“A lot of fat can be taken out without hurting muscle and bones.

Vivendi Universal CFO Philippe Capron, confirming long-rumored plans to start another cost-cutting round at the conglomerate’s Universal Music Group unit, the world’s largest music company. Layoff chatter started as soon as Vivendi put Lucian Grainge in charge of UMG earlier this year.

Vevo

Kohl’s job is a key one at the venture, whose premise is that the music industry can do a better job of selling its video inventory than sites like Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. Vevo is a joint venture owned (for now) by Sony (SNE) and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group; YouTube will help power the site and share in some of its revenue.

In theory, there could be a lot of dollars to go around. When Vevo opens its doors later this year, it is expected to generate some 450 million video streams a month. In theory, the fact that a single company controls the way the videos are displayed and distributed will make those streams more attractive to advertisers.

But there are plenty of skeptics who think the site will flounder, in large part because the music industry has never figured out how to run a successful consumer business and because media companies have a terrible track record when it comes to joint ventures. In Vevo’s favor: They said the same thing about Hulu, and that venture has been a success, at least operationally.

Kohl will run a six-person sales team he intends to expand, people familiar with Vevo’s strategy tell me. Until now, Vevo head Rio Caraeff has been overseeing sales himself–and learning on the job, since he didn’t have any sales experience of his own. Vevo now employs about 45 people.

At Nokia, Kohl ran the company’s interactive ad group; he has also put in time at Viacom’s (VIA) MTV Networks, Vivendi Universal and Comedy Central.

During an interview yesterday, he even got a few good ones off about the funny foibles of Activision, the gaming company he runs, even though it has suddenly become a much more serious business after a recent merger with Vivendi Universal’s gaming division.

Here’s a video chat with Kotick, who also serves on the board of Yahoo, which I made after we had lunch at–like I said, he’s funny–Google’s cafeteria (and, of course, he also gets a good one in about Electronic Arts’ competitive Rock Band game at the end):

Activision, which makes the popular Guitar Hero video game series (its Guitar Hero III is expected to be one of the best-selling this holiday season), has vaunted itself to be about equal in size to EA, the longtime dominant video game company.

Perhaps most importantly for Activision, the move puts the business squarely into the Web space. Vivendi’s Blizzard Entertainment unit makes the hugely popular World of Warcraft multiplayer game, where users compete on the Internet.

Kotick will be CEO of the merged company, even though Vivendi will get a 52% stake. It will be called Activision Blizzard with combined revenues of $3.7 billion.

But even together, the pair face the challenge of churning out more hits and keeping their franchises fresh.