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Viacom CEO may lack cool, but he has clout

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Times Staff Writer

With his trim dark suits, gold cuff links and erect bearing, Philippe P. Dauman projects a sense of dignity and reserve that some in Hollywood regard as just this side of pompous. One industry insider called him “the quintessential New York suit.”

Dauman, 53, who just finished his first year as chief executive of the entertainment conglomerate Viacom Inc., is such a Manhattanite that he doesn’t drive; he never even applied for a license.

In a business dotted with college dropouts and spike-haired hustlers, he’s the brainiac takeover lawyer who entered third grade at age 6 and Yale at 16. His sport is golf, his venue East Hampton’s posh Maidstone Club, but he’s not much of a player and seldom breaks 100.

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All of which may help explain why the cool kids love throwing spitballs at Philippe. Even his name bugs them.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch took a couple of sly jabs at Dauman last month at an investor conference in New York. Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, co-founders with Steven Spielberg of Viacom’s DreamWorks movie studio, bad-mouthed Dauman recently for showing insufficient respect for Spielberg. In July, Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt publicly skewered Dauman and Viacom at Allen & Co.’s retreat for media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Heading the list of Dauman’s supposed offenses against coolness are, one, that he played a part in the ouster of the charismatic Tom Freston, architect of MTV, whom he succeeded at Viacom last year, and two, that he filed a $1-billion copyright lawsuit last March against Google and the new king of hip: its popular YouTube video-sharing site.

Dauman also is suspect because he holds the world record for getting along with Sumner M. Redstone, the crusty autocrat who built Viacom and looms Zeus-like from his hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills as executive chairman and lead shareholder of Viacom and its sister company, CBS Corp.

Cool or not, Dauman’s 25-year relationship with Redstone, 84, is the key to his power at Viacom. It also increases the odds that he will be a force there after Redstone is gone.

Dauman once served as Redstone’s personal lawyer and co-executor of his estate. He has been his strategist, secret agent, corporate troubleshooter, fellow board member and, now, top executive. With the circle around Redstone thinning because of ongoing conflict within his family, there may be no one closer to him than Dauman.

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“He’s very loyal, very hardworking, and suddenly, he’s the last man standing,” a New York media investor said.

For all Dauman’s influence as overseer of such brands as MTV, Paramount Pictures, BET, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, he has a relatively low profile. In fact, he cultivates the obscurity. According to his longtime business partner and right-hand man at Viacom, Chief Financial Officer Thomas E. Dooley, Dauman sees it as a competitive advantage to be overlooked and underestimated.

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard D. Parsons summed up the reason this way: “Sumner wants to be the straw that stirs the drink, and Philippe’s very comfortable letting him.” At the same time, he added, Dauman “has a very clear sense of himself. He has some steel.”

Redstone, characteristically hyperbolic, gushed to industry analysts in August that Dauman and Dooley had “transformed Viacom,” restoring financial and operational discipline after Freston’s regime.

Key actions

In Dooley’s view, Dauman’s most important action has been setting priorities for his lieutenants. Ratings for some key MTV and BET shows had slipped as managers let their attention stray toward coping with fast-changing digital media. Dauman and Dooley’s answer was to assign certain people to concentrate on Viacom’s online efforts while the rest refocused on core programming.

Another way Dauman showed his managerial acumen was in fence mending. From his first day, he moved to soothe emotions stirred up by Freston’s ouster and fears of further bloodletting. In between personal meetings and follow-up phone calls with people at MTV Networks -- the part of Viacom most closely identified with Freston -- Dauman jetted to Los Angeles in a public show of support for Paramount chief Brad Grey.

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The headlines said Grey might follow his friend Freston out the door. His loss would have been disruptive to a studio in the midst of a turnaround. In meetings at Paramount and a dinner with their wives, Dauman told Grey he wanted him to stay and promised the studio his full backing. “He’s more than made good,” Grey said.

The two men then flew with actor Brad Pitt to the Toronto Film Festival, still abuzz with news of Freston’s firing. Independent film mogul Harvey Weinstein, aggressive and physically imposing, admitted to closing in on Dauman and exploding: “I’m really mad at you! I hated the way this came down! Tom Freston is my friend.”

Today, Weinstein says he has no problems with Dauman. He has run into him in St. Tropez and elsewhere and considers him “a good family guy.”

It’s not as if Dauman couldn’t relate to Freston’s fate.

Dauman and Dooley were Viacom’s top operating officers in 1999 when Redstone threw them overboard for the sake of a deal. To close his $37-billion acquisition of CBS, Redstone agreed to install CBS’ Mel Karmazin as CEO of Viacom. (Karmazin would be fired later.)

“Eventually, Sumner fires everybody,” Time Warner’s Parsons said.

For Dauman, the blow of having to leave Viacom was softened by $150 million that he took with him, most of it the fruit of stock options that had exploded in value as the company’s shares tripled during his three years as Redstone’s second-in-charge.

Over the next seven years, Dauman enjoyed what he called “an ideal life.” He had opened a media investment business with Dooley, he was wealthy, and for the first time he had the freedom to take extended vacations with his wife, Deborah, and devote more time to his sons, Philippe Jr. and Alexandre.

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“The one thing I did not have was the adrenaline rush, that excitement of being involved in high-stakes, day-to-day decisions,” he said.

That missing ingredient made him receptive when Redstone came calling a year ago.

“I enjoy competition,” Dauman said. “I really like to win. This is a trait that Sumner and I share. And I never give up.”

The name game

There’s an unflattering story passed around in Hollywood that to make himself seem classier years ago, Dauman stopped introducing himself as “Phil DOW-man” and adopted the Frenchified “Philippe Dough-MAW.”

But Dauman’s given name actually is Philippe. As children of French immigrants, he and his younger sister grew up speaking only French in their Manhattan apartment. At his French-speaking primary and secondary school, he was Philippe, but in college, when friends kept mangling his name, he went by Phil. A few years later, at his wife’s urging, he permanently reclaimed Philippe.

Appropriately for someone whose domain one day would include Sponge Bob Squarepants, Dauman first learned English from Saturday morning kids’ shows. “Mickey Mouse, Popeye the Sailor Man, Diver Dan -- I used to watch a lot of television when I was a kid,” he said.

Under his mother’s firm tutelage, Dauman was well advanced in reading and math by age 6 when his family enrolled him in Lycee Francais, a New York institution that emphasized rigorous, rote instruction of math, science and the classics of French literature and philosophy.

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It was a mecca for the children of Francophone diplomats as well as for American children whose parents wanted them immersed in French language and culture. In a class behind Dauman was future French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. A few classes ahead was romance novelist Danielle Steel.

Based on his performance in tests and a few days in class, young Philippe was triple-promoted from kindergarten to third grade.

Thus, right through college, he was typically the youngest person in his class.

Dauman excelled, but he was hardly a grind. “He was top man in class, but he did it without a heck of a lot of studying,” recalled middle school classmate Marc Luksberg.

The pattern continued at Yale, where Dauman played a lot of poker.

His wife, whom Dauman married at age 24 when he was at Columbia Law School, initially had doubts about his drive.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, “when it counts, I’ll do what’s necessary.”

He proved it as a young associate at the New York law firm of Shearman & Sterling, where he met Redstone. At the time, Redstone was a passive investor in Viacom who needed help with required securities filings. He was impressed with Dauman, whom he recently called “the smartest man I’ve ever met.” Dauman quickly became Redstone’s confidant and strategist in the takeover fight for Viacom and many campaigns since.

The two men talk at least once a day, though Dauman says he now initiates most of the calls, unlike early in their relationship when Redstone would ring him every morning at 5.

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“I’m fairly obsessive,” Redstone admitted.

On the big decisions, they always confer. Dauman said Redstone respects logic and can be persuaded to change his mind. He and Redstone agreed from the outset on Dauman’s most publicized decision as CEO: filing the Google lawsuit.

YouTube dispute

The dispute began building last fall when Viacom, like other entertainment creators, grew frustrated over the unauthorized -- and uncompensated -- posting on YouTube of clips from such hit Viacom television shows as “South Park” and “The Colbert Report.”

Initially, Google appeared eager to strike a licensing deal with Viacom, Dooley recalled, but as the months wore on an agreement seemed to recede. At some point Dauman and Schmidt were negotiating directly, still without results.

Last winter, Viacom stepped up the pressure, hitting Google with a “takedown” demand under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove more than 100,000 Viacom videos from the YouTube site.

Google finally took the position that it would comply with takedown demands but was under no legal obligation to strike a licensing deal. In March, Viacom filed its lawsuit.

Others at Viacom were worried about the repercussions. “Google is considered to be a cool company,” Dauman said. “I was warned by some that it would not be so cool to be filing a lawsuit against them.”

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He believes the action “changed the dynamic” in the industry by, for one thing, putting venture capitalists on notice that there was increased risk in investing in start-ups whose business plans involved piggybacking on other people’s content.

There are a few odd twists to the Google story involving Dauman’s own family.

Legal precedent

First is the legal precedent. Dauman’s father, Henri, still living in New York, was a freelance photographer who worked on many big assignments for Life magazine, including the funeral of President Kennedy, where he took an iconic photo of Jacqueline Kennedy in a black veil.

In 1996, the photographer spotted an article in the New York Times noting that an Andy Warhol work, “Sixteen Jackies,” had just sold for $418,000. Looking at the accompanying picture, he saw that Warhol had incorporated Life magazine photos -- including one from the JFK funeral -- into his painting. He soon discovered that his own photo of the veiled Jackie had appeared in a number of Warhol works from the series.

The artist had died in 1987, but Henri Dauman sued his estate and the Andy Warhol Museum and foundation. The copyright infringement suit was settled for an undisclosed amount that a lawyer involved in the case put at “several hundred thousand dollars.”

Coincidentally, Henri Dauman had met Warhol in 1964 when Life sent him to shoot a portrait of the artist in his studio. According to Henri’s son, Philippe, Warhol offered the photographer a sketch from a project he was working on: a series of paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans. Baffled by the mundane image, Henri Dauman declined the gift.

“He should have taken that,” Philippe Dauman laughed in recounting the story. “It would have been worth many years of his photo career.”

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More recently, on the day last winter that Viacom’s initial takedown demand of Google hit the news, Philippe Dauman’s older son, Philippe Jr., happened to be meeting a Google executive for a job interview.

“Dad, you really screwed me up,” he told his father on the phone that night.

He got the job anyway.

thomas.mulligan@latimes.com

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Philippe P. Dauman

Born: March 1, 1954

Career: Viacom Inc., chief executive (2006 to present);

DND Capital Partners, co-founder and chief executive (2000-06); Viacom Inc., deputy chairman (1996-99); Viacom Inc., general counsel (1993-96);

Shearman & Sterling law firm, partner (1978-93)

Education: B.A., Yale University, 1974; J.D., Columbia Law School, 1978

Personal: Married to Deborah (Ross) Dauman; two sons, Philippe Jr. and Alexandre

Source: Times research

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