A decade after the split that was supposed to unlock the hidden value inside Viacom, some pundits are calling for the home of MTV Networks to put the old band back together by recombining with broadcaster CBS in an aggressive move to restore value and clout to the once-powerful cable networks.

Recent moves by Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s ailing top shareholder, to possibly oust CEO Philippe Dauman and the board of directors have brought the conversation to the fore.

But many say stitching Viacom and CBS back together would be a long, costly process that might make both weaker rather than stronger.

SpringOwl Asset Management hedge fund manager Eric Jackson has been one of the loudest proponents of reconstituting the old Viacom, combining the broadcast and cable assets and placing CBS chairman and CEO Les Moonves and his team firmly in charge.

Jackson pins most of Viacom’s woes on executive chairman and CEO Philippe Dauman and thinks a CBS-Viacom recombination would offer cost savings and greater efficiencies, as well as the obvious changes in management.

TARGET: NEW MANAGEMENT

Viacom might indeed rise out of the ashes of its current predicament — but possibly too late for Dauman. “Investors will value other management taking over,” Pivotal Research Group senior research analyst, advertising Brian Wieser said in an interview. “You could literally put anyone in the CEO spot.”

Wall Street’s top candidate would be Moonves, who has overseen a huge resurgence at CBS in the past 10 years, while Dauman has seen Viacom’s value diminish. The biggest question, Wieser said, is if Moonves wants to take on the daunting task of reviving Viacom or would rather continue on his current path of growing’s CBS assets.

Under Moonves, CBS stock has more than doubled in price, to $55.17 from $26.64 per share, over the last 10 years.

CBS expects retransmission-consent revenue to reach $1 billion by year-end (up from “tens of millions” after the 2006 Viacom split) and to more than double to $2.5 billion by 2020.

Moonves has been quick to the attack on the over-the-top front, launching CBS All Access, which last year attracted an estimated 100,000 monthly subscribers. CBS has projected it could have 4 million customers by the end of 2020.

Moonves has deflected merger talk, saying on a 2015 earnings call, “We’re feeling pretty strong about ourselves and don’t need any partners.”

One roadblock could be finding an acceptable premium for Viacom, which currently has an enterprise value of about $29 billion, about the same as CBS’s EV of about $32 billion.

Wieser said a Viacom-CBS combination makes sense on some fronts and there could be tons of synergies across the board, but Moonves and CBS would have to articulate their vision for the company for any recombination to work.

Viacom still has value in that its Nickelodeon networks reach more kids than any other programmer, Wieser said. In the music arena, MTV Networks could recapture some of the lost mojo in that sector with new programming introduced at the most recent upfronts. “It really comes down to whether there is a fundamental belief in the durability of the assets,” he said. “I believe there is value in the assets, but it’s understandable why some don’t have that view.”

Others, like Telsey Advisory Group media analyst Tom Eagan, think the risks would outweigh the rewards, adding that Viacom’s problems could also be solved with time and the move toward Total Audience Measurement.

Total Audience, which is beginning to emerge from ratings companies Nielsen and comScore, potentially will track all viewership all of the time, even those elusive viewers who watch content on every device but their TVs.

CROSS-PLATFORM ELEVATION

One of Viacom’s biggest problems has been declining ratings at its youth-oriented networks, which have driven ad sales down and made the company vulnerable in affiliate-fee negotiations.

“The inclusion of more cross-platform measurement is going to help Viacom,” Eagan said. “You could arguably say it will help them more than any other cable-network group, because so much of their viewership is off-linear. But they need to be able to monetize it.”

Wieser wasn’t so sure that Total Audience would be Viacom’s magic bullet. He believes the company’s problems are much deeper, even more than its failure to develop shows its core audience wants to see and the loss of talent like Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

“The fundamental problem Viacom has is, it has a controlling shareholder,” Wieser said. “Investors never seem to care [about that] until things go badly.”

Timing is everything, especially when it's about survival. Or a fundamental re-thinking of everything you do.

Perhaps it was because of Comcast's recent revelations of massive new initiatives in business services and WiFi delivery. Maybe it was the spate of (often-conflicting) data about video streaming successes. Some of it could be attributed to the revived hype about the Internet of Things and other technology reconfigurations. And probably it's about the over-arching malaise regarding policy and financial developments.

Whatever the reason, Robert Tercek's concise new book, Vaporized, has just arrived in the midst of overwhelming (as usual) changes. Thanks to the author's background in the media and communications industries (MTV Networks, Sony Pictures, president of OWN Digital Media, plus early videogame ventures), Tercek's perspectives offer particularly strong insights about how cable operators, programmers and technology suppliers can adapt to the emerging marketplace.

Subtitled "Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World," the book presents an insightful, optimistic analysis of the digital future. Tercek crafts ideas for digital business practices that are akin to the kinds of interpretation that Malcolm Gladwell has done in pop sociology.

Tercek's basic principle is that "whatever can be vaporized will be."  Media companies -- which faced that process much sooner than other industries -- took the first blows as digital production and delivery of music, publications and video vaporized previous formats. Tercek describes the emergent "new value bundle" as a combination of a device, software, content and commerce; he acknowledges that in these early days, "everything is up for grabs."

And Tercek warns against ignoring the inevitable changes. "Denial is powerful because it shuts down the imaginationl," he writes.

Vaporized offers a checklist for the new economy, is peppered with reminisces of Tercek's background, and occasionally (befitting a long-time Hollywood denizen) is self-promotional. He cites an "emergency meeting" he convened at MTV Networks in the early '90s when he was a young executive. Enthralled by the new videogame industry that also aimed at MTV's target audience of young males, he urged the entire company to plunge into the category. Tercek's plan was so far out of the box that Nickelodeon chief Geraldine Laybourne and most other top executives walked out of the meeting, leaving his boss, MTV president Judith McGrath, to comfort him. "That didn't go very well," he says in the book.

He also cites a 1991 CableLabs internal examination on "Delivering Interactive Services" by Peter Miller. Tercek characterizes the ideas as a blueprint by which cable operators "could have owned the Internet." But it was rejected. "The scale of the missed opportunity is breathtaking," Tercek writes.

Tercek's subsequent media and interactive projects convinced him that "defensive innovation" is not a valid strategy. He doesn't believe that bundles or TV Everywhere will work well, although he is a strong cheerleader for mobile and wireless operations. 

As with most such books, Vaporized presents an introductory tutorial about a wide array of technologies with critiques of many of the companies -- especially content creators and Silicon Valley stalwarts. The straightforward style makes for easy reading, even during descriptions of arcane, cutting-edge ventures.

Tercek spends a chapter on the Internet of Things, including predictions on how carriers (including cable operators) and technology suppliers will participate. He also, as big data permeates every sector of business, delves intelligently into fundamental questions such as, "Who owns the data layer?"

Another volatile factor is the nature of work, as virtual operations eliminate the entire middle management tier in many companies.  Tercek conveniently includes a list of 98 jobs (starting on page 223, in case you're doing some career planning) that are "highly likely" to be safe; most are in the technology and creative categories, and there's also hope for marketing and sales jobs.

Throughout the book, Tercek opines on which companies will survive in the "vaporized economy," which he characterizes as a fully decentralized peer-to-peer environment. Tercek's wide reach encompasses regulatory and public policy factors; he points out that in this situation, the popular term and tactic "disruption" represents reversal: big companies want to disrupt government efforts that affect their status quo. He expects the battle between the establishment and the vaporized economy will persist.

Idealistically, Tercek says, "We may see a new generation of vaporized institutions that are probably reliable and demonstrably fair."

Overall, Vaporized is optimistic and vastly relevant in and beyond the media/telecom industries. Tercek doesn't guarantee success to anyone, merely noting that most operations will have to modify or overhaul their ways of doing business to survive.

Needless to say, Vaporized is available in digital formats as well as between hard covers. 

VH1 said it has ordered a second season of Nicole Richie reality series Candidly Nicole. The MTV Networks outlet said the show, an outgrowth of an AOL online series and produced by Telepictures and World of Wonder, will return in spring or summer of 2015.

“Candidly Nicole has surpassed every goal that we set for the launch," Susan Levison, EVP of Original Programming and Production for VH1, said in a release. "The series increased viewers in its time period by 50% attracted thousands of new viewers to the channel and shared Nicole Richie's sharp wit and comedic flair for highlighting some of the absurdities of the real world." The Aug. 28 episode drew 276,000 viewers on a Live plus Same Day basis, but two episodes in July drew more than 500,000 viewers each in the Thursday 10 p.m. time slot, according to Nielsen. The series premiere on July 17 drew 551,000 total viewers.

Famous for her role in MTV's The Simple Life, with Paris Hilton, Richie (the daughter of singer Lionel Richie) married musician Joel Madden, had two children and founded The Richie Madden Children's Foundation. She currently acts as the Creative Director for House of Harlow 1960, offering ready-to-wear, jewelry, eyewear, footwear and handbags. She recently starred as one of the three mentors on NBC's Fashion Star and is author of the novel "The Truth About Diamonds."