Word: diller
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Manhattan dinner party three weeks ago, Barry Diller was constantly asked what he was going to do next. The flinty mogul, whose QVC cable network had lost an expensive bid to buy Paramount Communications, would say only, "I'm onto something." Late in the evening, he stood at the door chatting with Don Hewitt, executive producer of CBS's 60 Minutes, and Hewitt's wife, TV newswoman Marilyn Berger. "Barry," Berger said nonchalantly, "you really should come around the show more often." Diller, twinkling and almost winking, replied, "Oh, I'll be around...
...Around? Diller is never just around. And he is always onto something -- usually on top. In the '70s he successfully ran Paramount's empire of movies. In the '80s, at Fox, he achieved the impossible: launching a fourth network and making it flower. In 1992 he became a partner in the home-shopping channel QVC, a roadside fruit stand on the new information superhighway. Instead of instantly upgrading the network's programming, Diller used QVC as a piggy bank for the hostile raid on Paramount. For once, he was vanquished, by Viacom Inc., and when the battle was over Diller...
Next, it turns out, was CBS. Last week Diller and CBS chairman Laurence Tisch announced that the Eye network would acquire QVC. CBS shareholders would own about 53% of the company, QVC shareholders the rest. If the deal goes through, Tisch will be chairman of the merged companies, and Diller will be president, CEO and chairman of the executive committee. QVC will designate five of the 12 members of the board of directors, including Diller. Tisch will own about 10% of the combined company (through his family-held company, Loews Corp., he owns 20% of the current...
Media mavens were quick to applaud the mix of CBS and the tough, widely respected Diller. "He's probably the one executive," says analyst Larry Gerbrandt of Paul Kagan Associates, "that just about everybody in the industry would salute." Diller, a high-profile schmoozer to whom networking is both a pleasure and a job description, was quickly at ease in the company he hopes will be his big new home. The day the deal was announced, he called Evening News co-anchor Dan Rather for a chat and was escorted around the network's New York City broadcast center...
...chairman Laurence Tisch and QVC head Barry Diller said "the Tiffany network" would almost certainly go ahead in its surprise merger with the home-shopping giant. The result, to be finalized July 13 barring unforeseen snags, will be an altered TV landscape in which a top-rated network has substantial interest in cable. Investors are buying in: even before the official announcement, CBS stock shot up $48, to $311, and QVC's rose...