Tommy Mottola Canned By Sony

The surprise is not that he is gone, but how long he lasted – the judgment of anyone who would marry Mariah Carey is deeply flawed. I wouldn’t marry Mariah Carey with someone else’s body:

The 14-year reign of Tommy Mottola at Sony Music is over.

According to sources at Sony Music, where the phones have not stopped ringing, Mottola only found out he was leaving when he arrived this morning at 550 Madison. “He was told to go see Sir Howard Stringer, and when he got there they handed him a press release,” my source said. Mottola was then given a couple of hours to clear out his office. A deal for a record label was, according to sources, Sony’s resolution of the last year of his contract.

….The Japanese owners of Sony had a lot on their minds when it came to Mottola’s future. The talented but volatile music executive personally forced out two of Sony’s major stars, Mariah Carey (his ex-wife) and Michael Jackson. In the case of the former, the embarrassing story of Mottola allegedly stealing music from Carey’s Glitter album and passing it to Jennifer Lopez didn’t help much. Carey was able to use that information as leverage to leave her Sony contract one album early.

In the case of Jackson, the complicated goings-on regarding his finances and the Beatles catalog culminated last summer in Jackson riding around Manhattan with a megaphone calling Mottola a racist. If there’s one thing companies like Sony don’t like, it’s public humiliation. And Stringer, who runs Sony Entertainment, and is a class act, was never amused by Mottola’s antics.

There was also the very public fight over royalties with the Dixie Chicks, and the company’s inability to make Celine Dion’s recent album more than a middling hit.

But in the end, Mottola’s ouster is more a result of bottom line numbers. Sony Music is No. 3 on the list of music companies and Columbia Records is third on the list of labels. The failure of the company to market albums by Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony and other acts sent their bottom line into a tailspin, and in the end it doesn’t matter who likes you or who you don’t like. It’s about the money. [Fox News]