IAC mogul Barry Diller thinks that the Hollywood studios need to “reorient” their businesses, and fast, or else face potential “catastrophic” consequences. The former studio executive, speaking to journalist Kara Swisher for her podcast, also expressed pessimism about the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and suggested that the legacy Hollywood studios should split with Netflix and their tech counterparts at the AMPTP.
The New York Times has decided not to join a group of media companies attempting to jointly negotiate with the major tech companies over use of their content to power artificial intelligence. The move is a major blow to efforts to Barry Diller’s efforts to establish an industry united front against Google and Microsoft.
Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group and former Hollywood studio chief, says that top executives and the highest-paid stars should take a 25% pay cut to narrow the gap between their salaries and those of the folks at the lower end of the pay scale.
CNBC asked media insiders, including Peter Chernin, Barry Diller, Byron Allen, Bela Bajaria, Jeff Zucker and Bill Simmons, for their predictions about what TV will be like in three years. They also weighed in on which companies will dominate streaming and how big a role sports and gambling will play.
The tech mogul’s company has hired Whisper Advisors, an advisory firm, to find potential buyers for the digital publication.
Exclusives
ViacomCBS and Comcast can succeed without acquiring other businesses, IAC Chairman Barry Diller says. He described Comcast as being in a “fantastic position” with a cable and broadband business that hedges against NBCUniversal. “I don’t think they have to do anything,” he said of whether Comcast needs to spin off a business or get bigger.
“Netflix won this several years ago, they’re the only ones who have the scale and momentum to keep making these somewhat lunatic investments in programming,” Diller, the chairman of IAC, said in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. “You cannot compete with the momentum, the scale, no one will ever be able to do that.”
Netflix has “won the game” as far as streaming, according to media mogul Barry Diller, but among its soon-to-launch rivals, he said Disney has “the best chance” to apply pressure. Diller made the comments during a CNBC interview Wednesday in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he’s attending Allen & Co.’s annual retreat.
Onetime film and television CEO Barry Diller offered an apocalyptic vision of the entertainment business during a podcast interview, arguing that in the face of Netflix and Amazon, “Hollywood is now irrelevant” and yet “those who chase Netflix are fools.”
Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller says he worries that tech companies like Amazon and Netflix are consolidating power, threatening to undermine the way the entertainment industry works.
A group of Tinder co-founders and current and former employees is suing IAC and Match Group over the valuation of the popular dating app. Former CEO Sean Rad alleges that Tinder’s parent companies intentionally undervalued the popular dating app to deny early employees billions in stock options.
The chairman of IAC and husband of Diane von Furstenberg reflects on pornography, philanthropy and the end of Hollywood as we knew it.
What Barry Diller Thinks About Television Today
IAC/InterActiveCorp, the hodgepodge of Internet businesses, has come under scrutiny. But today, the numbers tell a different story for his unique business model of buying digital businesses, folding them into a conglomerate and then spinning out the most successful ones.
The media titan, appearing today on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street: “All TV news, other than local news, is irrelevant,” said Diller. “People watch local. I’ve always thought the last one standing is a local television station. I think they’re going on forever. They are the ones organized to deal with their local community. People like to know about things in their area: weather, sports. Local, local, local is always going to be relevant for television.” See the video here.
The TV-turned-digital mogul says he will take any bet that Donald Trump will not be the next president of the United States. His campaign “is a phenomenon of reality television as politics and I think that that is how it started. Reality television, as you all know, is based on conflict… All he is is about conflict and it’s all about the negative conflict… He’s a self-promoting huckster who found a vein, a vein of meanness and nastiness.” See the video.
A federal judge barred online video distributor Aereo from streaming over-the-air TV shows in real time to subscribers’ smartphones and tablets, but cleared the way for the company to resume offering its remote DVR service. The order, issued Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan in New York, marks the latest turn in a two-year battle over the online service.
The chairman and senior executive at IAC and Expedia also says that Vimeo is “not that far” from its own House of Cards, how quickly the company decided to fire PR chief Justine Sacco after a controversial AIDS tweet and why Rupert Murdoch’s empire shouldn’t outlive him.
Billionaire Barry Diller, the backer of Aereo Inc., said the online-television service may eventually get as much as 35 percent of U.S. households to subscribe if it overcomes legal challenges from broadcasters. People in their mid- to late-20s aren’t willing to pay $100 a month for cable TV packages, making Aereo’s $8 service increasingly attractive, Diller said Wednesday at The Year Ahead: 2014, a two-day conference hosted by Bloomberg LP in Chicago.
Aereo And The Battle Over Broadcast
Over the course of Barry Diller’s long career, he has jumped from movies to television, to cable and finally to the Web. Now he is backing a company, Aereo Inc., that wants to sell access to broadcast television on the Web — though a digital antenna — for a fraction of what cable charges. Broadcast networks, claiming copyright infringement, oppose what Aereo is doing. Some cable executives, including CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, don’t exactly approve, either. Both men sat down to talk about Aereo, CNN and the future of television and the Web.
Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC and backer of the online-TV service Aereo, said the service would expand to 22 cities in the next six to eight months, and that the ultimate goal was to create original content to push through the service.
IAC chief Barry Diller says the TV networks and studios’ impending petitions for government intervention against his streaming service are also futile: “No incumbent ever wants to see its territory invaded.”
Diller: Death Will Come For ‘Irrelevant Media’
The IAC chairman told NAA mediaXchange attendees that “sleepy” companies that behave like “recovering alcoholics” as ad sales continue to drop off will face extinction in the age of disruption. Diller downplayed a recent legal victory that found that Aereo, his online service that streams TV shows did not constitute public performances in the scheme of Aereo’s larger fight. And he also downplayed the Fox network’s recent threats of converting to a paid network in the face of Aereo’s threat. “That’s a lot of noise.”
How Stations Can Kill Aereo And AutoHop
Broadcasters have an alternative to converting over-the-air networks to cable channels to thwart Barry Diller’s Aereo and Charlie Ergen’s AutoHop Dish DVR: the “Dual Stream Strategy.” Each TV station would feed a new, modified visual format of programming to their transmitters for OTA reception. This would consist of a station’s programming lineup in a reduced-size video window, surrounded by continuous weather, news and community information graphics and visual ads. The second stream would consist of the core programming full-screen, just as it is now, for MVPDs with retrans deals.
Awesome Questions For FCC’s Genachowski
With the NAB Show slotting an “interview” of outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski by NAB Joint Board Chairman Paul Karpowicz next Wednesday, once again I’d like to volunteer some questions guaranteed to liven up the proceedings.
On Thursday, FilmOn claimed rights to “Aero,” and that Aereo has taken a moniker that’s confusingly similar. The new lawsuit comes six months after David was sued after attempting to redub his own service as BarryDriller.com and AereoKiller. The basis for the lawsuit comes from the allegation that months before Bamboon Labs changed its name to Aereo, FilmOn already had a hold on “Aero.”
The IAC chairman says that Alki David’s company is violating his intellectual property to divert people from Aereo.
Barry Diller’s IAC/Interactive offered more than $300 million to buy the About.com information website from the New York Times, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp has taken control of Newsweek Daily Beast after the family of late stereo magnate Sidney Harman declined to pump any more cash into the money-losing joint venture.
Broadcasters Face Setback In Aereo Case
A federal judge denies the broadcast networks’ request for a preliminary injunction against the distribution of broadcast signals by the online company in New York. “While we are disappointed, we will continue to fight to protect our copyrights and expect to prevail on appeal,” says Fox in a statement. Aereo, which launched its service in March, is backed by Barry Diller.
Diller And His Aereo: He Should Know Better
Aereo’s attitude toward the intellectual property of broadcasters is the same as that of a 15-year-old who believes that he has a god-given right to anything he is smart enough to download or stream off the Internet — be it the complete works of the Beatles or Glee or Marvel’s The Avengers in HD. As an investor and the public face of Aereo, Barry Diller is endorsing that kind of juvenile thinking. I’m surprised he would be associated with such a venture.
Barry Diller, a major investor in the new Aereo online video service, tells a Senate panel that the start-up’s technology “simply allows a consumer to get what was the quid pro quo for a broadcaster receiving a free license.’’
Barry Diller isn’t shrinking from his battle with broadcasters over Aereo, his new streaming device that allows anyone to watch and record TV shows on the Internet via a dime-sized antenna. “It’s going to be a great fight,” Diller told a panel at the SXSW Film Festival Sunday. The service is scheduled to go live in New York on Thursday.
The service, backed by media billionaire Barry Diller, launched in New York this week, but it is available only by invitation. It hopes to broaden access to more people next month, and then launch in other cities.
It’s hard to tell who has more to potentially worry about from Aereo — a new service financed by Barry Diller’s IAC that enables consumers to get broadcast TV without a cable — the broadcasters or the cable industry. Diller calls Aereo a “potentially transformative technology.” The broadcasters and their lawyers are likely working on other phrases to describe Aereo as copyright thieves.
Barry Diller is stepping down as CEO of IAC — and he’s getting a divorce from John Malone after a long, often tumultous marriage. Diller announced today that he has relinquished his post at the New York-based digital media company, part of a complicated deal that will see Liberty Media, one of IAC’s biggest stakeholders, exit the business.
