80 Percent Growth in Viacom Profit

NEW YORK, November 2: Net income at Viacom for the third
quarter rose 80 percent to $641.6 million on revenues of $3.27 billion, a
24-percent gain, driven in part by the blockbuster Transformers.

"Viacom delivered solid growth at the top and bottom
lines in the third quarter," said Philippe
Dauman, the president and CEO of Viacom. "Innovation and
execution continue to be key drivers in our success. Our slate of original
programming across our Media Networks is gaining traction with ratings showing
steady improvement. We are also expanding our presence in the digital arena as
we offer richer entertainment experiences, which are engaging more fans.
Traffic across our global websites continues to increase substantially. We are
bringing those audiences closer to our brands with tools that allow them to
interact with our content and to form communities around their interests
through Flux, the social networking platform which we began to roll out this
quarter. As a result, people are spending more time on our sites. In Filmed
Entertainment, we enjoyed phenomenal success with our new global franchise Transformers, which is continuing with the recent release of the
film on DVD. Looking ahead, we are very pleased with our 2008 movie slate,
which includes a broad spectrum of film genres across our family of
brands."

At the media networks, revenues were up 9 percent to $2 billion.
Worldwide advertising revenues increased 7 percent to $1.18 billion, affiliate
fees grew 14 percent to $582 million and ancillary revenues grew 7 percent to
$237 million.

Filmed entertainment revenues gained 57 percent to $1.3
billion, led by a $278 million increase in theatrical revenues to $490 million,
thanks mostly to the Transformers. The
segment also experienced a 39-percent rise in home-entertainment revenues, to
$457 million.

—By Mansha Daswani