Word: diller
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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During an interview at the midtown apartment that serves as his Manhattan pied-a-terre, Diller is restless even in repose. His is a singular physical presence, his fine-boned body at odds with his rock of a head and a gap-toothed grin that is both wary and omnivorous (actually, he looks a lot like David Letterman minus the hair). As Diller talks, he twists himself into ligament-straining positions on the couch. He fidgets with his socks, gets up again and again to fiddle with the thermostat--it's as if he can't help exuding nervous energy...
...Diller almost owned Paramount, but in 1994 it slipped away. He nearly won control of CBS, but he lost that too in an abortive bid later that same year. This is what he does own, bought in quick succession last summer and fall: 1) Silver King Communications, whose main assets are 12 TV stations that comparatively few people want to watch; 2) Savoy Pictures, an independent film studio known for producing movies (Last of the Dogmen, for example) that comparatively few people went to see but a studio that owns considerable cash and a quartet of television stations...
...Diller's managerial and entrepreneurial arts may turn these into far more valuable assets. Wall Street apparently thinks so; it bid up Silver King's stock from $25 to $39 the day Diller's purchase was announced (the stock closed last week at $301/2). Still and all, this is not the kingdom people expected Diller would survey when he walked out on his job as chairman of Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox in 1992 and told the world he yearned to own a network of his own. His assumed ambition was to be a Murdoch, or even a Laurence...
What kind of network will Silver King become in its wildest, Cinderella-like dreams? Diller intends, he says, to build it from the bottom up with local programming--a national network of distinct and separate voices. It almost sounds like a koan: When is a network not a network? Of course, this is precisely the kind of counterintuitive thinking that has drawn Diller admirers and partners like investment banker Herbert Allen and Tele-Communications Inc.'s John Malone. In practical terms, however, Diller's plan would seem almost too counterintuitive, given the fact that Silver King stations currently produce almost...
...interested in a national voice?" wonders Diller. "Probably--sure I am. But that's not what I'm trying to do. My job is to say, 'Is there a local voice? Can I be of service? Can I get you?' " He refuses to be more specific concerning how he plans to go about getting you--as a viewer, he means--but he will speak to where he sees his opening: "Local broadcasters all look exactly the same. Local newscasts are terrible. Except for weather and sports, they're uninformative. They should just have one master shot of police and ambulances...