VIACOM Disputes Report Of Emmy Losses

A National Underwriter report that the cancelled Emmy Awards were not insured for advertising losses has been labeled “inaccurate” by an official of Viacom.

But Ted Mangano, vice president, risk management, refused to provide any details concerning the insurance coverage in question or to expand in any way on a written complaint he sent to the magazine.

In a letter to the National Underwriter, Mr. Mangano did not say the losses were insured, but rather that they were “insurable.”

The letter stated that “Viacom is currently evaluating the extent to which its insurance program covers its losses and is confident that it has suffered insurable losses.”

The 53^rd Annual Primetime Emmys, originally scheduled for Sept. 16, were cancelled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They were rescheduled for Oct. 7, but again cancelled because the U.S. attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan began that day.

As reported in an article that appeared in the Oct. 22 edition of National Underwriter, another Viacom risk management executive had previously told NU “there was no cancellation coverage. Losses were absorbed by Viacom, which owns CBS. Obviously for CBS, theres a tremendous loss of revenue.”

He also said the network did have coverage for situations where a civil authority shuts operations down.

“This clearly was not the case. This was simply a decision that with what was going on in the world, this was not an appropriate time to have this event,” he said.

Mr. Mangano complained that the story did not accurately “depict Viacoms position regarding the availability of insurance coverage for losses associated with the attacks.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, October 29, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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VIACOM Disputes Report Of Emmy Losses

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