Sunday, March 04, 2007

Merger Talk: Major Feature On Mel In Sunday's New York Times

Media Frenzy
The Karmazin Way: Build It, Sell It, Run It, Repeat
By RICHARD SIKLOS, The New York Times

MEL KARMAZIN could sell microwavable ice to Eskimos. He started his career in ad sales at WCBS radio in New York four decades ago, quickly proved himself to be a master closer, and has been peddling his wares ever since.
“Mel is the singular best salesman I have ever met in my life,” said Joel Hollander, the chief executive of CBS Radio, who spent much of his career working for Mr. Karmazin. “He’s very aggressive, to say the least.”
The capping moment of Mr. Karmazin’s radio career came in 1997, when he sold Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio), a vast collection of stations he and partners had built, to what was then the broadcast company CBS Inc.
Though he had little experience in television, Mr. Karmazin’s hero status on Wall Street and his zeal for growth catapulted him into the chief executive’s chair at CBS after only a couple of years. A mere nine months later, he pulled off another coup and sold CBS to Viacom, on the condition that he would run the combined media conglomerate as its president...read more: here