CULTURE WATCH : Paramount Concern

You don’t own stock in Paramount or Viacom. Maybe you do own a computer and a VCR, but basically the information superhighway is a political buzzword to you. So what’s the difference to you if Viacom or QVC or somebody else owns Paramount? Maybe none. But maybe some, if serious books are as important to you as movies.

The big chips on the Paramount-Viacom-QVC gaming table were not book chips but entertainment chips: MTV, Blockbuster Entertainment Corp., etc. The executive who told The Times “It’s about companies that need content connecting with companies that have content” had entertainment in mind.

But will it be so for book publishing, whose content will contribute relatively little to the bottom line of Viacom but is indispensable to the national conversation on virtually every issue of any consequence? Some speak reassuringly of Viacom’s success this week in a fierce competition to buy Paramount: This content will be as hungrily sought in Viacom’s “vertical integration” as any other kind. Others fear that in a world where entertainment is king, only entertainment publishing will thrive. They predict that the entertainment mentality at Viacom will do to even a publishing giant like Paramount Publishing (nee Simon & Schuster) what the entertainment mentality has done to television news, accelerating the worst trends, changing standards, greasing the skids.

They may be proven wrong, those naysayers. We certainly hope they will be. Either way, that’s why this deal probably matters to you even if you’ve never bought a share of stock.