Word: paramountly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
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...
Wall Street wasn't sure who would be boss, but it responded emphatically. The day the merger was announced, the stock of both CBS and QVC rocketed 19%. It pumped up a QVC stock value that had been cut sharply after the Paramount sortie. And it brought Tisch's company almost back to its May level, before CBS got a black eye by losing eight of its affiliate stations to Fox. CBS had also suffered wounds from an earlier affiliate raid by Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News Corp. (which includes the Fox network), and Revlon magnate Ronald Perelman...
...February, as Diller's Paramount proposal waxed, waned and went under, Daniel Tisch first broached the CBS-QVC deal to takeover lawyer Martin Lipton, one of whose clients was Diller. The chat with Lipton, says Danny Tisch, "wasn't done with Larry Tisch's okaying or not okaying. It was just saying, gee, if the Paramount-QVC transaction looks good, think about what a CBS-QVC fit would look like. Lots of sex appeal...
...Beverly Hills builder, Diller joined abc in 1966. This was a young man in a hurry. Diller was soon developing two important formats: the mini-series (QB VII) and the made-for-TV movie (such as Duel, Steven Spielberg's debut feature). In 1974 he moved to Paramount, where he, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Frank Mancuso and some other sharp people spurred a renaissance of the studio, with such hits as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flashdance and Terms of Endearment...