Word: diller
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...before Diller can make policy, he must make the deal. He must help sell it to the boards and shareholders of both companies, and help keep it from enticing other companies avid for a big buy. Diller may even have to convince himself that Tisch -- a proud man, stung by accusations that he is a timid blunderer in the high-speed world of entertainment commerce -- is not using the Diller name to entice a corporate behemoth with a fatter wallet...
...pilot. Consider the potential plot twists. For a start, the CBS and QVC boards do not convene (separately) to discuss the merger until July 13. "It's not like the board is coming in tomorrow ratifying to do it," says a TV industry executive who is close to both Diller and Tisch. "It's not coming in for another 10 days! You got the July Fourth weekend -- what do you think is going to happen over that time? A lot of meetings. You can name 10 possible suitors for CBS: all the studios that could afford to pick...