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An ailing titan of the small screen

October 10-11| FT| By Matthew Garrahan

In its 1980s heyday, MTV was the coolest brand in media. The music video channel was name-checked in pop hits, helped turn acts such as Michael Jackson into huge stars and was so popular that young people of the era were the "MTV generation".

Today, MTV is a shadow of its former self, hit by lower audience ratings and supplanted in the hearts of young people by digital players and platforms. It is unclear if it can be turned around, but responsibility for reviving it ultimately lies with a now-diminished 92-year-old billionaire who has not been seen or heard in public for several months.

Sumner Redstone controls an empire that consists of two companies: CBS, one of America's largest broadcast networks, and Viacom, which owns cable channels including MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon, as well as the Paramount movie studio.

Viacom has been hit by a tumbling share price on worries that viewers, their heads turned by on-demand services such as Netflix, are no longer watching live television - and so missing the commercials.

Mr Redstone's Viacom management team, led by his long-time ally Philippe Dauman, are grappling with these shifts. But it was Mr Redstone who hit the headlines this week amid rumbles of discontent about the performance of Viacom and its future ownership. His health is also a concern: Mr Redstone has not featured on recent earnings calls for the two companies and has missed annual investor meetings.

Mr Redstone has been having trouble with his speech and did not want to become a distraction for the company, said a person familiar with the matter. His withdrawal from public life means the absence of one of America's more colourful media moguls. Born Sumner Murray Rothstein in Boston in 1923 - he was 17 when his father changed the family's surname to Redstone - he is among the last of a breed that includes the likes of Rupert Murdoch , Barry Diller and John Malone.

He came from a family versed in media, his father starting Northeast Theatre Corporation, which owned several drive-in movie theatres.

The younger Redstone graduated top of his class at the Boston Latin School and attended Harvard College. When the second world war started he joined the army and spent the latter part of the conflict working for an intelligence group at the Pentagon, decoding Japanese military and diplomatic codes.

After the war he studied law, working for the Department of Justice and in private practice before returning to run the family cinema business. "Law is just a business, not a crusade for humanity," he once said. "When I reached that conclusion, I decided I was going to go into business."

He realised that the industry's future lay in out-of-town "multiplex" cinemas - a term he coined - and his National Amusements became a cinema powerhouse in the north-eastern US.

Mr Redstone, though, had his eye on a bigger prize: owning the content that appeared on his cinema screens was more lucrative. He is thought to have been the first person to say "content is king" - an adage even more relevant in an age of fragmented audiences and new digital platforms. He set about building a media empire with interests in television and film production.

Then a near-death experience in 1979 put his life on a different path. He survived a hotel fire in Boston by climbing out of a window and kneeling on a ledge until he was rescued, but suffered burns to 50 per cent of his body. Mr Redstone had several operations and was in hospital for four months. "People didn't think I would live or walk [again]," he once said. "And most of the important things that have happened in my life have taken place since then."

Chief among these were the acquisitions of Viacom, in 1987, followed by Paramount in 1993. The finance came from Michael Milken's junk bonds . Television programming was exploding, thanks to the boom in cable. His stakes in Viacom and CBS are now worth an estimated $5.1bn, according to Forbes .

While Mr Redstone's physical powers have diminished, he still pulls the strings at the two companies. The issue he faces is whether his management team at Viacom can lift the company out of its rut amid seismic shifts in media consumption patterns.

He will have been encouraged by a rally in Viacom's shares, which have risen close to 25 per cent from a low point in August. Ratings at children's channel Nickelodeon and the VH1 music network have picked up. But the environment is tough. Paramount has slowed movie production and released no films in the three months to June.

Mr Redstone this week issued a statement saying that Mr Dauman continues to have "my unequivocal support and trust, which he has earned over our many years together". Mr Dauman is one of seven members of a trust put in place to manage Mr Redstone's holdings in Viacom and CBS. Mr Redstone's daughter, Shari, 61, with whom he has often feuded, is also a member: any decision affecting the trust's holding in Viacom or CBS would have to be passed by majority vote.

The trust will take over management of the stakes in Viacom and CBS only after the death of Mr Redstone, who was once reported to be working on a memoir provisionally titled How To Live Forever. Last year he bristled in response to a question about the future from The Hollywood Reporter. "I will not discuss succession, he said. "You know why? I'm not gonna die."

The writer is the FT's media editor

By Matthew Garrahan