Viacom-CBS 10 Years Later

It was 10 years ago that Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin unveiled the $36-billion marriage of their respective companies, Viacom and CBS. "Our union will be king," Viacom's Redstone said in the announcement of the deal. Karmazin added that the new Viacom "will be the first 21st century media company ... the future is virtually unlimited for this new and exciting company." Wall Street ate it up. "It's just perfect," Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif-Cohen gushed to Time. It sure sounded good on paper. Viacom had the cable networks -- MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and a movie studio in Paramount Pictures. CBS had the iconic broadcast network, 200 radio stations, a huge outdoor advertising company, lots of TV stations and even Oprah Winfrey. We all know what happened next. After the Sept. 11 attacks and the first Internet bubble burst, advertising went into the toilet and media stocks tumbled.