Word: diller
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...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...
...course, if Diller wanted to do things the easy or obvious way he could have; he reputedly turned down offers in the past year from both Edgar Bronfman Jr. (to run MCA Universal) and Michael Eisner (to join him as No. 2 man at Disney). "Barry has had these unbelievable silver trays offered to him, and he's always said no," says his best friend, designer Diane Von Furstenberg. Why no? "He's not a pig," she explains. "It's not about greed with him. It's ambition, it's vision, and that makes him different and makes...
...Diller, others who know him speculate that his need to strike out on his own is to some extent born of necessity, given his inability, at this point in his career, to share power or work harmoniously for others. Diller himself doesn't sound unduly deferential when he describes his drive to succeed: "A lot of it has to do with willfulness, whether you're capable of imposing your will on the process. To the extent that you insist, you at least have a prayer...