Mel Karmazin leaves Viacom - Changing Viacom’s business model - Viacom’s recovery: “Viacom was and is run by moguls, people who want to make deals and who aspire to be machers. Machers aren’t geeks; they laugh at geeks. They even make movies and TV shows poking fun at them. Machers like to be seen, preferably with other machers, usually with a martini in hand at a big conference or in the Grill Room at The Four Seasons, not home studying the next big thing or checking out new stuff on the PC. Yet in the end, every one of the challenges that have sprung up for Viacom since its merger with CBS was the product of pure geekdom, and unless you were a geek, you couldn’t see the tech two-by-four that hit you until you went to the videotape.”

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