(FORTUNE Magazine) – You've got to like two things about Michael Jordan, the 60-year-old chairman of Westinghouse Electric: One, he's not afraid to shake the tree, and two, he's showing a lot of grace under media and Wall Street scrutiny. Jordan, an 18-year PepsiCo veteran, inherited a debt-ridden, deeply troubled enterprise in 1993. He has since made a series of radical moves: selling off two large divisions, buying CBS for $5.4 billion in cash late last year, declaring his intent to split the company into two units, and offering $3.9 billion in stock to snap up radio giant Infinity Broadcasting. His basic strategy is to move Westinghouse out of low-growth industrial enterprises and into the more lucrative business of broadcasting.

The result of all this dealmaking so far--as Jordan freely admits--is the strangest of companies. His empire is a bizarre conglomeration of old-line industrial units and newfangled broadcast properties, peopled by everything from nuclear power engineers and refrigeration specialists to celebrities Dan Rather, Bill Cosby, and radio shock-jocks Howard Stern and Don Imus. Such diversity, Jordan jokes, should make for some interesting senior management meetings.

Jordan's proposal to split Westinghouse into two distinct companies--one for heavy industry and the other composed largely of TV and radio stations--is designed to end the confusion. "We need to isolate our industrial properties, so that major media investors can look at the broadcast side more clearly," he declares. Many entertainment-industry security analysts admit that they're baffled by the complexities of Westinghouse's industrial side. And investors evidently haven't gotten the message either. Although Westinghouse stock has risen modestly since Jordan began the makeover, the shares are still selling for far less than they did a decade ago.

If you want a reason to believe that Jordan can put his plans into practice, look at his record so far. Regularly nailed in the press as charismatically challenged and unimaginative, Jordan has in fact proven to be a pretty good dealmaker. He impressed analysts when he unloaded Westinghouse's defense electronics unit on Northrop Grumman this year for $3.5 billion and got twice as much as they had predicted for the Knoll office-furniture unit. Conventional wisdom--which had Jordan overpaying for CBS--may just have been wrong. CBS continued its ratings slump last season, but the outlook has improved because of the presence of Les Moonves, brought in from Warner Bros. as programming chief. "This is a guy with a great track record, a guy who speaks the language," says Edward Atorino, entertainment analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. "People are feeling better about CBS this fall than they have in years."

The Infinity radio deal could turn out to be a real coup. The communications reform bill passed by Congress recently is producing a flurry of radio mergers and acquisitions, and Jordan may have already picked off the industry's choicest property. Infinity's stations have operating margins well above average, and together the two radio networks will bring in $1 billion in annual ad revenues.

This is not to say Jordan is completely out of the thicket. The downside of this wheeling and dealing is that Westinghouse is now saddled with about $6 billion in debt. Much of that burden will probably be carried by the broadcast side in the restructured company, where cash flow should be ample enough to cover interest payments. Still, the debt will surely limit the company's options in the fast-changing media world.

Jordan has also inherited a couple of "legacies" (in company parlance) from the industrial past. One category is $1.2 billion worth of potential environmental cleanup costs and lawsuits--some filed over allegedly faulty generators built for nuclear power plants. The other is $1.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, which Jordan has been whittling down.

Uncertainty about upcoming government decisions also clouds the company's future. Westinghouse has $1.5 billion in tax-loss carry-forwards that Jordan would dearly love to apply to his broadcast properties to shelter their cash flow from future taxes, but it's not yet clear whether the IRS will go along. And the newly vigilant antitrust warriors at the Federal Communications Commission may yet cast a skeptical eye on the Infinity deal.

A final question: Can the Westinghouse management team handle the glare of the media spotlight that surrounds the entertainment business? Jordan has been a target of ridicule since buying CBS, and the Infinity deal will raise his profile higher. The morning after the merger was announced, Don Imus launched an on-air tirade about the "manufacturer of second-tier kitchen appliances" and the "vacant" look in Jordan's eyes.

Jordan seemed unfazed by it all during a recent interview, and he seems to have a reasonably sharp vision of his company's future. If he can make it a reality, Jordan could end up creating more value than Westinghouse shareholders have seen in a long, long time.

REPORTER ASSOCIATES Lenore Schiff, Tricia Welsh, Wilton Woods