unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. ♪ ♪ announcer: on "q&a," keach hagey on her book "the king of content."

brian: who is sumner redstone? keach: one of the great media moguls of the 20th and 21st centuries. he amassed an enormous media empire that spanned cbs and viacom. if you don't know about viacom, that owns mtv, paramount pictures, nickelodeon, and of course cbs owns the cbs channel as well as an array of other things like simon & schuster. brian: i'm going to start off with this and ask you to explain it. it is on page 226. sumner was not paying a great deal of attention. by late 2010, his skirt chasing had become a corporate liability. brandon, who had grown tired of introducing his grandfather to girls and the payouts that often followed, decided his grandfather needed a steadier, classier girlfriend. he hired the host of the millionaire matchmaker on bravo

to set him up. he was looking for a quality girl he could have a serious relationship with. that is a quote. what is that about? keach: this is sumner after he has made his millions and billions. he is in his 80's. twice divorced. after his second divorce, he was out in hollywood. when you are in hollywood and very rich, you have a lot of opportunities to meet young women. he got excited about that. after he had a battle with prostate cancer, he saw being seen with young women as a sign of his vitality. being with them was a sign he could tell the world, i'm going to live forever, as he loves to say. he would go to hollywood parties and go home with his grandson's date, things like that.

it was awkward for the executives in viacom and cbs. he is still the controlling shareholder of these companies. he would do really weird things. for example, a band of young women on mtv because he had befriended one of them and cajoled the mtv executives to put them on the air. he dated one of them for a while. decisions that would have gone against mtv executives were being forced down their throats because of his love of young ladies. the people around him said, we have to put a stop to this, let's go find sumner a steady girlfriend. they hired patty stanger to do that. that is how sydney holland came into his life. brian: who is sydney holland? keach: one of two women who were

with sumner for about three years. about 2000 13-2016. -- 2013-2016. at this point, he was really not well. they took care of him. sydney was his girlfriend and the other one, was sort of a next girlfriend that was a friend -- ex-girlfriend that was a friend. they controlled access to him. even between sumner and the executives of viacom and cbs. eventually, they were ousted. it was their ousting from his mansion that set in motion this amazing drama and corporate warfare that has kept viacom and cbs in the front pages of the newspaper for years. brian: how old is he? keach: 95. brian: where does he live? keach: beverly hills. brian: what kind of health does he have?

keach: stable, but not good. people who know him say that he can't speak. he can't eat. he has a feeding tube. he can sometimes grunt, but he mostly communicated about a year ago through an ipad loaded with snippets of his voice. he would push buttons, they would say yes, no, his favorite curse words. he is barely there is how people -- brian: have you met him? keach: i have not. he was very ill before i started working on this project. brian: any reactions about this book you wrote from the family? keach: i cannot really answer the question directly. there has been no public reaction, let me put it that way. my reporting in this book -- i tend to protect the sources i talked to for the book. there has been no public outcry,

certainly. brian: page 275, it is the end of a trial in 2016 in los angeles superior court. were you in the courtroom? keach: i was not. i actually was on maternity leave. brian: what was the trial, and why was it so important? it's near the end of your book. keach: this is the final trial for the battle of viacom in 2016. this was the trial between two sides. there were multiple trials happening at the same time. this is a power struggle between viacom, the former ceo of viacom, and, really, sumner's daughter, sherry redstone.

she took over the family holding company which controlled cbs and viacom. now she is running the entire empire. she is in charge, clearly. in this trial, basically, philippe was also a trustee of the trust that was going to control the controlling stock of cbs and viacom the the family company had. one day in may out of the blue, he was kicked off along with another lawyer who had been there for a long time. he sued and said, it is not sumner kicking me off the trust. it is his daughter. this is an invalid thing. this is just a charade. that started a series of lawsuits in multiple states that led to the overhaul of the viacom board, his ouster, and the rise to power of sherry redstone. brian: i'm going to read -- i can't read it all. the last paragraph in this particular chapter. around lunchtime, the trial was

dismissed. an audio recording of sumner pleading with a prospective lover to participate in a foursome was posed to the gossip site radar online. first of all, how did it get to radar online? keach: we do not know. you are asking me about a trial. i was giving you an answer about a subsequent trial a month after that. the one you were asking about was a trial that happened in the spring of that year. that was the fight to get manuela out of the house. after she was kicked out, she sued and said, sumner did not have mental capacity. this is a big deal in the corporate world. people had been wondering for a year, why have we not heard from

him? what's going on? she provided an answer to this. she was suing to be reinstated as his health guardian, basically. but also to say his decision to kick her out of the house was invalid and his decision to write her out of his will was invalid. that trial, which culminated in this absolute zoo where some -- sumner was on videotape being interviewed, but no one could see the tape. they give a transcript. he did not say he did not want her in his life and he wanted his daughter sherry to be there. the trial was dismissed and that was the end of manuela. after that, that bizarre audiotape was leaked. we do not know who leaked it. brian: i cannot read much more of it. it says bob has never done a threesome with two men.

sumner says he has done it with two women. buts a little bit nervous he is going to come because i want him to. what will happen will probably really excite you. it goes on and it can't be read on television. has that ever been published other than in your book? keach: it was published on radar online. people knew about it. people around him say this is -- he had a very lively love-life. in all of the court papers, both sides describe women coming in, being paid for companionship, and this was a pretty normal thing that was happening all the time. brian: does he still control 80% of the company? keach: yes. it is a little arcane, but he controls 80% of the national amusements, a holding company. that company controls 80% of the voting shares of cbs and viacom. brian: one of the reasons i go

this way is there were people on the board that are well-known. of maineilliam cohen was on the board. parsons came on as chairman for a while. with all of these shenanigans in his life, plus having a federal license to cbs owned stations, how was he able to maintain control? why didn't some of those board members say, what is going on? keach: that is the $6 billion question. especially because some of the members on the board who are not the ones you listed -- he had good friends on the board. cbs producers who would go over to his house every sunday. they knew the situation. one of them who just passed away went into his house and took a video in january of last year

-- this year, to prove to the world he is not ok. we will see whether it will ever see the light of day. your question is, how do the board members not know? that is my biggest question. brian: or do they now? keach: he was very ill. toward the end of his public life, when a lot of board members were there, but some of them have been there many years. i think it's impossible the top people at the company did not know that he was not really capable of making these decisions. the official position of the family to this day is that he still has mental capacity. that is the legal position they had. brian: add to this that cbs had to fire les moonves, who ran cbs network for sexual harassment. then you read this book -- i'm

not even going to come close to getting all the details. how do people like this keep a federal license to run television stations across the united states and have one of the most important networks in television history? keach: this book sort of ends before the cbs fight, but there was a viacom fight and then a cbs fight and they are very similar. they are basically the same fight played out twice. brian: two separate corporations. keach: two separate corporations, but the redstones control both of them. that fundamental question of where was the oversight, many people said -- this book ends with a gigantic fight over value, -- viacom. viacom stock price nearly dropped by half. everyone on wall street was wondering, what is the ceo doing? where is sumner, who would have fired a ceo for a wobble in stock price?

why was he allowing this to happen? the answer is he was not really there. we see the same thing with cbs now. it is a question that will not go away. it was raised during the litigation this year over les moonves. the question was raised, did sherry redstone come to power in an appropriate way? is everyone telling the truth about sumner's capacities? i think we will hear that again before it's all over, even though people have tried to push it aside and there have been settlements in these lawsuits. it is still there. brian: when you dug into this book, what did you learn for the first time? keach: my favorite thing i learned was sumner's father, mickey redstone, had been a bootlegger. national amusements was founded

as -- i don't want to say criminal enterprise, but there were criminals involved. it's not completely unusual for a company to have underworld associations, but i did not understand how deep the underworld associations that led to national amusements were. mickey redstone's business partner was a really famous bookie. the fbi finally gave me my foia request 15 months after i filed it, and it shows him receiving payments from the theaters the redstone's owned up until the 50's. he was a full partner, it is pretty clear, in the foundation of national amusements. brian: why did it take 15 months to get your foia request? keach: the wheels of government grind slowly. brian: so national amusements and the ownership of the movie theaters. how important were they to sumner redstone accumulating all

this? keach: very important. that was the foundation on which this is all based. sumner loves to say that he is a self-made hand. -- man. he is absolutely a brilliant legal mind and deserves credit for that. much like donald trump, who took over his father's company. his father built this chain of these, drive-in theaters then turned into indoor theaters and multiplexes. they bought the land underneath the theaters so they could flip them. that is what sumner came into. he took that entity and used it, used leverage to take over viacom. without the land purchases and the foundation mickey created, sumner would not have been able to become a media mogul. brian: was there anything illegal about national amusements when it owned just

theaters? keach: about the actual company, i do not think so. they had this very quiet partner who was in and out of prison and who had been convicted. they co-invested in casinos with various members of the new england mob. a lot of associations, but national amusements itself, there is no evidence they were doing something illegal. brian: another paragraph from your book on page 178. sumner had become a holy terror to people around him. he was known to throw a steak across the room when he found it not cooked to his liking. he was banned from le cirque and elios in new york. once aboard company plane he threw a turkey leg at a flight attendant.

after learning it did not come popular deli in beverly hills. how do you find this out? keach: people around sumner -- a lot of them had something like ptsd. they actually loved to tell the stories of his abuse. he was a pretty abusive boss. he was also very smart, also very funny, but everyone seemed to have a sumner story they could not wait to tell. he was not like any other person. he had irrational fits of rage and he yelled at his subordinates a great deal. when that happens to you, it is not hard to find people wanting to tell you the story. -- these stories. brian: this has been going for a long time, but how many people has he fired? keach: he famously fired all these ceos, right? the former ceo of viacom, another former ceo of viacom --

he tried to fire tom cruise, even though tom cruise did not really work for him. he made this statement he was going to fire tom cruise from paramount pictures. he loved to push people out the minute he sensed this loyalty. isloyalty.yalty -- d brian: you suggested frank , who was the ceo of viacom, he did not like the fact he would not go to dinner with him, he was a normal guy who drove in from the bronx or wherever he lived, he wanted him to live a different life. keach: when he bought paramount pictures, this long-standing goal of his, that was the most wonderful gift. he could go out to dinner with all these people in hollywood and be this hollywood figure. he liked to have been a very early, especially as he got older. that was his social life, to hang out with his executives. a lot of people said he did not have real friends.

i do not think that is a fair assessment. i have spoken to people who really were his friends. but he did not have a lot of them. a lot of his socializing was through his company. brian: how much is he worth today? keach: about $6 billion with the last forbes estimate. brian: hard to keep track, you have so many names in this book. how much money did they walk away with? keach: $150 million between the two of them. brian: why? keach: he give them gifts. a lot of litigation in subsequent years has been about that. he gave each of them about $75 million. there was one day he gave each of them $45 million in a single day. it was sometime around that moment that his family, which

had been estranged from him, realized they cannot let this continue. they began to talk to each other and they befriended the nurses around him and started getting information about what's going on inside the mansion. that, in some ways led to the ouster of one of them. brian: this may be a stretch, but he owns simon & schuster? the book publisher? they published bob woodward's book, fear. he owns cbs television and all the programs. they have gone after the president of the united states. what gives them the right to do this when they have in their midst somebody that should be investigated who owns it? keach: well, he is a private businessman. people around this world say -- this is how they deal with this question.

he stepped off the board under great pressure. brian: when? keach: february of 2016, i think. that was in the midst of this trial over manuela. it was only after she said he doesn't have capacity -- three days after that, he finally stepped down from the board and handed over these negative chairmanships to the respective ceos. people close to the company would say he is not technically on the board anymore. the have updated, made these subtle changes to the bylaws of national amusements so that he does not have the ultimate say. you really have to stand on one leg and squint to see this logic. that he is only one vote among

seven of the board members of national amusements. there's the board of the company and the board of national amusements, a private entity no one can see inside. it is mostly red family members and lawyers and staff. he is just one vote among seven. even if he did not have his marbles, he would only be one vote. the problem with that is he personally still owns 80% of the stock of that entity. it is really strange that he is not in control legally. brian: one of the stories told so often about him that you write about is the story of the fire at the hotel in boston. when did it happen? how much of what he told in his own memoir was true?

keach: it was 1979. he was staying on the third floor of a beautiful hotel in boston. there was a fire that broke out in the hallway. a couch had caught fire. the way he tells the story is that he woke up, he smelled smoke, he went to the door as you should never do if you are in a hotel fire, he opened the door, flames burst in, he tried to get to the window, would not open, finally found a window that was open, he hung outside waiting for the fire trucks to come pick him up. brian: what floor? keach: third floor. as the flames were burning the flesh off his hands. it is true he was very badly burned in the fire. people that he would not live. he had to have hours of incredibly painful surgery. he did almost die. he opens his autobiography with this story everyone knew about. this is a parable that was supposed to show what a tenacious guy he was. what a superhuman tough guy he was. that's how he acted in

negotiations. it was a perfect metaphor. that part of it is really true. he tells the story, it makes it seem like he was alone in the hotel room. he was not. he was with his longtime mistress, who at that point he had been with at least a decade. she actually got up first, got out first, went down the ladder, she only had a blackened thumb. that was basically it. me about this to story is it was in the boston globe the next day that both of them were in the hospital. there is news footage of both of them climbing down the ladder. it was not really a secret. brian: so he did not hang by his hand -- keach: he hung by his hand in -- and then the latter came -- ladder came, eventually.

brian: how long did he hang? keach: he claims at least 10 minutes. that's his version of the story. it's a little bit hard, because how did she get out first? some versions of the story, he nobly allowed her to go on the ledge. this is sort of an act of chivalry or something. the other weird thing i found out is that he was he was in a room adjoining the guy he was there to celebrate, a warner bros. executive who was also in a room with a woman not his wife, and they both died of smoke inhalation in the hallway. brian: when did you find that out in your research? keach: as i was rummaging around trying to understand who was there. i tried to call around all the people who had any contact with the story. brian: if i understand right, he was with his mistress for

decades the same time he was married twice. explain all that. how long was he married to the first woman? keach: phyllis, his longtime wife, that is the mother of his children. my research -- he was not a very constant husband. he cheated on her a fair amount. there was a lot of fighting. they tried to divorce each other multiple times. one of my favorite things i discovered was that she was not just a mistress. she was a second family. he was with her for decades. he was like a father to her children. she had four children. one of her children actually named her child's middle name sumner. brian: did phyllis know about her? keach: there was fighting about it at the home. that was part of what made such a tense place to grow up for

the kids. the relationship was so interesting because she was a writer. a very serious story writer. she had published a novel on simon & schuster. she gave him culture, she stood up to him, no one else stood up to him. i really believe she is what gave him the confidence that he had, the taste that he could make bets on the movie studios. he started to do this investing on what movies he thought were good. if you are an executive, you get advanced view of the movies. he would do that. he got confident enough in that he would buy stock in a movie studio if he thought their movies were good. he made a killing that way. that is the money he used to take over viacom. i believe it was this relationship with her that gave

him the confidence to do that. brian: is she alive? keach: she is not. brian: is phyllis? keach: she is. brian: how much money did phyllis get? keach: phyllis had the opportunity to get what some thought would be the largest divorce settlement in the history of america. some $3 billion. in the end they came to a compromise she would not take away half of his assets even though she had the right and he was worried she was going to do that. they would put all the assets in a trust and she would get the income -- half the income from the trust in her lifetime. when they pass away, that trust would go -- would be controlled by these seven trustees. phyllis is doing fine, but she did not manage to take away half his assets, which would have meant he lost control of cbs and viacom.

brian: who actually can you tell us talk to you directly? allowed you to quote them? keach: there's a fair amount of quotes from tom preston, the ceo of viacom. the former ceo of viacom, as well as the former ceo of sleep philippe du mond. and sherry redstone, although i make clear that was done for the newspaper a couple years before i started doing the book. there's also various redstones here and there. karen redstone, sumner's granddaughter was quoted several times. as well as some cousins. brian: who gets the $6 billion he is worth? keach: the grandchildren. brian: just the grandchildren? what about sherry redstone and her brother? keach: it is set up for the benefit of the grandchildren.

sherry would be one of the trustees that would control it, but the actual payout or whatever is set up -- -- set up to be generation-skipping. brian: who decides who the trustees are? keach: sherry has been influential recently. it was originally -- it came out of a divorce discussion, so it was people on phyllis' side or sumner's side. originally their kids were both on their. -- there. there was a falling out between sumner and his son, who moved to colorado and does not want to see any of these people ever again. a lot of it is just lawyers. they have their divorce lawyer there. lawyers they trust. at this point it is national amusements that really can choose. it is ultimately up to sherry.

brian: it is a shock to me to find out debra was 60 years old. she is on the board and on the compensation committee and she is the anchor of inside edition. what is she doing there in that capacity? in your opinion? keach: sumner made some interesting choices about who was going to be on the board of those companies. she is not on the board anymore, i don't think. i could be wrong about that. she was part of a group that was overturned. brian: online -- i can't keep up with it all. she went on in 2013 i believe. keach: i think she is part of the group that was ousted in the end. there are many interesting choices on the boards of those companies. there had been when sumner was

fully in charge. part of what sherry has tried to do is professionalize the boards a little bit. get people with more media experience. brian: second wife paula. keach: paula is such an interesting character in this whole thing. she was not the first wife and she was not one of these hollywood women that he ultimately ran in ways. -- with. she was in the middle. she was a schoolteacher in new york who had never had kids and was set up on a blind date. it actually seems like a very sweet story. it seems very genuine that they fell in love and got married and were married for a handful of years. they made an effort to say it was an amicable divorce.

she is actually still very friendly with him. even when he was with the other two girlfriends, he would always pick her up dinner at a restaurant and bring it to her. they never really cut ties. brian: they had a prenup, of course. keach: oh yes. brian: how much did she walk away with? keach: i think it was $1 million or $2 million. maybe up to $5 million. not the double-digit millions the later women got. brian: you quote in there, sumner redstone saying i enjoy recognition. [laughter] keach: it is so true. i think that was his mother who ultimately did that to him. who made him feel like he always had to be number one. there was no number two. i also think it was boston latin school that the number on him. -- did a number on him.

i got to know boston latin very well in researching this. it is the oldest public school in the country. they have this wall in the auditorium of their many signers of the constitution, these great patriots, their name in gold lettering. the implication for the students who get in there is, you need to get your name on this wall. sumner does have his name on that wall, but there is a lower wall for people who donate. he bought his way onto the wall. brian: what is his education? keach: he went to boston latin and then to harvard and harvard law. smart guy. brian: he practiced law? keach: he did. he thought he was going to save the world through public service. he left harvard law and got the clerkship, the federal clerkship. he actually went to work at the justice department for a little while. during a time when the justice department was breaking up the studio system through the

paramount decision 1948 and 49. that is when they decided you cannot have a movie studio and also run movie theaters. they broke up paramount. this company that was vertically integrated. they forced him to sell off their theaters. that decision ended up having a huge impact in his business dealings the rest of his life. brian: what years would that have been? keach: he would have been -- the late 1940's. all the way through to 1951, when he went into private practice. he did that for a few years. that was the beginning of his disillusionment with the law. he realized, this is not saving the law. -- world. it is just a business. if i'm going to go into business, i want to go into business for myself. by 1954, he joined the family business where his brother and father had been working for decades together already. he became a theater executive.

brian: people were upset with him he voted for bush. why would they be upset with him? what was his prior visibility? keach: he actually had had political ambitions. he was a campaign cochairman for muskie. ed muskie. he was a democrat. he was a normal, middle-of-the-road democrat, i would say. one person who knew him said, if he was not jewish, he would be president. that was one of the business partners who said that about him. he had some political ambitions. as he got older he got more conservative. some people said it had to do with israel policy. he is from a jewish family. i think he disappointed people with that conservative turn.

brian: how much was the iraq war part of his support of george w. bush? keach: i think it was before that he did it. if my timing is right, it was before that was part of bush's narrative. maybe all the facts were not in about bush at that point. brian: i'm going to test whether or not you can pronounce the kind of tea tom preston drank that you pointed out. [laughter] hallucinogenedelic from latin america later in his career, he had tried it. he is the ceo of mtv. he built mtv from the beginning. and turned it into this global juggernaut. he hung out with the bands. he was sort of a hipster guy.

is a hipster guy. that was a little detail i put in there to show you what a hipster he was. brian: a little insider thing most people will care about -- for years, john lack was the guy who started mtv and a lot of people would say bob pittman started mtv. you just said tom preston made it. where do they fit into all this? keach: they are all in the book. if someone said, who is the true father? john lack is the first. pittman is the one who put it on the map. pittman ultimately left. preston used to be deputy to pittman, took it and made it a global juggernaut. made it into this huge international cable powerhouse. he was there for decades. all of them can credibly say they created and shaped mtv, but that is the house tom preston

built. brian: tell us what the impact of mtv has been on this country. keach: mtv did several things. it created cable along with cnn and hbo. it was 1981. one of the first cable channels. it was an anchor in the idea of -- we used to call it narrowcast cable. a channel that had a specific voice you would tune into not because a certain show was on, but because of what it stood for or the overall brand of the channel. that idea was replicated 500 times into the giant cable bundle we now see today. when i started covering television, six years ago, that was still at the peak of its existence. it does not permit business perspective, but -- it did that

from a business perspective, but from a cultural perspective, there is no way to sum up how important it was. it was a youth cultural voice of this country for at least the last quarter of the 20th century. today it is still trying to be a youth cultural voice, but because the cable apparatus it helped create is crumbling, it is having to get creative about doing that. brian: i was going to quote you suggesting that crumbling pay-tv castle falls into the scene. -- sea. do you think it will happen? keach: i do. it is happening right now. this morning i saw in my email, 975,000, nearly one million subscribers were lost by pay-tv companies in the last quarter. that is extraordinary. it has been going down by 2%, 3% per year. i think we will live in a place where less than half of the population subscribes to cable pretty soon.

that is going to happen soon. brian: what happens to sumner redstone's $6 billion? keach: that is a good question. everyone in the banking and wall street communities assumes cbs and viacom will have to be sold, one way or another. whether they are going to be merged as a sherry redstone has been trying to do for three years, first, and then sold, or sold one off, they are just not big enough to survive in this world where we see their rival, disney, gobbled up most of fox and is going to take a run at netflix to build its own direct to consumer player. which is enormously expensive in content cost and technology costs. this is not something you can have a bunch of small companies competing to do. brian: one thing i wrote down is everyone switched sides.

how often did -- what side was sherry redstone on? his son brent -- what you mean by switch sides in all this? keach: one of the weirder moments, this is a book made of lawsuits. there are constantly lawsuits and trials happening all the time. sherry's point of view in the main lawsuit in this book, the power struggle over viacom, was my father has capacity. she has amazing lines where right after the coup happens that kicked felipe off the trust, she said i respect my father's decisions and his right to make them, something like that. she was on the side saying, my father has capacity. philippe was on the side of saying, he does not have capacity. after that fight happens, there was a fight between the

redstones to get the money back. trying to get their $150 million back. if you follow the logic of those lawsuits, they say these women swindled poor sumner into giving them $150 million. in order for that to be possible, he has to have something close to not having capacity. sherry denies she is behind those lawsuits. whether it is sherry, whether it is sumner, you see there is a conflict between those points. either he has capacity or he doesn't. brian: paint a picture. he is in los angeles. does he have a feeding tube? keach: yes. brian: he is 95 years old. can't do anything more with his money. is he a happy man?

an unhappy man? do you have any idea whether the relationship with the different women continues? the women that are gone, do they have the $75 million in hand? keach: there has been a settlement with one who had to pay some back. i believe. the fighting with the other one continues. we will see. it has been three years. i was say in who has gotten rich here, it is the lawyers. you who hasll gotten rich here, it is the lawyers. he is not especially well. his family is around him, which is a better situation than was happening before. brian: how much has that had to do with the fact they want the money? keach: i think that is un-shareable. family should be together. regardless -- brian: the life he lived, the women, the divorces, the mistresses -- keach: totally. brian: the family should still be loyal? keach: i don't know about loyal.

there were many years he did not see his family much. there was tension between the women in the family. now, those particular women are gone and the family is with him a little bit more. there are still some women that come in and out. they basically our family -- our family approves women -- women.ily approved brian: i guess my question, and it is crass to ask, would they be there if there was not money at the end of the rainbow? keach: i think they would. i have gotten to know this world. sherry redstone does love her father. she writes him these poems every year for his birthday. the real issue is that she wants so desperately to be loved by him and that he was unable to ever really show her love.

now that she can be with him, it is a scratching an itch she has had a long time in her life. brian: would you say she came out on top of all this? keach: she is a redstone. she is a lawyer. she is smart. she played her hand very well. brian: another quote from the book. i think he said this to tom preston. i think we are alone in this life. keach: he said that to another viacom executive. that was such a telling moment. that is how -- that is really how he thought. people who knew him said he did not have many friends. he saw everything as transactional. he treated his family like it was a transaction. everything had to be negotiated through lawyers.

they communicated through faxes sometimes. i tried to find the original source of conflict between father and daughter. sumner and sherry had a fraught relationship. ultimately, that is how he felt. he had been divorced from his wife or was estranged from his wife. he had this transactional relationship with his children. his son was in the process of moving to colorado. he was alone. keach: i wrote down you have worked in politico, you have worked for cbs news.com, the village voice, the queens chronicle, and you went to stanford. which has had the biggest impact on you? keach: the village voice. i was an intern for this

investigative journalist who wrote the first book on donald trump many years ago and who passed away last year on the eve of trump's election, actually. he taught me everything i know. brian: how did you get from indiana to stanford and then to new york city? what drove you to do that? keach: i went to stanford right out of high school. i wanted to go to california. youare a fellow hoosier, know sometimes it was nice to see the world, as delightful and beautiful as indiana is. i wanted to go straight to new york after college. i studied literature and art and it seemed like all the good literature and art was in new york city. i wanted to be a part of that. brian: how old are your children? keach: two and four. brian: when did you meet your husband and how? keach: my fellow intern at the village voice. he introduced me to his college

roommate who is now my husband. brian: how did you get your job at the wall street journal? keach: i was working at politico covering media. . from roger, who was working for news corp. he said there is this new opening. do you want to check it out? i took the train to new york and that was that. brian: how many years? keach: almost seven. brian: these pages are hard to even comprehend. mickey died suddenly. later death stalked the redstones for the rest of the year. who was mickey and what was his relationship to sumner? keach: he was sumner's father --

let's see. when did mickey died? what year was this? brian: i don't see a number on the page. could have been near 87. keach: that was right around the time he bought viacom. mickey and his mom died within months of each other. they got to see him begin to take over viacom, but they did not see the final thing. i was struck by in mickey's obit, it never mentions viacom at all even though his son had just taken over one of the biggest media companies. i think it is the sadness of his life for his mother and father didn't see the scope of his accomplishments.

brian: your daughter is named belle. did you name her belle because of finding the name here? keach: i did not. belle is my mother's name. just a weird coincidence. brian: you probably have not looked at this page for a while. ruth anne dies. that turns out to be a tragedy. who is she? keach: ruth anne is the daughter of sumner's brother. national amusements was a family business. it was mickey, eddie, and sumner running it. mickey wanted to pass the business down to his grandkids. there were four of them. sherry and brent on one side, sumner's kids, and eddie's kids. mickey wanted to pass the what happened to everyone of them except for sherry is tragic and awful. ruth anne joined the children of god cult in the 70's.

one day she was on the campus and they came through town and she went off with them and went to south america and was never heard from again. her family hired these the de-programmers. they lobbied local officials to pass anti-cult legislation. they never really got her back. she ended up dying in tokyo. they got a call from the consulate saying, what should we do with the child? what child? she had a three-year-old son. gabriel adam redstone. who of course was an heir to a fortune they did not know about. they went over and got him and brought him up. almost immediately after that, leela died. that was part of a death -- brian: belle dies, leela dies.

there is so much we have not gotten to, as you know. a lot of the intricacies of how they bought the different entities. what year did he buy cbs and how did he get it? keach: that was 1999, 2000. it was very hard for him to take over viacom. that was a fight. by the time he went after cbs, he had already gobbled up paramount. in 2000, he just had a friendly meeting with the head of cbs and they merged. it was not a fraught thing. at that moment, that was the largest media deal in u.s. history. it would soon be eclipsed. brian: do you have any idea how much he changed, whether it is paramount or showtime or nickelodeon or simon & schuster, did he have any personal impact on those organizations? keach: he really believed in mtv.

when he was trying to take over viacom, the hippie kids at mtv friended him, including bob pittman and tom preston and smuggled him inside the building and said, this is mtv. he fell in love with the energy and really believed in the promise. he could see that this thing was just going to be like a rocket ship. as he was the head of the company, after he ended up taking over, he really believed in that business and invested in it and had a hands-off approach, let his people run without too much micromanaging. people who worked for him, as strange as it might sound with all the firings, said he was a pleasure to work for from a business perspective. brian: how long did you spend writing this book? keach: about two years. brian: what is the impact of

money? on this whole group of people you write about. keach: i think it is corrosive and sad, honestly. ruth anne is the best example. she watched her father be pushed out of the family business. she watched her father and grandfather and uncle fighting about money. she said, this is disgusting. i'm going to give all of my money to this cult. and go to south america. the ones who stayed in the fold, it has been nothing but fighting about money for decades. in the family pattern, it repeats itself. so many lawyers, lawsuits and fights about money. if these people ran a dry cleaners, would they be happier? brian: your book has been out about half a year. did it sell what you wanted to

sell? keach: i have been surprised, yes. brian: if you had to write another book on somebody, who would you pick? keach: that is tough. i would say i don't know about a character, but i'm very interested in the duopoly. the facebook-google duopoly and its impact on media. i think it is one of the most important issues today. brian: how many stories a week do you write for the wall street journal? average. keach: it really depends. lately i been trying to do more enterprise stories. i write fewer stories, but less often. i don't always accomplish that. i probably end up writing three stories week. brian: "the king of content: sumner redstone's battle for viacom, cbs and everlasting control of his media empire." our guest has been keach hagey. thanks for joining us. keach: thanks for having me. ♪

announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available as c-span podcasts. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: next sunday on "q&a," james grant talks about the state of the u.s. economy and the threat posed by the expanding national debt. that is "q&a" next sunday on c-span.

>> here is a look at what is lipoma c-span networks today. next, your calls and comments on "washington journal." afternoon noon, a discussion on how social media is used. at 2:00 p.m., former diplomats and defense officials on efforts to nuclear us security. 6:00, a discussion with the u.s. army general on recruitment challenges facing the u.s. army. >> tonight, on "the discussed the" we race between the u.s. and china to develop artificial intelligence. i think the u.s. companies, the best of them tend to be phd driven, research driven, aiming for a