Viacom Still Pursuing SVOD Deal; Winnows Paramount Paramours, CEO Says

Viacom continues to hope to ink a major subscription VOD deal as soon as this quarter, CEO Philippe Dauman said Thursday in a quarterly conference call. Dauman said those SVOD talks have slowed due to uncertainty about Viacom's leadership legal battles "coupled with our evaluation of various new distribution opportunities." The family of controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone plus Dauman and others on the board are engaged in a protracted legal battle over whether Redstone can remove them from their jobs. Many players from traditional distributors to over-the-top providers, are creating virtual multichannel video programming distributor products, he said. "We just want to make sure that we maximize our overall value," Dauman said. "We are having fruitful discussions." He said that during the most recent quarter, the programmer signed long-term affiliation agreements with Dish Network and Cox Communications, "both with solid annual rate increases." The company previously said the SVOD holdup would affect quarterly results (see 1606170013). For the quarter over the year-ago period, Viacom said in a news release, revenue grew 2 percent to $3.1 billion, with license fees up 39 percent from licensing some titles for SVOD services and from revenue from Paramount TV production, but profit fell 27 percent to $432 million. Dauman also said Viacom had winnowed down "to a handful of prospects" in its bid of selling a 49 percent interest in Paramount.