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Is Barry Diller delusional?

By | September 29, 2009, 5:57am PDT

Summary: Here’s chapter 120 of Barry Diller’s “people will and should pay for online content” tour. But I have a nagging question: Why exactly are we still listening to Diller? First, here’s the video of Diller rapping with Katie Couric. The refrain sounds familiar: Pay for online content dammit! Watch CBS News Videos Online Diller has accomplished a lot, [...]

Here’s chapter 120 of Barry Diller’s “people will and should pay for online content” tour. But I have a nagging question: Why exactly are we still listening to Diller?

First, here’s the video of Diller rapping with Katie Couric. The refrain sounds familiar: Pay for online content dammit!


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Diller has accomplished a lot, but I’m not sure he’s a Web mogul in the same way that he’s a Hollywood mogul. He’s a Hollywood legend and he had a stake in QVC, which turned out to be huge. But his online endeavors have been a touch confusing. Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActive Corp., has put the company through multiple phases. Tracking IAC is downright difficult. Diller’s IAC bought Ask.com in 2005 and set out to be a search giant. That didn’t quite work out. IAC bought Expedia and then spun it out. Simply put, IAC is a mish-mash of properties.

Shareholder value? Don’t count on it. IAC shares have recently surged, but over the last 10 years value has been hard to come by. You can find Diller’s wheeling and dealing timeline at IAC’s site. Diller is like a Web property day trader.  What’s harder to figure out is how these moves add up to anything.

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Topics

IAC/InterActive Corp., Channel Management, Corporate Communications, Financial Accounting, Marketing, Finance, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Is Barry Diller delusional?
makrekwe85-24353645770225391928980580402533 5th Nov
cxcblh,good post!
View in thread
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Are Barry and Rupert Delusional?
rshol 29th Sep 2009
The market will decide. They should quit talking about it and put up a product and see if they make money. Money talks and suckers walk.
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Value is the driving force
adornoe@... 29th Sep 2009
People will pay for a service if it has any real value. If that service can be found for free and the free service offers the same value as the paid service, the free service wins. As long as there are choices, the paid service won't be worth using.

The only way that Diller and Murdoch can force their users to pay for a service is to insist on paid memberships for their services. However, the information or content from their services eventually "leak" out and paying for those services becomes a moot point.
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Is Barry Diller delusional? No, just out of touch.
wbrodyjr 29th Sep 2009
Diller is beating a dead horse. He knows that his business model is kaput, but, what else can he do? He has to dig in and fight, and this is how he does it.

Online file sharing has rendered him irrelevant. It's easy to ignore him, so I do.

Next!
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RE: Is Barry Diller delusional?
aaaqqq1234 29th Sep 2009
They all are ready to fall off their chairs happy
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RE: Is Barry Diller delusional?
Scrod 29th Sep 2009
Yes.
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In a word, "Yes"
NJSteveK 29th Sep 2009
nt
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Mammals shouldn't take advice from dinosaurs
dave.leigh@... Updated - 29th Sep 2009
I wrote a huge response to this, then realized it's really too huge and moved it to my blog. What it boils down to is that mammals should not take advice from dinosaurs.

Barry's a dinosaur.

http://www.cratchit.org/blog/2009/09/mammals-shouldnt-take-advice-from.html

The summation:

In Diller's case... sure, he can argue that people should pay for HIS content. He doesn't even have to argue it... he can just wall off his sites and do it, and needs no one's permission. But if he thinks he's arguing on anybody else's behalf, then he's just laying down a smoke screen for his own anti-competitive behavior. If he's hesitating, it's because he's got free competition. That he's complaining shows he doesn't like it. Tough. Other people have found ways of monetizing the web without fees. They don't need to be told how to run their businesses by the guy who hasn't figured it out yet.
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Many in Hollywood might be shocked to find that...
JohnMcGrew@... 29th Sep 2009
...many of us find that 98% of what they produce is
complete crap, and unworthy of any form of payment.
Yeah, people will consume tons of what Hollywood spews
as long as it's free, but there's minimal elasticity
beyond that. That's why the cable & satellite
business will fight to the death the idea of "al-la-
carte" subscriptions, where consumers would have the
choice of not paying for the 50% or more that crappy
channels that make up most basic packages.

So Barry, are you really that confident in your
product? If so, start charging away and make another
fortune!
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Amen1
JCitizen 30th Sep 2009
I have a blu-ray but won't buy any of the Hollywood crap coming out now. I'll just have to wait for Turner's remasters I guess!
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pay for online content
mykmlr@... 3rd Oct 2009
I haven't any dog in the fight in re:Barry Diller himself.
BUT, content goes online BECAUSE the vendor decides to put his material into the public content environment, sort of as in 'what happens when my movie goes TNT?'
You lose control in return for wider exposure.
STOP pretending it works any other way. If you go for the exposure, get used to the fact that you stop making revenue, other than incidentals such as product placement. Use it to boost your non-online content for sale, OR GO OUT OF BUSINESS, because this is what will happen if you keep clinging to your outmoded distribution style.
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RE: Is Barry Diller delusional?
Ernie Mennes Updated - 15th Oct 2009
No! Barry Diller is a Genius

Barry Diller gets it and understands the future of mobile interactivity and merchandising. The losers with big valuations and lots of ad revenue (today) will be history tomorrow. There is very little or no more money and no future market for companies that create a lot of attention and rely on ad revenue alone...ad revenue models are dead.

Consumers, as opposed to techies and/or Wall Street, will in the end, determine how merchandising will work. Barry Diller has seen it coming. Mobile Interactivity and the new methods of e-Merchandising are about to disrupt and displace companies which rely on search and ad revenue alone. Mobile phone devices are evolving and soon there will be 100's of millions of transactions happening daily that will leave old-school websites in the dust.

The future of digital content distribution and hard-goods fulfillment will occur via mobile devices and LSLED canvases around the globe. The web will always be great for research and entertainment but the real business of the future is about transactions, about bringing consumers and products together quickly while allowing product offerings to be marketed and distributed much much more efficiently, thereby providing more margin for everyone to share.

Just take a look around and you will notice that conventional retail is changing. One example would be music. Try to buy music at a retail store... Music is just one vertical that will never die. I think we can all agree about that and ought to be able to agree that the future is all about form of delivery. Delivery is what Diller is all about and there is no question that IAC is the best bet for marketing and distribution as Analog continues to take a beat down from Digital.

As for media, The legacy media companies of the past are going to be history inasmuch as they cannot continue to lose money and pretend that they have control over the method of delivery of their product offerings. At some point they're going to be gone or will be onboard and open to allowing the best distributor(s) to market product - and yes there is a cost.

Wake up everybody, IAC is going to take off as Mobile Interactivity and LSLED Media re-shape the way advertising and e-Merchandising happens.

My recommendation would be to buy IAC now and watch for the fireworks to start as G4 Technology comes into play in Q409 and Q110.

Ernie Mennes
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RE: Is Barry Diller delusional?
makrekwe85-24353645770225391928980580402533 5th Nov
cxcblh,good post!

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