Barry Diller

Barry Charles Diller was born in San Francisco, CA to Michael Diller, a real estate developer, and his wife, Reva. He attended UCLA in 1960, but dropped out after a single semester. Instead, thanks to a family connection to actress Marlo Thomas, Diller found work in the mailroom of the William Morris agency. He advanced quickly into assistant and junior agent positions, but in 1964, Diller left the agency to work as assistant to the ABC network's head of West Coast operations, Elton Rule. When Rule was promoted to president of the network that same year, he took Diller with him to the head office in New York, where Diller swiftly moved from working as an assistant to negotiating broadcast rights for feature films. By 1968, Diller had moved his way up the corporate ladder to assistant to the vice president of program development, and had built a reputation for intimidating his subordinates with threats and impressing his superiors with results. In 1969, the ambitious young Diller steered ABC away from acquiring broadcast rights for feature films and toward producing films exclusively for television. He created ABC's "Movie of the Week" (1969-1976), which energized the made-for-TV formula with big name talent and crowd-pleasing stories - all of which proved that the usually third-place network ABC could compete.Impressed with his revitalization of ABC, Paramount Pictures brought Diller onboard as CEO in 1974. He saved the struggling studio from the brink of collapse with a combination of austere budget cuts, aggressive content acquisition, and innovative marketing. With Diller at the helm, Paramount produced such blockbuster films as "Saturday Night Fever" (1977), "Grease" (1978), "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) and "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984), as well as hit television series including "Laverne & Shirley" (ABC, 1976-1983), "Taxi" (ABC, 1978-1982 / NBC, 1982-83), and "Cheers" (NBC, 1982-1993). Despite his success, Diller's ambitious and abrasive personality put him at odds with Paramount studio head Martin Davis and, in the midst of an internal feud, Diller quit. He was quickly hired by another troubled studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, and set about saving it using the same strategy with which he had rescued Paramount. He was put in charge of the fledgling network Fox Broadcasting and legitimized its role as a competitor with the "Big Three" by focusing on inexpensive, sensationalist fare like "Cops" (Fox, 1989-) as well as unique, potentially risky shows like "Married With Children" (Fox, 1987-1997) and "The Simpsons" (Fox, 1989-). Diller also wisely launched his new shows in August while the other networks traditionally aired reruns, and aggressively acquired an extensive network of local affiliates. Though he was once again an unqualified success, Diller's borderline-abusive management style drove a wedge between him and the rest of Fox's board. He left the network that he helped to build in 1992. While Diller exhibited this pattern of enriching and then alienating his cohorts throughout his career, he also inspired a dedicated following of executives who he mentored and who emulated his style. These executives, informally referred to as "the Killer Dillers," included Columbia Pictures head Dawn Steel, Dreamworks principle Jeffrey Katzenberg, and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, all of whom worked under Diller at Paramount, as well as President of BBC America Garth Ancier, who worked under Diller at Fox.In the latter years of his career, having previously relied on a cadre of assistants, Diller purchased his first laptop and immediately became intrigued by interactive media. He purchased a $25 million dollar stake in QVC, the home shopping network. He then built a network of locally run television stations around QVC, which he named USA Broadcasting. In 1994, Diller attempted to merge QVC with CBS, but failed. Instead he sold the television assets to Univision, keeping only the Home Shopping Network, around which he created InterActiveCorp, a conglomerate of interactive commercial interests including Match.com, Ask.com, Citysearch, Vimeo, CollegeHumor.com, Internet portal Lycos, and LendingTree, the most successful online mortgage lender. Diller also served as Director of Coca-Cola from 2002, as well as the Director of the Washington Post company. In 2010, Diller merged his online news source Daily Beast.com with Newsweek magazine, and launched Aero, a broadcast start-up that streamed content to digital devices. In 2012, he joined producer Scott Rudin in launching Brightline, an epublishing concern. Despite this focus on information technology, Diller remained a dedicated philanthropist, raising millions of dollars in charitable donations through foundations created with his wife, fashion design Diane von Furstenberg.By John Crye