Barry Diller Takes on Media Deregulation

Editor's Note: This is an edited transcript of an interview with media mogul Barry Diller who appeared on the PBS weekly newsmagazine NOW with Bill Moyers, on Friday, April 25.

Many things can be said about Barry Diller. But what he says about himself goes right to the point.

"I've not conducted my life in the service of smallness," understates the man who created Fox Broadcasting and ran some of the world's media giants: ABC Entertainment, Paramount, Vivendi Universal. And is even now chairman and CEO of USA Interactive, itself an empire of informational services from the Home Shopping Network to Ticketmaster.

"Second," says Barry Diller, "I am a contrarian." This is the man, after all, who at the failing Paramount Studio took a huge gamble on a movie called "Saturday Night Fever." Everyone else said it was a sure loser. It then broke every box office record and moved Paramount from last to first place in the motion picture business.

Now, once again, Barry Diller is shaking up the media world. A couple weeks ago in Las Vegas, he stunned an audience of broadcasters with a speech in a moment where fewer and fewer conglomerates own and determine more and more of what we see, hear and read. And the FCC is about to allow them to own even more. Barry Diller said, "Whoa! We've gone too far." He's here to talk about that contrarian idea. Welcome to NOW.

BARRY DILLER: Nice to be here.

Why now? Why did you choose this moment to speak out on media conglomeration?

Well, I don't know. Maybe because, you know, all the forces are, so to speak, gathered. ... Thirty years ago, three companies controlled 90 percent of everything we heard or saw. And that was a bad idea. Now four companies, five companies control 90 percent of everything we see.

I mean, you stated in your speech that ten years ago independent producers in Hollywood created 16 new television series. Last year, only one. Is that the consequence of oligopoly?

Sure it is.

How so?

Well, if you have companies that produce, that finance, that air on their channel and then distribute worldwide everything that goes through their controlled distribution system, then what you get is fewer and fewer actual voices participating in the process. Used to have dozens and dozens of thriving independent production companies producing television programs. Now you have less than a handful. What's caused that is the forces of consolidation.

There should be some restraints. Broadcasting really used to have a very clear public service quotient and it's been lost. Other things have been lost too. This perfect balance which was created by fear (is gone). Fear that your license would get taken away from you plus a real sense of public service responsibility. That those airwaves actually belonged to the public. You used them. You profited from them. But you had to keep it in balance. That was a healthy environment. And in that environment, of course, mistakes get made, excesses happen. But they rebalance themselves.

Today, after Mark Fowler says...

The Chairman of FCC in the Reagan Era.

Who says, you know, a television is a toaster. It's just there for marketing. All that goes away.

Could a young Barry Diller make it today? A young Ted Turner? Could there be a new ESPN? A new CNN?

Almost impossible.

Why?

Ted Turner started with TBS, which was a rundown Atlanta television station that he got to Superstation status. But he was still a tiny, little player when he said, "You know, I've got this idea for a 24-hour news network." Of course everybody thought he was crazy. Everybody thought that it was hopeless. But he sold cable system after cable system on this idea. He got backing from a whole group of people to start what was then just a stand-alone. I mean, he didn't have very much more than that.