Barry Diller (Photo credit: johnkoetsier)
After starting his career in the mail room at the William Morris Agency, then going on to work at ABC, where he masterminded the “Movie of the Week” program. Barry Diller led Paramount Pictures and created the TV network Fox with Rupert Murdoch. According to recent profile in New York Magazine, he is constantly pushing the boundaries of traditional television, and as the head of NY-based Internet company IAC, the 70-year-old has not let up.
In his office, Diller spends most of his time on media and entertainment and is highly interested in online TV, which is why he recently invested in and launched NY-based Aereo, a new subscription service that allows users to watch broadcast TV on mobile devices, circumventing traditional TV by using dime-sized antennas based in Brooklyn. Aereo, however. is currently entangled in a lawsuit with the big networks who fear that Aereo is hijacking their broadcast signals. Of Aereo, Diller says to New York, “that it has the possibility of being disruptive.”
“I was always only interested in things that were not already being done,” continued Diller when questioned about his future-focused mentality. He forecasts, “now along comes the potential creative destruction brought by a different distribution methodology, the Internet. And we’ll see what happens.” He believes that the advent of the Internet being brought to the mass-market creates “new alternatives” to traditional broadcasting, and feels that the cable companies will be forced to innovate.
Diller believes that the Internet is a truly remarkable means to bring individual productions to the world, saying to New York, “just the idea that that system wasn’t co-opted or controlled by interests is a miracle. It’s very much worth preserving.”
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