mr. Redstone announced plans to split his empire into two publicly traded companies, and it seemed for a time that he would recede into semi-retirement. However, in the late summer of 2006, in rapid succession, Mr. Redstone acrimoniously ended a longstanding relationship between Tom Cruise and Paramount, a Viacom property, and then fired Tom Freston as chief executive of Viacom.And for nearly a year, Mr. Redstone has been embroiled in a dispute over corporate governance with his daughter, Shari, who is nonexecutive vice chairman of both Viacom and CBS. The falling out between father and daughter has not been resolved, but Mr. Redstone has not sought to remove Shari from the boards of Viacom and CBS. In July, executives close to Mr. Redstone said he was expected to try to oust her. Their sparring has been uncomfortable for Mr. Redstone%26#8217;s friends and executives, and he frequently, at dinners and business meetings, has used abusive language toward his daughter, said one person who has been present during such incidents. Through a representative, Mr. Redstone declined to comment.Mr. Redstone%26#8217;s frayed relationship with his daughter makes the issue of who will succeed him as controlling shareholder %26#151; a question that hovers over the future of Viacom and CBS %26#151; much more difficult. She was once regarded as the clear successor. Last summer, Mr. Redstone settled litigation with his son, Brent, buying out his son%26#8217;s stake in National Amusements, the family holding company. This week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is to hear arguments in an appeal involving Mr. Redstone%26#8217;s nephew Michael, who has argued he was cheated out of a share in the family business.Like all business titans, however, Mr. Redstone%26#8217;s legacy will rest less on his relationships than on the performance of his companies. Here, too, he has expressed some ambivalence about perhaps his biggest decision, breaking Viacom into two entities. When asked at the Florida conference, convened by Bear Stearns, to reflect on how he split the companies two years ago, Mr. Redstone replied: %26#8220;Would I do it the same way? You know, you%26#8217;re never sure. I think so.%26#8221;The jury is still out among executives and investors as to whether or not that was the right decision. Only lately are the two companies performing as they were expected to at the time of the split, when Viacom was billed as the company that would grow faster and CBS was said to be the slow-growing broadcast network that would pay steady dividends.For the first two years after the split, CBS%26#8217;s stock outperformed Viacom%26#8217;s, but that is no longer the case. Both stocks are down from where they were at the time of the split: the combined market capitalization was $50 billion then, and today the value of the two companies combined is $40.8 billion. (Of course, other media companies have declined in value over that time as well.)Initially, the post-split Viacom was disappointing when measured by the stock price, and Mr. Redstone reacted by firing Viacom%26#8217;s chief executive, Mr. Freston, who was popular among the staff and in the industry. Mr. Redstone said publicly at the time that Mr. Freston had been too slow to expand Viacom%26#8217;s businesses on the Internet. Mr. Freston was pushing to bid for the social networking site MySpace but was overruled by Mr. Redstone, according to two people involved in the process who asked not to be identified because the discussions were intended to be confidential. MySpace wound up in the hands of Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation, who bought it for $580 million. Shortly after firing Mr. Freston, Mr. Redstone appeared on the PBS program %26#8220;The Charlie Rose Show%26#8221; and criticized Mr. Freston for being too late in jumping into the MySpace sweepstakes.%26#8220;Before Rupert got into the act,%26#8221; he said, %26#8220;MySpace was sitting there, ripe for the taking, for $500 million. Tom never took it. So the board had legitimate concerns.%26#8221; Mr. Freston was barred from talking publicly about Viacom, as part of his $85 million severance package.Under Mr. Freston%26#8217;s successor, Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom has undoubtedly improved, both in its operating performance and its stock market performance. Shares are up more than 18 percent since Mr. Dauman took over in September 2006. 1 2 Next Page %26#x00bb;
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