Hail to the Chief(s) : Who Will Run Paramount Viacom: Biondi or Jaffe?

One grew up as a star athlete and scholar in suburban New Jersey, the son of a chemical engineer. The other went to swank private schools, with a big-time Hollywood producer and executive for a father. One is known for grace under pressure. The other has a pressure-cooker personality.

Frank Biondi, the chief executive of Viacom Inc., and Stanley Jaffe, the president of Paramount Pictures, are a study in contrasts. Although the two had never met until last week, when the Paramount-Viacom merger talks were nearly complete, they are about to enter an undefined collaborative management structure in a business that does not easily lend itself to power-sharing.

Whether both can hang onto senior positions in the new company is subject of heated debate in Hollywood. Some executives give Biondi the better odds of survival, because of Viacom’s dominant position in the new entertainment giant that includes such prized assets as Paramount Pictures, MTV and Simon & Schuster. But others warn that Jaffe should not be counted out, since his bruising executive style more closely mirrors that of Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone.

“It’s like musical chairs,” observed Francis T. (Fay) Vincent, who used to oversee Columbia Pictures when it was owned by Coca-Cola, and for whom Biondi once worked. “Someone will be left standing. There are not enough seats.”

Such uncertainty is fueled by the fact that Biondi’s and Jaffe’s roles in the merged company are still undefined. Biondi and Jaffe will both serve on the “transition team” of the newly named Paramount Viacom International along with Redstone and Chief Executive Martin Davis. It is expected afterward that the four will establish an “office of the president” as they try to parse out their spheres of responsibility.

In many ways, Biondi and Jaffe complement each other. Biondi, 48, has a finance background, having moved from Harvard Business School to Wall Street, before taking a series of financial and administrative posts in TV, including a stint as president of HBO in the early 1980s. By building on its cable TV assets, such as MTV, he’s credited with helping to turn Viacom into one of the world’s fastest-growing entertainment companies.

Biondi, however, has limited involvement in motion pictures, outside the financial side. He’s given the go-ahead to only two movies: the clunker spoof about the TV business called “Switching Channels” and the critically acclaimed “Hope and Glory.”

Jaffe, 52, on the other hand, has much greater experience on the creative side, having shuttled back and forth between studio executive jobs and film producing. Jaffe’s film credits include such box office hits as “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Fatal Attraction.” He revitalized Paramount’s New York Knicks by bringing in former Lakers coach Pat Riley and has stabilized Paramount Pictures with the appointment of ex-producing partner Sherry Lansing as studio chief.

Stylistically, both can be unsentimental when it comes to tough business decisions.

Biondi, after engineering Coke’s $485-million acquisition of Norman Lear’s Embassy Communications in 1985, flew to Los Angeles to meet with Embassy executives. When he started to lay out some of Coke’s ideas for Embassy, one executive protested that was not the way it was done at what, up until then, had been a company run by Lear like a close-knit family. “You don’t get it,” Biondi said, cutting the executive off in mid-sentence. “Embassy is now dead.”

Jaffe, known for his short fuse, has a reputation for making mincemeat out of unprepared subordinates. Shortly after he took over as president of Paramount, he summoned one doomed executive to his office and inquired: “Exactly what is it you do here?”

Biondi and Jaffe said although they are not looking beyond the transition period--expected to last until well into next year--they both expressed mutual respect and nonetheless expect to continue to work together.

“We haven’t talked it through further,” said Jaffe. “But this is a big company. There are plenty of moving parts, and there’s a lot for people to do. . . . As far as I’m concerned, I’m not the issue.”

Biondi called Jaffe “fairly impressive in the ‘due-dilligence’ meetings. He really knew his stuff.”

Whether such feelings in the hotly competitive and intensely personal entertainment business will hold over the long term is difficult to tell. Moreover, the ultimate decision may not rest with either individual, but with Redstone, who will control 69% of the voting stock of the merged company.

Redstone, a self-made billionaire, is still a hands-on manager at 70--so much so that Biondi reportedly has had to fight for more authority, although both refer to their management of Viacom as a “partnership.”

One knowledgeable source said the transition could take up to a year because of the complexity of the deal. He also predicted that it will be rocky. He called Redstone “the most non-collaborative guy in the world” and said Jaffe will be ill-equipped to deal with him.

Most likely, Biondi and Jaffe will focus on their areas of strength, at least until the dust settles: Biondi in television and finance, Jaffe in motion pictures and sports. In addition to the Knicks, Paramount owns the New York Rangers ice hockey team, and Jaffe is known to have his business meetings interrupted so his secretary can relate to him the latest Rangers scores.

“I don’t really view this as manifest destiny one way or the other,” said Biondi about what his role might be after the transition period. “Sumner and I have always been a partnership. Although obviously at some point it’s more equal than others. . . . Most of what I do is work on capital markets, allocation or resources, corporate strategy, and I’d expect to be doing much of the same.”

A Marriage Made in Entertainment Heaven The merger of Paramount Communications and Viacom International combines such assets as MTV, Nickelodeon, “The Firm,” “Addams Family Values,” Showtime, the New York Knicks, “Entertainment Tonight” and Simon & Schuster.

Breaking Out the Revenue 1992 revenue by business segment, in millions. VIACOM Networks $1.05 Entertainment $0.24 Cable Television $0.41 Broadcasting $0.16 Paramount Film $1.91 Theater, sports, other entertainment $0.74 Publishing $1.60 Merging Giants Here are the biggest media mergers to date, in billions of dollars:

RANK/COMPANY DATE PRICE 1 Paramount Communications/Viacom 9/93 $18.0 2 Warner Communications/Time Inc. 1/90 14.1 3 McCaw Cellular/At&/T 8/93 12.6 4 NCR/At&T; 9/91 7.5 5 Contel Corp/GTE 7/90 6.8 6 MCA/Matsushita 11/90 6.6 7 NBC and RCA/General Electric 6/86 6.3 8 Columbia Pictures/Sony Corp. 9/87 3.4 Lin Broadcasting/McCaw Cellular 12/89 3.4 10 Triangle Publications (TV Guide) News Corp. 8/88 3.0 11 Centel Corp./Sprint 12/92 2.9 12 Time Warner Entertainment/ U.S. West 5/93 2.5 13 Warner Bros./Lorimar Telepictures 5/88 1.2 14 Twentieth Century Fox/News Corp. 12/85 0.6

Researched by ADAM S. BAUMAN / Los Angeles Times