Viacom

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the Hunt Valley-based broadcast company, is selling one of its top-performing television stations, in Sacramento, Calif., to Viacom Inc. for $285 million as part of a plan to leave markets where it can't own two stations. The company said yesterday that it will sell its CBS affiliate KOVR-TV, Channel 13. Sinclair added the station, in the country's 19th-largest television market, to its portfolio when it merged with River City Broadcasting in 1996. Since 2001, Sinclair has sold $443.

They are sons of strong women. Both have sparred publicly with their heirs, both are plotting to conquer China, and both seem to view immortality as their best succession plan. But what really unites Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner M. Redstone and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is that, to a degree almost unknown today among heads of U.S. public companies, they can do as they please. Redstone and Murdoch are part of a line of autocratic media titans stretching to CNN founder Ted Turner, William S. Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time Inc., newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and such lions of early Hollywood as Louis B. Mayer and Adolph Zuken.

Any company that broadcasts such shows as Jackass and Beavis and Butt-Head can't get overly worried about controversy. But Viacom - the corporate giant behind CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and numerous other networks and media properties - might be taking its biggest TV programming gamble yet with Logo, the long-awaited gay cable channel. Today, the media giant will roll out the network in roughly 10 million U.S. homes, making it the first widely available, advertiser-supported channel for the community known by the acronym LGBT - lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

NEW YORK - Viacom Inc. said yesterday that it will buy BET Holdings Inc. for $2.9 billion in stock and assumed debt, adding the top cable channel aimed at black people to its stable of TV networks, including CBS, and big-city radio stations. Viacom, the world's No. 3 media company, said it will issue about 40 million Class B common shares worth $2.34 billion, based on yesterday's close of $58.50. The final purchase price will be based on the share price 20 days before the tax-free transaction is completed.

NEW YORK -- Viacom Inc. said yesterday that it plans to sell stock in its Blockbuster Entertainment Group to pay off debt and announced that Bill Fields resigned after a year as chairman of the struggling unit.Viacom, which bought Blockbuster from H. Wayne Huizenga for $8.4 billion in 1994, plans the stock sale as Blockbuster's troubles deepen.The unit's first-quarter cash flow will drop 15 percent to 20 percent on slow video rentals, the parent company said.Some investors said the new stock won't fix Viacom's problems.

What would YouTube be without Jon Stewart, South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Colbert Report and dozens of other commercial video clips? Oh, just the hottest collection of America's home videos, self-made movies, no-name docudramas, videodiaries, bloopers, candidate cameos and gotcha outtakes. This video bulletin board is as eccentric, wacky, evocative, idiosyncratic and freewheeling as its users. And yet entertainment giant Viacom has charged that snippets of its stars, comics and cartoon characters that appear on YouTube are copyright infringement.

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web's largest video site by far. The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google Inc. and Viacom Inc. said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site's visitors. Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google.

NEW YORK -- The sparring among Paramount Communications Inc. and its rival suitors, Viacom Inc. and QVC Network Inc., heightened yesterday, raising the prospect that the five-month takeover battle will limp past its scheduled Tuesday finale.QVC, responding to "grave concerns" expressed by Paramount about its behavior, told the media and entertainment company it is complying with the auction procedures, which prohibit new bids before Tuesday.At the same time, QVC stated that it was free to amend its bid if neither side gets a majority of Paramount shares by the expiration of tender offers at midnight Monday.

NEW YORK -- After weeks of haggling, lawyers for Paramount Communications and QVC Network Inc. met yesterday morning to discuss QVC's bid for Paramount.It was the first time representatives for the two sides had met officially since QVC commenced a hostile $9.6 billion bid that was roughly comparable to a friendly merger proposal from Viacom Inc.But by all accounts, the two sides were no closer to a rapprochement by the end of the day. In fact, neither Paramount's chairman, Martin S. Davis, or QVC's chairman, Barry Diller, bothered to attend.

QVC, BellSouth discuss bidRepresentatives of QVC Network Inc. and BellSouth Corp. met the last two days to discuss the possibility of QVC revising its bid for Paramount Communications Inc., sources said yesterday.Final bids in the five-month fight between QVC and Viacom Inc. are due by Tuesday.BellSouth is the largest investor in QVC's bid for Paramount, having agreed to put up $1.5 billion.Viacom is offering $105 a share in cash for 50.1 percent of the company, compared with QVC's bid of $92 a share in cash for the same percentage.