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December 6, 2007

Murdoch + Freston = ?

My wife and I went to dinner with another couple last night on the Upper East Side of New York and saw Rupert Murdoch (natty in a black suit and black turtleneck) dining with a group of people that included Tom Freston, ex-CEO of Viacom.

Of course, I immediately asked myself, “What does this mean?”, because I assumed Murdoch is too old (76) to waste time just socializing, especially with Freston, who is not a barrel of laughs (he’s not glum, just not effervescently funny) and Murdoch doesn’t seem ever to stop at merely buying dinner. What’s he up to now?

Well, the possibilities are delicious to speculate about, which, after all, is why blogs are better at this sort of thing than fact-driven journalism. We speculate and opine, therefore we exist.

Freston was CEO of Viacom when it made the deal to invest in DreamWorks. DreamWorks is now unhappy with Freston’s successor, Philip Dauman, who had the gall to suggest that DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg was not God, which enraged the other two DreamWorks principlals, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who accused Dauman of being un-American because Spielberg was a “national treasure.” It’s been widely rumored that DreamWorks is looking for another home; the most likely one being NBCUniversal because Spielberg still has his office at Universal, for one reason.

It’s also known that the DreamWorks triumvirate like Freston, so… Perhaps the Murdoch-Freston tete-à-tete signals a new home for DreamWorks, which makes sense considering Murdoch’s lust for iconic brand names—today the Wall Street Journal, tomorrow Spielberg.

The prospect of such a match is delicious to think about. Can you imagine being a fly on the wall and watching a negotiating session between the filthy-rich, brilliant, strategic, conservative Murdoch and the filthy-rich, brilliant, bitchy, liberal David Geffen?

Politics and movies make strange bedfellows, often a continent-sized bed that can hold the egos of those who believe that image-making trumps substance or truth.

Posted by Charles Warner at December 6, 2007 9:50 AM

Comments

Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at December 6, 2007 12:28 PM writes:

Bill Grimes writes:

"Good speculation. Dreamworks within Fox would get lots of autonomy and love--at least for a long while--and the DreamWorks principles would be happier. Murdoch would strengthen the distribution and eventually Fox's library. I think you are on to something.