BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Viacom Inc. is an American multinational media company that specialises in film and television. It is currently the world's ninth largest broadcasting, cable, and media company in terms of revenue, and has headquarters in New York City and Hollywood, California. Voting control of Viacom is held by National Amusements, Inc., a privately owned theater company controlled by billionaire Sumner Redstone,[2][3][4][5] who also holds a controlling stake in CBS Corporation.

The present-day Viacom was created as a spin-off from the original company, which was renamed as CBS Corporation afterwards, on December 31, 2005. The latter currently retains control of the over-the-air broadcasting, TV production, subscription pay television, and publishing assets, which were previously owned by the original Viacom. Comprising BET Networks, Viacom Media Networks, and Paramount Pictures, Viacom operates approximately 170 networks, reaching approximately 700 million subscribers in approximately 160 countries.

In June 2005, Viacom announced its purchase of Neopets, a virtual pet website, along with GameTrailers, GoCityKids, and IFILM. That December, Paramount announced it would acquire DreamWorks. All indications were that the whole of DreamWorks, both live comedy film and TV studios, albeit not the DreamWorks archive (which was sold to a group led by George Soros in March 2006) nor the animated unit (which was not part of the deal) would remain owned by Viacom, even though CBS acquired Paramount's television studio.

Official Viacom website can be reached here

Related Assets/Studios

Viacom owns/has a share in the following companies:
Paramount Players
Paramount Famous Productions
Insurge Pictures
MTV Animation
Nickelodeon Animation Studio
Paramount Animation
BET Films
Comedy Central Films
CMT Films
MTV Films
Nickelodeon Movies
VH1 Films
Viacom 18 Motion Pictures (49%)