- Barry Diller
Barry Diller (born 2 February 1942) is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation ofFox Broadcasting Company andUSA Broadcasting .Biography
Barry Diller was born
February 2 1942 in Beverly Hills,California , where he was raised and began his career through a family connectionReported on the AmericanCBS network's "60 Minutes ", re-broadcastJune 10 ,2007 ] in the mailroom of theWilliam Morris Agency after dropping out ofUCLA after one semester. In 2001 he married fashion designerDiane von Fürstenberg . He is a life-long Democrat and supporter of progressive causes. [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/foundations/barrydiller1.html]Career at ABC
He was hired by ABC in 1966 and was soon placed in charge of negotiating broadcast rights to
feature film s. He was promoted to vice president in charge of feature films and program development in 1969. In this position, Diller created the "ABC Movie of the Week", pioneering the concept of the made-for-television movie through a regular series of 90-minute films produced exclusively fortelevision .Career at Paramount
Diller served for ten years as the Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer ofParamount Pictures Corporation starting in 1974. With Diller at the helm, the studio produced hittelevision programs such as "Laverne & Shirley " (1976), "Taxi" (1978), and "Cheers " (1982) and films ranging from "Saturday Night Fever " (1977), and "Grease" (1978) to "Raiders of the Lost Ark " (1981) and its sequel "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom " (1984) to "Terms of Endearment " (1983) and "Beverly Hills Cop " (1984).Career at Fox
From October 1984 to April 1992, he held the positions of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fox, Inc, parent company of
Fox Broadcasting Company and20th Century Fox , where he greenlighted hits like "The Simpsons". Diller quit 20th Century-Fox in 1992 and purchased a $25 million stake inQVC teleshopping network. Diller resigned from QVC in 1995.USA Broadcasting
In 1997, Diller acquired the assets of Silver King Broadcasting, the collective group of over-the-air TV stations owned by then
Bud Paxson 'sHome Shopping Network as well as the Home Shopping Network itself. Along with this acquisition, Diller also purchased the rights to theUSA Network from theBronfman family. Due to Home Shopping getting more notarity on the cable networks from his former dealings with the QVC Network, Diller sought to repurpose the broadcast stations into independent, locally-run stations as part of a station group dubbedUSA Broadcasting of which the flagship station wasWAMI-TV inMiami Beach, FL . The purpose of the network was to have the flagship, WAMI, produce sports and news programming while testing general interest programming for the other stations in the group... of which, the general interest programming would be locally produced by the other stations in the group. Due to the high costs involved with producing and acquiring talent for shows outside the typical areas ofNew York, NY andLos Angeles, CA , plus the siginicantly low ratings such shows received in Miami Beach, the remaining shows were moved to Los Angeles to regain traction, but never did. Diller eventually sold the TV assets toUnivision after rejecting a bid fromThe Walt Disney Company . The USA Network and its assets were later sold off toVivendi . Diller retained the assets of the Home Shopping Network and the subsequent internet assets he acquired later to bolster the HSN Online stable that later becameIAC/InterActiveCorp .2000s
Diller is currently the Chairman of
Expedia and the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer ofIAC/InterActiveCorp , an interactive commerce conglomerate and the parent of companies includingServiceMagic ,Home Shopping Network ,Ticketmaster ,Match.com ,Citysearch ,LendingTree andCollegeHumor . In 2005, IAC/InterActiveCorp acquiredAsk.com , marking a strategic move into the Internet search category. Diller has been on the board ofThe Coca-Cola Company since 2002. The new headquarters ofIAC/InterActiveCorp was designed byFrank Gehry and opened in 2007 at 18th Street and the West Side Highway in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, an epicenter of the city's gay community. The western half of the block is dedicated to the building which stands several stories taller than the massiveChelsea Piers Sporting complex just across the West Side Highway. The extra floors guarantee a panoramic Hudson River view from Diller's sixth-floor office.In 2001, Diller married fashion designer and longtime friend
Diane von Fürstenberg .In 2003, on the
PBS TV program "NOW with Bill Moyers ", Diller vocalized a strong warning againstmedia consolidation . In the interview he referred to media ownership by a few big corporations as anoligarchy , saying the concentration strangles new ideas. [ [http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/bigger.html Moyers on America . The Net @ Risk . Big and Bigger Media | PBS ] ]Barry Diller was "the highest-paid executive [of 2005 fiscal year] " according to a report by The New York Times on Thursday, October 26, 2006 with a total compensation package in excess of $295 million. [ [http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=169065] , Marketwire.Com Accessed on Oct 28, 2006] In an opinion article in the New York Times of Nov 7, 2006,
Nicholas D. Kristof awarded him his annual "Michael Eisner Award", consisting of a $5 shower curtain, for corporate rapacity and laziness. [Nicholas D. Kristof , [http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?hp America’s Laziest Man?] ,New York Times ,November 7 ,2006 ]"The Killer Dillers"
Diller is responsible for what the media dubs "The Killer Dillers" – people whom Diller mentored and who later became big-time media executives in their own right. Examples include
Michael Eisner (who was President & COO ofParamount Pictures while Diller was Chairman & CEO ofParamount Pictures , who went on to become Chairman & CEO ofThe Walt Disney Company ),Dawn Steel (future head ofColumbia Pictures and the first woman to run a movie studio, who worked under Diller at Paramount),Jeffrey Katzenberg (head of PDI/DreamWorks Animation , principal ofDreamWorks SKG , former head of Walt Disney Studios, and a head of production of Paramount under Diller), Garth Ancier, President of BBC America, and Don Simpson, who was President of Production at Paramount under Diller and Eisner, was also included – he later went on to run a production company based on the Disney lot withJerry Bruckheimer .Trivia
Barry Diller is the owner of the sailing yacht EOS; at 93 metres it is the largest sailing yacht in the world. Diller was also the inspiration for the appearance of the Simpsons cartoon character
C. Montgomery Burns .References
Resources
*"Diller, Barry". [http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/dillerbarry/dillerbarry.htm The Museum of Broadcast Communications] . Retrieved 14th July, 2006.
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