• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Not Great, Bob Bakish!

A corporate eulogy for a Redstone yes-man as Shari finally turns on the guy she plucked from obscurity and empowered through Paramount’s troubled foray into the streaming wars, until he quietly sought to sabotage her planned sale to Skydance.

bob bakish
Bob Bakish was a different kind of yes-man, for a different kind of Redstone, happy to pretend the empire wasn’t just a dying television company in the eyes of investors. Photo: Michael Kovac/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
April 30, 2024

The Palm Beach outpost of New York’s French restaurant Le Bilboquet is just off the appropriately named Worth Avenue, and if you’re there in the early evening these days, you may spot Philippe Dauman and his wife among the tanned and aged clientele. Dauman, of course, is the villainous former Viacom C.E.O., who extracted more than $500 million in compensation from a legacy media company he systematically managed into the ground, before he was finally exiled to Florida (and the Hamptons) in 2016—with a $72 million kiss-off.