Viacom Sees Dollar Signs in Wireless Distribution
Scott Reeves
Philippe Dauman, Viacom’s chief executive officer, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that he believes wireless distribution of the company’s content will generate significant revenue in the future.
“It’s relatively small dollars today, but growing extremely rapidly – it’s one of the most rapidly growing businesses in our portfolio,” Dauman said Wednesday. “I expect us to be not a leader, but the leader in providing video content on the cell phone.”
He said Viacom is the world’s leading content producer and seeks “to distribute that content to people wherever they are on every platform that exists.”
On March 31, Viacom sued YouTube and Google in Federal Court in New York for alleged copyright infringement of its entertainment content. The lawsuit seeks more than $1 billion in damages and asks the court to order a halt to future copyright infringement.
“Google and YouTube seem to be outliers in the technology community in how they deal with other people’s intellectual property,” Dauman said.
He said Pepsi and Intel have signed on as charter sponsors of MTV’s mobile offerings. Sprint will expand its distribution of Viacom's music, entertainment, children's and comedy programming.
Viacom’s brands include MTV, VH1, Country Music Television, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land, and more than 130 networks around the world.
