Barry Diller

Barry Diller   (billionaire)
Diller and wife Diane von Furstenberg
Born	February 2, 1942 San Francisco
Nationality	US
Religion	Jewish
Spouse	Diane von Fürstenberg
Owner of	Daily Beast, Vimeo
Member of	IAC (corporation), Paley Media Council, The Giving Pledge
Party	Democratic
Billionaire businessman and media executive

Barry Charles Diller is an American billionaire businessman and media executive. Through is company IOC he owns the video site Vimeo, the liberal website Daily Beast, and dominates the market for online hookup sites with Match.com, OK Cupid, How About We, Tinder and many others, giving him control over lots of sensitive private information.

Career

From 1964 to 1974 Diller worked for the US media company ABC. From 1974 to 1984 Diller worked for the media company Paramount Pictures. As a manager, he was responsible for the formation of the media company Fox Broadcasting Company, which he ran from October 1984 to April 1992, and for USA Broadcasting. In 1992 Diller acquired shares in QVC for Fox Broadcasting Company. In the same year he was fired from Fox Broadcasting Company. [4]

Diller currently heads the US company InterActiveCorp and Expedia. Diller has been married to the Belgian-American fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg since 2001. Diller is the stepfather of Alexander von Furstenberg and Tatiana von Furstenberg.

"The Killer Dillers"

Diller is responsible for what the media dubs "The Killer Dillers" – people whom Diller mentored and who later became big-time media and internet executives in their own right. Examples include Michael Eisner (who was President of Paramount Pictures while Diller was its Chairman & CEO, and went on to become Chairman & CEO of The Walt Disney Company), Jeffrey Katzenberg (a head of production of Paramount under Diller who became a co-founder of DreamWorks SKG and former head of DreamWorks Animation and Walt Disney Studios), Don Simpson (who was President of Production at Paramount under Diller and Eisner before forming an independent production company initially based on the Paramount lot with Jerry Bruckheimer), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), Dawn Steel (a VP of Production for Paramount when Diller was Chair & CEO; she went on to become President of Columbia Pictures, one of the first women to run a major movie studio) and Garth Ancier (former President of BBC America).

Diller worked with Stephen Chao at Fox Television Network, whom he later hired as President of Programming and Marketing at USA Network. Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was Diller's General Counsel during their tenure at USA Broadcasting, and again as Chief of Business Operations and a member of Barry Diller's Office of the Chairman at IAC/InterActiveCorp.

He also helped promote the careers of Aaron Spelling and Steven Spielberg, both in career infancy at the time, as producer and director.

Personal life

In 2001, Diller married fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, mother of Prince Alexander von Fürstenberg and Princess Tatiana von Fürstenberg. He is a member of the Democratic Party and supporter of related political causes. As of June 2020, Diller's estimated net worth was $4.2 billion.

Diller's sexual life has been discussed in the media. In James B. Stewart's 2005 book DisneyWar, erstwhile Paramount colleague Michael Eisner characterized Diller as "a homosexual." In 2001, New York Magazine's Maer Roshan wrote:

The recent wedding of Barry Diller and Diane Von Fürstenberg epitomizes the media’s convoluted approach to covering gay celebrities. I would not presume to speculate on their relationship, which is said to be a warm and genuine one. But it’s also true that Diller did not live as a monk before his marriage at the age of 59 – in fact, while Diller is often referred to as bisexual, he has lived most of his adult life as a more or less openly gay man. He has had both short-term boyfriends and long-term relationships (including one with a former editor-in-chief of The Advocate); he appears frequently at gay parties and gay benefits. His sexual orientation has even been referred to in print with regularity. Still, because Diller had never actually sent out a press release acknowledging he was gay, journalists faced with the news of his wedding were in a quandary: All across Manhattan, reporters offered various explanations – financial and otherwise – for his apparent midlife transformation. But none, of course, made it into print.

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References

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