Lookit that picture up there, kids. Just look at it. Damn that boy looks pleased.
And why not? After a zillion years (well, over 20 for sure) as the world’s highest paid assistant (to Rupert Murdoch, no less), Mr. Chernin left his $15,000,000+ a year gig as President of News Corp. and formed the Chernin Group, forming all kinds of cool alliances with Fox, Dreamworks, and lesser entities. No more Rupert butt to kiss. Yay!
Earlier this year he scored $200 million in working capital from Providence Equity Partners, possibly to fund a merger (read “takeover”) of Endemol, one of the biggest produces of reality TV in the world, and Core Media, which produces AMERICAN IDOL and SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE and, better yet, holds the licensing rights to Elvis Presley and Muhammed Ali.
Now we learn that Mr. C has gotten hold of $100 million from Qatar, which sounds like a planet from the comic book Green Lantern but actually is a country somewhere. According to AllThingsD.Com the dough will be used as “‘firepower’ for a strategy [to] build up media assets in emerging markets like China, produce film and TV shows in the U.s., and make investment bets on media/tech companies….”
And to think, our boss, LB, knew him back when Mr. Chernin was an assistant to TV producer David Gerber, working for half the going rate because, as he told LB, “I didn’t know what to ask, and he offered me twice what I was getting as a junior book editor in New York.”
TVWriter™ congratulates Peter Chernin on growing up to become a man who knows exactly what to ask, and, more importantly, how to make sure he gets it. But we also have a request: Please, please, please, Petey, can you not be as happy as you look? Cuz if you aren’t secretly miserable we’ll never be able to face our own miserable, financially unsuccessful lives again.
