CBS Corporation

Early history

The first incarnation of Viacom was created in 1952 as the television syndication division of CBS and was spun off in 1971. In late 1994, in a major change of direction, Westinghouse acquired the CBS television network and renamed itself CBS Corporation. Most of its remaining industrial businesses were sold off at this time. CBS Corporation was acquired by the first incarnation of Viacom in April 2000. The prior CBS Corporation also owned CMT and The Nashville Network (TNN), which remained Viacom properties after the 2005 split, but the prior CBS did not own UPN, Showtime, Paramount Television, Paramount Parks, or Simon & Schuster.

In March 2005, Viacom contemplated splitting the company into two publicly traded companies, amid issues of the stock price stagnating and clashing corporate cultures between the cable and broadcast divisions, which came to a head with the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy a year previous with the MTV-produced show causing controversy for game broadcaster CBS.

On June 14, 2005, the Viacom board of directors approved the split of the company into two firms. The CBS Corporation name would be revived for one of the companies, to be headed by longtime television executive (and Viacom co-president) Les Moonves, and would include the namesake television network CBS, UPN, Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, Viacom Outdoor, Showtime Networks, and Paramount Television.

The split was structured such that the second Viacom was spun off from the first Viacom, which was renamed CBS Corporation. In a sense, this was a repeat of the 1971 spin-off. However, in this case, CBS retained virtually all of the prior firm's broadcast television assets, including its various syndication companies.

With the split, the two companies began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbols "CBS.A" and "CBS" (the latter symbol was previously used by CBS, Inc. as an independent company prior to its 1994 acquisition by Westinghouse) on January 2, 2006. Investors anticipated Viacom benefiting from the split, but instead, it dropped approximately 20%, while CBS Corporation rose 9%, that same year, Paramount Parks became a wholly owned theme park unit of CBS Corporation.