Who

The former CEO of Viacom, Freston was forced out of the job in 2006 by Sumner Redstone and replaced by Philippe Dauman.

Backstory

Following business school at NYU and a short stint in advertising (he was assigned to Charmin's "Mr. Whipple" campaign at Benton & Bowles and promptly quit), Freston moved to South Asia for nearly a decade, running a clothing business from such exotic locales as Kabul and New Delhi. When the business fizzled in the late '70s, Freston returned to New York. In 1980, he took a marketing gig at a nascent MTV, a year before the cable channel launched; as marketing director, he teamed up with legendary ad man George Lois to come up with the slogan "I Want My MTV."

Following the departure of MTV CEO Bob Pittman in 1987, Freston assumed the top spot and led the company through a period of enormous growth: During the late 1980s and '90s, he presided over MTV's migration away from music videos (thus unleashing programs like Beavis and Butt-head and The Real World); branched out to film (MTV Films) and the web (mtv.com); launched a number of spinoff networks (like MTV2, Logo); and took MTV worldwide with nearly three dozen affiliates around the world, making MTV a global cultural force.

Following Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone's 2004 decision to cleave his media conglomerate in two, he placed Freston in charge of a broader collection of cable and film properties as the CEO of Viacom. (Les Moonves was put in charge of CBS.) But his tenure was short-lived: Less than two years later, Redstone dismissed Freston, reportedly because he faulted him for missing out on the chance to acquire MySpace. (It was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. instead). The spiky-haired TV vet, who received a golden parachute worth $84.8 million, was replaced by longtime Redstone confidente Philippe Dauman.

Currently

Following his ouster, Freston took to the road, traveling to such far-flung places as Myanmar, Cambodia, Mali, and Zanzibar. (He wrote about his visit to Africa in the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair.) While he hasn't taken a new job just yet, he's kept busy with various investments and board seats. He joined Bob Pittman, Barry Sternlicht, and Jason Flom in a round of financing for Tom Scott's PlumTV. He also put cash into the online video site Veoh.com, along with Viacom's Jonathan Dolgen and ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, and joined the board of DreamWorks in September 2007 at the invitation of Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Board game

Freston is on the board of trustees at Emerson College and the American Museum of Natural History, along with Tom Brokaw, Louis Gerstner, and Dick Parsons, among others.

Legal file

Freston waged a decade-long legal battle to have New York City reimburse him for the tuition fees he paid to enroll his son in a special school for the learning disabled. (His son, Gilbert, attended the Stephen Gaynor School on the Upper West Side.) Although clearly he didn't need the cash, Freston said that he pursued the case because he wanted to make sure that families with disabled children received adequate services from public schools. He ended up winning and donated the proceeds to charity.

Personal

Freston has two kids with his first wife, Gilbert and Andrew. He's currently married to Kathy Freston, a yogaphile and "growth and spirituality counselor" who authored the self-help tome Expect a Miracle: Seven Spiritual Steps to Finding the Right Relationship. The couple lives in a townhouse on East 66th Street that once belonged to Andy Warhol; they purchased the manse in 2000 for $6.5 million. The Frestons also have a home in Beverly Hills.