Viacom CEO Bob Bakish said on CNBC on Wednesday he does think “scale is valuable,” but he repeatedly pivoted on questions about whether a CBS merger is any more likely since Les Moonves was ousted at the network.
In a “Squawk on the Street” interview with CNBC’s David Faber, after the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, Bakish said his shareholders should focus on his turnaround plans for Viacom, not on deal speculation.
Following the Moonves departure at CBS, some analysts suspect a merger of Viacom and CBS could be more likely. Moonves was a leading voice in opposition of such as deal.
National Amusements Inc., which controls both CBS and Viacom, has twice tried, and failed, to bring the two media companies back together again to gain scale in a landscape of megadeals galore this year.
Some of those megadeals include Disney‘s $71 billion offer to buy assets from Twenty-First Century Fox, which is approaching the finish line, and AT&T‘s just-completed $85 billion purchase of Time Warner.
On Sunday, CBS announced Moonves will depart “effective immediately,” following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct that spanned much of his career.
CBS and NAI, the holding company of Shari Redstone and her family, agreed to drop their respective lawsuits against each other, with a stipulation that NAI and the Redstones won’t pursue a CBS-Viacom deal for at least two years.
Still, that does not prevent the companies from negotiating a deal independently.
The CBS board also got an overhaul, with six new members.
— CNBC’s Alex Sherman contributed to this report.
