Barry Diller Quotes & Sayings

Who ever knows what will happen with the economy, and will it affect the Internet? There's so much pouring into the Internet; I would doubt it, but I'm not the greatest predictor. But more than any media sector, I think the Internet will hold up. — Barry Diller

All forms of commerce are adversarial. — Barry Diller

I like businesses in transition, first of all. If ever there were a business in transition, it is publishing. — Barry Diller

The business model for content is to be paid for it. You can be paid for it either though advertising or subscriptions or some new invention, but right now what we've got is advertising revenue and subscription revenue as the only way to be paid for content. — Barry Diller

The entertainment business hasn't had a new idea in years. — Barry Diller

I still believe in synergy, but I call it natural law. — Barry Diller

We have a tax code whose complications and levels of unfairness and levels of choosing people to give tax breaks to and choosing people to deny them to is thousands of pages long with endless complications and unbelievable manipulations by everybody. — Barry Diller

We're in a world now where it's not enough to be smart. You have to be curious. — Barry Diller

I don't have answers for anybody else. What I know is that internal complexity makes for superficiality. There's never essentially a pure story unless there's a pure product line that has its own shining clarity. — Barry Diller

I'm never absolutely sure of anything, and I don't want to be. You're either right and you'll pull through, or you're not. We're never going to be right about everything, and we've certainly been wrong. — Barry Diller

The ability for consumers to receive broadcast over the air signal is their right. — Barry Diller

Napster has pointed the way for a new direction for music distribution, and we believe it will form the basis of important and exciting new business models for the future of the music industry. — Barry Diller

This is a world in which reasons are made up because reality is too painful. — Barry Diller

If we're going to talk about our businesses, we're going to have to talk about them within the constraints of the disclosure rules, without giving guidance, because we're not going to give guidance, because we don't believe that it is a sensible game to play. — Barry Diller

What interests me is starting businesses on our own, finding ideas that we can support, and simply investing in invention. — Barry Diller

I'm sure there are some commercial applications for Twitter, but they don't really interest me. I mean, 140 characters? I am really not interested in Ashton Kutcher's daily walks. Not for me. — Barry Diller

The American public tunes in every night hoping to see two people screwing. Obviously, we can't give them that but let's always keep it in mind. — Barry Diller

I never thought I was a very good manager. — Barry Diller

I've always said AOL is great opportunity for somebody. — Barry Diller

Well, the Internet is this miracle. It is an absolutely extraordinary idea that you can press a send button, and you are publishing to the world. — Barry Diller

The world is changing. Networks without a specific branding strategy will be killed. I envision a world of highly niched services and tightly run companies without room for all the overhead the established networks carry. — Barry Diller

The idea of a company that's earning money, not losing money, that's not, let's say 'industrially endangered,' to have just cutbacks so they can earn another $12 million or $20 million or $40 million in a year where no one's counting is really a horrible act when you think about it on every level. First of all, it's certainly not necessary. It's doing it at the worst time. It's throwing people out to a larger, what is inevitably a larger unemployment heap for frankly no good reason. — Barry Diller

Broadcasting began, essentially, in the hands of very, very few players - actually two - and when television came along, there were two networks, then three. Rules began to get formulated that essentially protected that concentrated group. — Barry Diller

Twenty years ago, there were dozens and dozens of independent television producers. There are a couple now, at the most. Mark Burnett, Endemol. It's gone. Everybody works for the Man now. And it's natural law, how that happened: Nobody prescribed it, but it's how things worked out and how it has been for decades, period. — Barry Diller

If you're going to sell stock and somebody wants to buy it at a price and that price is not a price you dictate, but demand dictates, sell it to them now. — Barry Diller

You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. — Barry Diller

Aereo is the first potentially transformative technology that has the chance to give people access to broadcast television delivered over the Internet to any device, large or small, they desire. No wires, no new boxes or remotes, portable everywhere there's an Internet connection in the world - truly a revolutionary product. — Barry Diller

It's not that you don't want to earn as much money as you can - it is your obligation, of course - but companies have obligations beyond that and they certainly have obligations beyond that at certain times, in the times in which they operate. And they also certainly ought to know that meeting and beating expectations is probably yesterday's game and it will be increasingly so, which would be by the way very healthy for companies. Running a company that meets and beats expectations, and that runs their company accordingly, are companies that I would question why anyone would invest in. — Barry Diller

The only way anyone's going to succeed is to build the product. — Barry Diller

I am a contrarian. — Barry Diller

Ticketmaster does not set prices. Live Nation does not set ticket prices. Artists set ticket prices. — Barry Diller

People have paid for content. They always have. — Barry Diller

If you have too many epiphanies, you're on some kind of drug. — Barry Diller

There's no way you can predict what is going to happen in six months or two years in most businesses, and certainly not for businesses that are growing at the rate that we have grown. — Barry Diller

People, me included, have a truly emotional thing about this iPad. — Barry Diller

Companies like GE and Procter & Gamble have been in business for a long time. Over decades or a century you're bound to figure out a management structure that works. — Barry Diller

I'm just saying if you want to reach large audiences, then rely on professionals, meaning people who are in the industry and are trained for it, rather than just idiot savants. — Barry Diller

My opinion, young people go to the Internet. To the Internet distribution system right now, you put it up there and it's accessed by the world. — Barry Diller

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done. — Barry Diller

No one can solve an issue where there is no economic model yet. — Barry Diller

Sometimes it seems like there's more footnotes than text. This isn't something we're proud of, and over time we'd like to see our footnotes steadily shrink. — Barry Diller

I've not conducted my life in the service of smallness. — Barry Diller

The directories businesses still make nothing but money. They're overleveraged, they're bankrupt entities, but they still are the largest. This is all going to move online over time. Why Citysearch and Service Magic are so important to us, is because nobody has really colonized it yet completely. — Barry Diller

What's happened to broadcasting is that broadcasting really used to be ... it used to have a very clear public service quotient. And it's more or less now. And it's been lost. — Barry Diller

Put one dumb foot in front of the other and course-correct as you go. — Barry Diller

Hollywood is a community that's so inbred, it's a wonder the children have any teeth. — Barry Diller

Facebook's the real deal. Nobody can buy Facebook now. Everybody has taken an angle at it. But Facebook may be the place that organizes everybody's personal information. It's got a very good chance of being that. — Barry Diller

Urbanspoon is a nice, little application and it's perfect, of course, for CitySearch because of the reviews it contains and the ability for CitySearch to use that content. — Barry Diller

We want to be able to sell you anything, anywhere, any time you want it. — Barry Diller

I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid. — Barry Diller

If you're going to run a public company, be absolutely certain of what the parameters are, what the clarity is, that you can explain it to yourselves and explain it externally. — Barry Diller

I don't want to set the world up for surprises. — Barry Diller

What we need to do is replace the entire tax code. I do not think it makes sense to say, 'Let's just grab money from, quote, the wealthy' ... The issue is the tax code's rotten and we should start truly over with a simple code that is fair and transparent. — Barry Diller

Now along comes the potential creative destruction brought by a different distribution methodology, the Internet. — Barry Diller

We need an unambiguous rule - a law - that nobody will step between the publisher and the consumer, full stop. — Barry Diller