Word: diller
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...talk centered on financing the Comcast bid, with Brian Roberts nonetheless repeatedly asking, "Are we doing this only because we're angry?" After securing a $1 billion line of credit from the Bank of New York last Monday, the Robertses were ready to strike. They began placing calls to Diller at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, hoping to arrange a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel that evening. Discovering that Diller was en route to New York City from Los Angeles with CBS entertainment president Howard Stringer and others, father and son hastily arranged to meet the plane at an airport...
...Robertses' bid ruptured a partnership with Diller that began when Brian Roberts brought the former head of Paramount studios and Fox broadcasting to QVC in December 1992. "Brian was very taken with Barry," says a cable-TV executive, "because when Barry turns on the charm, he can be quite impressive and effective. You have this older guy and this younger kid, and what really must have hurt is when Barry did an about-face. If he had gone to the Robertses and made them feel a part of the CBS deal, this might not have happened...
...Robertses' bid not only reaffirmed Diller's status as a mogul manque, but it left CBS on the block for a takeover attempt by anyone from the Walt Disney Co. to cable-TV magnate Ted Turner. By agreeing last month to join forces with QVC, Tisch, 71, had shown himself willing to cash in half of his 20% stake in the network and to hand the titles of president and chief executive officer to Diller. Now, with the QVC deal gone aglimmering, CBS had what amounted to a COMPANY FOR SALE sign on its black granite headquarters in New York...
Tisch moved fast to limit the damage. Declaring that "the merger discussion is at an end," he immediately walked away from QVC. "There was no chance," Diller recalls. "We absolutely knew that if Comcast made a competitive offer that Mr. Tisch would be gone in 10 seconds." To keep CBS stock from collapsing over the failure of the deal, Tisch immediately launched a $1.1 billion offer to buy back 22.6% of the company's shares for $325 a share. At the same time, Tisch partly made up for the defection of eight major CBS affiliates to the Fox network...
...Still, Diller haggled with CBS over the treatment of options to buy 6 million shares of QVC stock. While Diller wanted to swap half the options for new ones in the merged company, Tisch balked at raising the issue before the deal was complete. Diller dropped his request, but it rankled the Tisch camp. "After they got engaged," says a source close to Tisch, "Diller demanded the dowry...