Freston whacked

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It was 9:30 pm and Viacom CEO Tom Freston was in a good mood, sipping a beer and playing pool and applying chalk to the tip of his stick when all of a sudden...whack! Someone clobbered him with the blunt end of another pool cue. Freston's eyes rolled into his forehead, his legs gave out and a second later he was on the floor and out cold. The upshot is that the poor guy's out of a job. Freston's former boss, the always assertive Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, made the call because of "a weak stock price and increasing questions about the company's online strategy," according to a Wall Street Journal report. The 83 year-old Redstone replaced Freston with "personal adviser" Philippe Dauman; he also rehired a former lieutenant, Thomas Dooley, as exec vp and chief administrative officer. The shakeup "bore striking similarities to a similar executive overhaul at Viacom in 1996", the Jounal story says.