CBS Corporation is an American mass media corporation focused on commercial broadcasting, publishing, billboards and television production, with most of its operations in the United States. The president and chief executive of the company is Leslie Moonves. Sumner Redstone, owner of National Amusements, is CBS's majority shareholder and serves as executive chairman. The company began trading on the NYSE on January 3, 2006. Until then, the corporation was known as Viacom, and is the legal successor to said company. A new company, keeping the Viacom name was spun off from CBS. CBS, not Viacom, retains control of over-the-air television (CBS, CW) and radio broadcasting, TV production and distribution, publishing, pay-cable, recording, and outdoor advertising assets formerly owned by the larger company. CBS has its headquarters in CBS Building, Midtown,Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States.Viacom was created in 1970 as the television syndication division of CBS, and was spun off in 1971. However, in 1999, Viacom acquired its former parent, by this time also named CBS Corporation, formerly Westinghouse Electric. The prior CBS Corporation also owned CMT and The Nashville Network (now Spike), which remained Viacom properties after the 2005 split, but the prior CBS did not own UPN, Showtime, Paramount Television, Paramount Parks, or Simon and Schuster.In March 2005, Viacom announced plans of looking into splitting the company into two publicly traded companies, amid issues of the stock price stagnating (although it was alleged that another main force behind the split was the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy, which led to MTV not being allowed to produce any more halftime shows, they had also produced the show for Super Bowl XXXV, the first Super Bowl CBS aired since regaining NFL rights and becoming MTV's corporate sibling.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) Leslie Moonves, and would include CBS, UPN, Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom Outdoor, Showtime Networks, and Paramount's television studio.The split was structured such that the "new" Viacom was spun off from the "old" Viacom, which was renamed CBS Corporation. In a sense, this was a repeat of the 1971 spinoff. However, in this case, CBS retained virtually all of the prior firm's broadcast TV assets, including its various syndication companies.With the split, the two new companies began trading on the NYSE on January 3, 2006.
Net income $ 1.305 billion (2011)
Total assets $ 26.197 billion (2011)