The Talented Ms. Redstone

There are some things only a daughter can know. Consider the telephone call Shari E. Redstone received from her father last August. Sumner M. Redstone, CEO and controlling shareholder of Viacom Inc., had just been approached by Mel A. Karmazin, the head of CBS Corp., who offered to sell the broadcasting giant to Viacom. "Dad, this is a done deal, isn't it?" Shari asked. "No, we're just looking at it," he replied. "No," she shot back. "I can hear it in your voice." Sure enough, barely two weeks later, the $40 billion acquisition was announced--a whopper of a deal, even by Sumner Redstone's standards.

As part of the merger, Karmazin, 56, is set to become president of Viacom with much control over management with the deal's expected close in April. Redstone, 76, will remain chairman and CEO, but his two longtime deputies will resign. That adds up to a plan for Viacom, though family-controlled, to be run by outsiders for the forseeable future. With annual revenue of $20 billion and assets including Paramount Communications' movie and TV studios, cable channels MTV and Nickelodeon, publisher Simon & Schuster Inc., the most-watched broadcast TV network, and the country's second-biggest radio group, it certainly is a hefty task.