Fresh off the news that big poppa Sumner Redstone is divorcing his second wife and will probably not be throwing the company Christmas bash this year, daughter Shari stepped down today from her position as chairwoman of Midway Games Inc., which is a giant pie slice of the whole Redstone legacy.

So those rumors about the Redstone stock plummeting despite some good CBS ratings might actually have had some merit to them. It doesn't take Nate Silver to estimate that Sumner will now attempt to sell Midway to rally up some funds for the family debt, pay for his divorce with company stock (again), and try to salvage what's left of his personal savings with some investments from National Amusements.

Don't be too sad if you are one of the Election Day layoff staffers over at Viacom: you're not missing much of a Christmas party, anyway.

MTV's parent company isn't the only one calling off its major annual bash; Lydia Hearst already did or did not call out her dynasty for throwing elaborate parties while the country goes broke, and now it's been shut it down as well.

Full list of the companies going rogue Scrooge this year after the jump. At least they'll be able to cut in half their companies' sexual harassment lawsuits?

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So by now you've all realized that searching for most network television clips on YouTube can be a pretty fruitless exercise. If you want to watch The Daily Show, you have to go over to Comedy Central's website, because Viacom is all up in YouTube's business when it comes to copyright infringement. Unless it's a fair use, fifteen second thing, and even the candidates are not really sure how to deal with that when it comes to the Internet.

So while Viacom dukes it out with YouTube's papa bear over at Google headquarters to the tune of one billion dollars, they've also been in the works to team up with MySpace so you can legally watch episodes of your favorite season of Punk'd (it's the third season, isn't it?) on Rupert Murdoch's social networking service.

Hear that Google? That's how you do it when you're Sumner Redstone! Although wait… Redstone's the chairman of Viacom, Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace…does that mean the two competitors are actually making nice to screw over YouTube and Google?

Ah, you got to love the sweet smell of capitalism in the morning.

When Sumner Redstone, chief executive of National Amusements and Midway Games (and through Amusements, has majority holdings in Viacom, CBS, Paramount, and everything else in the world) divorced his first wife in 2002, he paid for the settlement in Midway stock. Which one would have hoped his first wife Phyllis would have sold by now, since the plummeting Dow makes the original settlement substantially less lucrative than it was back in good old '02.

But now that Redstone is breaking off his second marriage, will he be able to pull the same stunt again and trade promises of money for the actual thing?

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Because when you look around and see all your competitors falling by the wayside due to lack of ad pages and a decrease in readership, and your own sales dropping 4.7%, you think to yourself "A 25¢ increase on weekend editions would fix this right up."

Well, at least that's what you'd think if you were Rupert Murdoch and determined to keep the Post going long enough to dance on Sumner Redstone's grave.

Everyone likes a good Citizen Kane narrative. Because even though pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and succeeding by cutthroat capitalism is (or was), the American way, there is also that delightful pleasure in watching a media baron like Kane, or Howard Hughes, succumb to those very demons that drove him relentlessly to success in the first place.

Call it the law of American physics: What goes up, must come down in an extremely gruesome fashion, and end up smeared all over Page Six. So enter Sumner Redstone, whose massive earnings have earned him an empire of National Amusements (an apt title if there ever was one) that includes CBS, Paramount, MTV, and BET.

And who recently has succumbed to that modern aristocratic ailment of addictive stock-picking, and an even more aristocratic ailment of a failed marriage.

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Sumner Redstone, the titan who famously cut Tom Cruise loose from Paramount, is about to do the same to his second wife. The 85-year-old Viacom founder filed for divorce from 46-year-old Paula Fortunato, with whom Redstone had been married for five years.

The court documents show that Redstone is making sure Fortunato doesn't get a penny too, for reasons you can only imagine. The man must be richer than god (or is he?) and the two likely had a pre-nup. He may have only gone through the ringer once before, but Sumner knows enough to make future Mrs. Redstone's sign a legally binding contract saying they won't try to get his gold, or a guest-spot on Two and a Half Men, after the divorce.

When an insanely wealthy family dumps hundreds of millions in stock of their own company, on lookers can't help but wonder: WTF? So when the family of Sumner Redstone — he the chieftan of Viacom and CBS, as well as movie theatre chain and holding company National Amusements — did just that on Monday (though now they say only $233m was chased in, not the $400m previously reported), rumors started flying it was because National Amusements was about to tank thanks to the incoming recession. Except: So not true!, says the movie theatre head Shari Redstone, daughter of Sumner.

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It is, perhaps, fitting that Viacom and CBS chief Sumner Redstone's holding company is called National Amusements, because this economic crisis surely is a national freakin' amusement. Redstone's company, of course, is named after the chain of 1,500 movie theatres his family owns, and which also holds controlling stakes in both media giants. And it was that stake that he was forced to sell off on Friday. Four hundred million dollars worth of stock (of the nonvoting variety), in fact, to pay down debt that is suddenly due in an era when refinancing loans, even for the wealthiest among us, is harder than getting a ticket to space. [LAT]

Tommy Lee Jones as Dan Rather? Laura Linney as Mary Mapes? Paul Newman as Sumner Redstone? Three brilliant casting ideas that should be sent directly to Casting Society of America members, and producer Mikkel Bondesen, as ideas for the Dan Rather movie. Of course, we're going to need an actual news anchor covering the saga to appear on a background television, a score of sleuth bloggers punching away at their keyboards, and Tom Selleck as former CBS News president Andrew Heyward.

In the months ahead, Dan Rather is going to get to throw down with former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, current CBS head Les Moonves, and maybe even CBS grand poobah Sumner Redstone. The first two are scheduled to give depositions in Rather's wrongful termination suit against CBS, where he's claiming the network so tarnished his reputation in the aftermath of Memogate that he was unable to get hired at NBC, ABC, or CNN. Rather, of course, has since found work in the nether regions of the cable dial on HDNet, where he receives less exposure than his court filings.

Eighty-five-year-old Sumner Redstone, who's spent much of his career steering Viacom, and then CBS, into a media conglomerate sporting some of the most valuable properties in the industry, has no intention of making his legacy a family affair. He will not select daughter Shari to succeed him when his last day leading the companies arrives. But also, Redstone is crazy: "I’m not worried about [naming a successor] ’cause it’s going to be another 20, 30 years." And: Shari's camp says this is all nonsense. [NYT]

Though they parted ways in 2006, Sumner Redstone and Tom Cruise may re-join forces for a fourth Mission: Impossible. The cranky Viacom and CBS chairman, who thus runs the Paramount movie studio, says he still considers Cruise "a great actor and a good friend" (notice the degrees of acknowledgment there) and wouldn't object to him starring in M:I4, though in the end he says he's leaving that call to studio head Brad Gray. That's Brad Gray, as in the guy who's running the industry's top studio right now, so it's like, yeah motherfucker, he's making the call. [AP]

Sumner Redstone, who continues to play grandpa to both CBS and Viacom even after the companies went their separate ways, has a few remarks for one of his offspring. Actually, just one remark: You fucked up.

Okay. "Made a mistake" was what Redstone actually said about Les Moonves, the smiling operator behind CBS, who bought the rights to broadcast an event from Elite XC, the mixed martial arts sport that promises to be violent. That bloodsport is normally shielded from broadcast and aired only on cable, but Moonves is after cheap ratings for the tiffany network. — though that doesn't mean Redstone, who has as much at stake in seeing CBS succeed, is happy about it.

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The media has oversimplified the decision by Paramount to stop selling its shows to Showtime! You see, Paramount is Viacom's movie studio, while Showtime is CBS's premium channel, and the two were getting along so well ever since Viacom and CBS went their separate ways, but now Paramount is teaming with MGM and Lionsgate to create a new premium channel.

Les Moonves, who heads CBS, played nice in press reports with Viacom chief Philippe Dauman. Moonves' deputy, Showtime chief Matthew Blank, told the Times, "We wish them well." Dauman not-so-blandly opined, "It’s our responsibility at Viacom to drive our strategy to benefit our shareholders."

But now one newspaper is fueling rumors all this backroom dealing is a move to try to oust Moonves! CAN YOU BELIEVE?

Corporate daddy Sumner Redstone, who chairs both Viacom and CBS, is said to be unhappy with CBS's crappy stock performance. Or at least those are the rumors Dauman's been able to plant, as he eyes the throne of octogenarian Redstone, who, despite his misgivings, must leave this earth, and his companies, at some point.

In front of hundreds of agents, publicists, and reporters on Tuesday, Tom Cruise did his best Sumner Redstone. It was on film, to be sure, in the black-facey fake-turned-real war movie Tropic Thunder, which was being screened by Paramount for Tinsletown's most important. (Photos of Cruise in a fat suit surfaced in November, but when Cruise's attorneys complained to agency INF, the images were pulled from distribution.)

After the Paramount boss axed Cruise in 2006 after his couch-jumping and ranting stunts, and the twosome's more recent, and widely reported, sharing of a meal, this send up is either A) an excellent, self-deprecating way to get the duo back on good terms; B) an excellent way to drum up viral support for the movie.

Tom Cruise is breaking bread with Sumner Redstone, in a very public lunch, because the couch jumper knows Valkyrie is going to bomb, and wants to secure his near future (which includes appearing in a fat suit) before he's panned across America. But don't expect Mission: Impossible 4 to arrive with Cruise on board; Paramount wants someone younger and more controllable. [Fox 411]

Tony Bennett wasn't the only one singing a toast to Sumner Redstone at a tribute to him last week. Face The Nation anchor and country crooner Bob Schieffer, who's leaving CBS News, also gave the Viacom honcho a tune:

"You are the guru, and who would know but you what a little change in Viacom’s name would do. Have an éclair, Mr. Redstone, buy some networks, make a movie, play a tune. Take a break now, Mr. Redstone, ’cause another deal will come along real soon."

But a call to arms wasn't the only idea on Bob's mind; the ousted Tom Cruise also got a shout out.

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"According to several people close to [Sumner and Shari Redstone] relations between father and daughter are anything but lovey-dovey, and their conflict appears very much alive." Also surprisingly still alive: Sumner Redstone. [LAT]

When asked about their new media strategy, CBS sums it up in the most concise way possible: by drawing an analogy between their online expansion efforts and those kinky—but invariably unattractive—adult swingers looking for promiscuous no-strings-attached sex.

"Swingtown" is a CBS television show, scheduled for midseason, about partner-swapping couples. It's also what CBS executives lightheartedly call their new Internet strategy. The idea is to let their online material be promiscuous: Instead of limiting their shows and other online video to CBS.com, the network is letting them couple with [other websites]. "CBS is all about open, nonexclusive, multiple partnerships," said Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive.

Neat! So, assuming the swinger analogy still stands, CBS is kind of like the creepy much-older guy at a party, hitting on all the hot underage co-eds by plying them with alcohol, feeding them cheesy pick-up lines and staring intensely at their breasts all as part of some pathetic misguided attempt at recapturing his youth?

Yep, sounds about right to us.