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Fascinating New Yorker profile of Barry Diller from 1993. It's nominally about Diller's search for his next role after Fox, but really is Diller, Malone, Roberts, and others speculating on evolution of video and telecom. Interesting read 26 years later. kenauletta.com/barrydiller.ht…
Article starts with Diller obsessing over his new PowerBook and what he's able to figure out it means for video consumption 
It seems charmingly quaint today to see how the future is described, but this is pretty good for a guy who dropped out of school and started in the mail room
Even in 1992, Roberts was obsessing over content. Wanted Diller to come work for him and run programming.
Diller visited Steve Jobs, and did the most Diller thing imaginable, told Jobs no you are wrong about computers
Diller visits Microsoft, and seems to envison a sort of Android or Alexa for the home.
Malone gonna Malone:
"He predicted a media landscape where cable companies operated in the phone-company business, and vice-versa. And network broadcasters were bought by cable, and vice-versa. "It really all comes down to government regulation."
"He predicted a media landscape where cable companies operated in the phone-company business, and vice-versa. And network broadcasters were bought by cable, and vice-versa. "It really all comes down to government regulation."
Diller on NBC business model:
"Everything he was learning made it clear that more viewer choices would continue to drain customers from the networks. He believed that viewers no longer needed a network middleman--that technology would enable people to do their own programming"
"Everything he was learning made it clear that more viewer choices would continue to drain customers from the networks. He believed that viewers no longer needed a network middleman--that technology would enable people to do their own programming"
Diller also envisions Fox News years before it is launched and conceptualizes getting rid of network comp (networks paying affiliates) in favor of what today is reverse retrans, but really just networks getting paid carriage fees in general.
Diller views QVC as more than home shopping, he wants it to be Amazon
"The direction the video business is taking is toward lessening the power of the middleman. Networks and independent stations are middlemen... Consumers watching what they want when they want will gain a sense of participation, of empowerment."
The article basically talks about Netflix, Amazon, iPhones, the internet's ability to bypass middlemen, the decline of networks, and a bunch of other stuff. In 1993.
The article ends with this incredible framing:
"THE economic and social consequences of the technology revolution that Diller envisions are also unclear..."
Diller said "We don't know enough yet. We don't know yet what 'good' is in a more fractionated world of communication"
"THE economic and social consequences of the technology revolution that Diller envisions are also unclear..."
Diller said "We don't know enough yet. We don't know yet what 'good' is in a more fractionated world of communication"
forgot he also sees his future in the OTA business, ultimately buying Hotels.com and Expedia and Hotwire and TripAdvisor and Orbitz
2 years earlier, Buffett had written about the fragmentation of consumer attention and impact on TV, newspapers and magazines
