Episode Details

Wall Street Journal media reporter Keach Hagey talks with Recode’s Peter Kafka about her new book, “The King of Content: Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire.” Hagey says that, like the Murdochs, Redstone’s family is embroiled in “soap opera drama” as they work out what happens to a company once dominated by a single patriarch-mogul. She talks about why the people closest to Sumner Redstone did not disclose his declining mental health to shareholders and what sets his daughter, Shari Redstone, who controls both CBS and Viacom, apart from others in that circle. Plus: Hagey discusses Disney’s aborted attempt to buy Vice and why she thinks 21st Century Fox would rather sell to Disney than to Comcast.

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