• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 17, 2005

With recent dismantling moves by Viacom and Liberty Media, TV executives seemingly want to roll back media companies to an era where, as independent TV companies, it could offer the public fresh programming and investors a big upside. That would be a lot of spin, since big companies are still lumbering enterprises.

The good news is that -- as collateral damage - separating media assets within a company would kill once and for all that quaint media conglomerate term: synergy.

Viacom is considering splitting the company into two publicly traded companies along existing lines in order to take the company on a path to being a more nimble operation.

There'll be a CBS-focused company on one side run by Viacom co-president Les Moonves, and on the other will be a MTV-lead division with Viacom co-president Tom Freston at the helm.

The New York Timesoffered a revealing comment: "When Viacom and CBS merged, company executives hoped that by combining Viacom's more youth-oriented cable networks with CBS, which attracted older viewers, the company could offer advertisers one-stop viewing for audiences of all ages."

Not quite. Actually, what Viacom had hoped for, in part, was to re-invent CBS with a somewhat younger bent thanks to MTV. For MTV, the hope was to bring more business from the bigger roster of advertisers at CBS.

But this was not so. The dismantling would also seem to include Viacom Plus, its cross-platform advertising selling arm. That group was specifically in charge of extracting more business for all the synergistic reasons of any big media merger. Remember all the talk about synergy for advertisers, offering them one-stop shopping?

With Moonves and Freston running separate operations, much of that talk will end - as both look to dramatically lift profits in a competitive way to gain favor as the next chief of Viacom when Redstone finally retires.

Sure, Redstone will be running both companies. But now with Viacom's splitting of the company, and with Mel Karmazin gone, who will push for these big cross-media deals for advertisers?

The answer is, no one will.

But it might not matter. If shareholder value increases because of the competitive situation Redstone has set up, revenues should climb anyway.

Other TV executives could be thinking along the same lines. John Malone will spin off Liberty Media's 50 percent interest in Discovery Communications to shareholders.

It is a sign, along with Viacom's move, that TV companies believe shareholders haven't bought into that fancy synergy talk all these years. Rather, they want - if nothing more than in spirit - some fighting entrepreneurial roots.