Ticket 2 Ride

Billionaire Barry Diller has headed movie studios, networks, e-commerce apps, and other media companies, developed FOX as a television entity, and was the power behind the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. He’s pretty much everything I despise, and while he made gazillions of dollars for his stockholders, I wonder how much all of that has really improved life on this rock. I’m not a fan of corporate greed, yet, here I am, opening his memoirs. I’ll give it a fair shake.

The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional. My parents separated often and came a day short of divorce several times before I was ten; my brother was a drug addict by age thirteen; and I was a sexually confused holder of secrets from the age of eleven.

This was the first paragraph in the book. Hook the readers early. Not being able to depend on his family was a lesson learned at a young age.

I felt isolated and alone. In desperation I called my mother and begged her to come and pick me up… Then it got dark and I knew she wasn’t going to come. I gave up on my mother that night. There would be no rescue. A very scary thing for this seven-year-old. As I walked down that driveway back to the life of the camp, I buried that fear and resolved never to trust anyone other than myself again.

Diller writes that his walls were high, he didn’t trust, and he didn’t give others much of himself. He focused on work and climbing the corporate ladder, living in hotels, and alternating between New York and L.A. He attained great success at a young age, without ever attending college, but the man was smart, intuitive and not afraid to try new ideas. Perhaps the paragraph below explains Diller’s career success – it also says a lot about the man and the ocean he swam in.

I developed the ability to say the right thing in order to make a situation better, whether or not it was anchored to any moral belief. I had no core at all, other than to please those who needed pleasing. This discovery was particularly valuable when applied to those who had power over me or who could further my ambitions. Because of this early training with my mother, I learned to seduce people, especially those much older than I was, and I could accomplish it on demand in any setting. I could please; I could subordinate myself effortlessly.

Diller went basically from the mail room at the William Morris Agency to Leonard Goldberg’s right arm man at ABC, where one of his first projects was developing the Movie of the Week concept. This was an experiment, a gamble, but ABC was in those days the trailing network, so why not task risks. Diller writes about putting instinct over data, how research can be faulty and decisions based solely on data won’t lead you to good, common sense ideas. The MOTW was a big winner. As was his next project: the miniseries, like Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man, two huge television events. ABC was now leading, not following trends of others.

Diller had this to say about his success. “When there is a vacuum, fill it. When you want something, take it.” It’s about seizing opportunity. The other leadership method he noted was to insist on, and nurture, “creative conflict” where ideas are cultivated, hashed-out and fire-tested through loud, argumentative and passionate debate. Creative decision-making should not be peaceful, he says.

Diller moved from ABC to lead Paramount Pictures for a decade, which coincided with a wave of success for the film studio. After the death of owner Charles Bluthorn, Diller knew his days under the new Gulf + Western head were numbered. He jumped to Twentieth Century Fox, and soon Rupert Murdoch would buy in, and then take full ownership.

In Diller’s orbit were Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, Rupert Murdoch, John Malone, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs…These were the movers and shakers, and tycoons of media and technology.

Diller guessed correctly on many projects and ideas. He writes that Jobs offered him the opportunity to invest in Pixar, and when Jobs showed him scenes of Toy Story that was in production, Diller turned him down. Diller said he didn’t “get” the Pixar animation and the movie didn’t interest him, so he passed. “What a dunce,” he writes.

Most of the time he saw the future and got ahead of others. Reality TV, he sent camera crews out to find interesting stuff and film it, leading to unconventional show like Cops, a big hit for the new Fox network. Diller’s vision was to program against what the three other networks were doing. Married…With Children was the result. The Simpsons came from The Tracey Ullman Show, who Diller called too highbrow for Fox.

After reading his memoirs, it’s still difficult to know the man. Sure, we know the business successes and what he thinks of people like Frank Yablans, Bob Evans, Charlie Bluthorn, Summer Redstone and Irving Azoff – he’s quite clear. Diller is open about some parts of his life, but you only know a certain amount, and he is quite careful in his reveal. Diller says it clearly, he’s about control. He’s an admitted micromanager of people and details.

Diller worked for Rupert Murdoch, but never mentions politics or FoxNews, even though he was very active building the television network and cable operations at Fox. Diller does mention that it’s very unfortunate that the “fairness doctrine” was repealed, the end of fair and balanced, which explains the sewage of FoxNews.

The title of the book, Who Knew, infers how he has surprised many in life. Diller talks about his sexual orientation, which was gay, until he met fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, and eventually married. Was his sexual identity a problem in his career? Not as much as one might suppose, and it is only a minor part of the book. I would say, who cares? There are much more interesting things about Barry Diller.

One has to read between the carefully written lines to gain a broader perspective of Diller’s values, the points on his moral compass. Yes, he’s given a lot of money to charity and public causes, and I guess his politics are more liberal than conservative, but I never learned what he really cares about, other than his business success and his family. After 300 pages, I learned a lot, but then I didn’t. Even with readers, Diller keeps secrets, but that’s okay.