Axed exec the roast of the town

Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Daily News

Axed exec the roast of the town

By George Rush and Joanna Rush Molloy

It wasn’t enough of an indignity that his boss Sumner Redstone, drop-kicked him out of his CEO’s office at Viacom last summer. Yesterday at the Center for Communication luncheon at the Pierre, Tom Freston had to relive the whole ordeal when “friends” honored the unemployed exec.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room today who feels Tom was treated fairly,: News Corp. President Peter Chernin told a crowd that included media and entertainment bigs like Rupert Murdoch, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Doug Morris, Harvey Weinstein, Ahmet Ertegun and John Sykes. “ There’s no doubt in my mind that Tom’s continued success will haunt Viacom for years to come.”   Pause. “But enough about Tom Cruise,” said Chernin, firing up the rotisserie. “we’re here to talk about Tom Freston, and Tom Freston is an a-hole. …How Can you roast someone who’s already toast?

“I can’t imagine how tough it must have been for Tom to be screwed over by a guy [Redstone] so old that he had to take a little blue pill to do it.”

Making fun of Freston’s corporate rival Les Moonves (who made nice with Freston at the Lunch), Chernin added that MTV, the network Freston founded, “now officially stands for ‘Moonves takes Viacom.’”

Chernin recalled that Freston had created the MTV Networks back when “Google was just the name of his bong.”

MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath said, “Everybody talks about the size of Tom’s package…and his severance,” reported to be as much as $72 million.

Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert congratulated Freston as “one of the secular, uber-tolerant, liberal, anything-goes, me-first, who-cares-what-my-county-wants, I-want-my-MTV-istas who are tearing America apart.”  Colbert also noted that Freston green-lit Nickelodeon – now “everytime I clean my cheese grater, my children scream ‘you’re killing [SpongeBob]!”

Rather than return fire, Freston made sport of himself. Goofing on reports that Redstone fired him because he let Murdoch buy MySpace, Freston said that, thanks to his “unplanned vacation,” he’d finally bought a computer. He proceeded to show his MySpace profile, where he posted one video clip of himself eating a peanut butter sandwich and another of him singing Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.”

“When you were all at Michael’s [restaurant] yesterday, I was home creating content.” Said Freston. “I could go on forever, but if I don’t leave now, I’m never going to get a seat at Starbucks.”