Here’s how Barry Diller is going to break up IAC. Don’t worry, Ticketmaster will still be charging you “convenience fees.” [Mediapost]
Just one week after showing how committed he was to exploiting the black community, IAC chief Barry Diller has been slapped with a race discrimination lawsuit.
Diller, who just celebrated a courtroom victory over Liberty Media’s John Malone, is being targeted by a former Home Shopping Network employee, Armanda Vernon, who says “she was turned down for numerous internal jobs despite being well-qualified” and that “her treatment fit a pattern of anti-black treatment at HSN.” Meanwhile, a spokesperson for IAC told Page Six “Vernon filed a charge of race discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in May, and they found insufficient evidence to support her allegations.”
Can Diller’s company really be guilty of racist employment practices when it just launched Rushmore Drive, the black search engine that makes it easier for African-Americans to find soul food Thanksgiving recipes? CONTINUED »
Barry Diller, the chairman and CEO of IAC, which owns Ask.com, Match.com, Evite, and College Humor, among many others, has just launched Rushmore Drive, a new online community geared toward blacks and centered around an “ethnic,” Ask.com-powered search engine that delivers both mainstream results and results targeted toward African Americans. “Every person is looking for a more relevant search result,” Johnny Taylor, head of IAC’s Black Web Enterprises Inc. unit and chief executive of RushmoreDrive.com, told the Charlotte Observer. “It recognizes who you are, so you can find what you’re looking for every time.”
Is that true? Just to test out that theory, and being of the core demographic, I searched some general terms on both Rushmore Drive and Ask.com to see how the first-page results differed.
Tina Brown and Barry Diller will finally be sharing a bed. The Princess Di biographer and the vindicated IAC chief are teaming on a news aggregator website, where there will be “no ideological stance” on the glorified RSS feed.
Former WSJ deputy managing editor Edward Felsenthal will lead things off (given that other high-profile types, including business scribes at the Times, turned down offers).
But Tina isn’t saying much about what the site will actually do, let alone when it’ll launch. In the meantime, there will always be The Huffington Post, Brijit, Newser, and a slew of others already doing whatever it is Diller thinks will rescue his company.
After an exhaustive and mostly trivial court battle, IAC chief Barry Diller has won the right to split up his company into five separate units as he sees fit. Liberty Media’s John Malone, who tried to wrest power from Diller, won the right to issue a carefully worded press release. [Fortune]
The item we thought we were running was about about how Barry Diller and John Malone are having settlement talks while suing each other in Delaware.
And then we found ourselves unable to ignore this expanding General Electric ad on Bloomberg.com, which displays a live interview with GE chief Jeff Immelt. After watching a minute or two of it, you’ll be directed to this site, where you can continue watching what’s essentially a shareholder conference call disguised as a “conversation about GE’s performance and the outlook for 2008.” The ad unit comes from rich media company Eye Wonder and, for us at least, is the first live streaming video we’ve seen in an ad. It’s quite captivating, and almost makes us forget about Immelt’s denials that he wants to sell off NBC.
The ad also lets you submit questions to Immelt. We asked, “Who makes your tie?” because all the other crap they were talking about was filled with too much financial jargon.
Yesterday’s trial between IAC chief Barry Diller and Liberty Media’s John Malone was never even supposed to happen. Weren’t these two supposed to everything out – choosing whether to split IAC into five units, and how that would affect Malone’s voting capacity – on their own without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom? No matter, though, because the testimony is providing great fodder for onlookers like us, like when Malone went after Diller’s leadership methods: “He frequently refers to it as his business. [… He is] extremely well compensated [… and made a] fine art [of using the corporate jet].” Meanwhile, IAC shares continue to slide; they’re down 20 percent from January, which will make the theoretical pie pieces of IAC that much more attractive to potential buyers. Firesale on Ticketmaster!
“Please do your best to ignore it. I will try as well but probably fail.” That’s IAC chief Barry Diller in a memo to staffers about what to do about the coming onslaught of press interest as he battles Liberty Media’s John Malone in court over the future of the company. Though, um, the media blitz is sorta kinda absolutely indeed already here. But today, as the trial begins in Delaware, is when the fun starts. That’s when company documents and sniping testimony will be on the table for all to gawk at.
Continues Diller: “At the end of the day, it’s purely a business dispute. We are highly confident in our legal position and are looking forward to proving our case to the judge. But, whatever the outcome, you have much to be proud of. And no one, including those seeking to dramatize this dispute with generic and often wrongheaded characterizations of our Company, can or should take that away from you.”
And he’s right: Nobody can take that away from IAC staffers. Except Diller himself. Which he did to 40 Ask.com employees alst week when he fired them.
FILED: OBVIOUS DEPARTMENT “A closer examination of the financial performance of the operations controlled by IAC and Liberty would be a fair way to determine who is better at managing shareholder value, rather than asset flipping.” MediaPost’s Diane Mermigas is genius! [MP]
Ask.com isn’t just laying off 8 percent of its work force — Barry Diller’s struggling search engine is remaking itself into a women’s website, with a focus on entertainment and health. Of course, the IAC-owned unit has been down this road before. When it continued losing market share to Google and its pals, it ditched its “Jeeves” branding for a more streamlined look. That gimmick didn’t work, either.
Might Liberty Media’s John Malone be willing to give up its super-voting shares in IAC – and let both parties drop their lawsuits – if the scream queen just hands over HSN?
The TV shopping network is among the few bright spots in IAC’s latest earnings report. A year ago and a few times in recent months, a similar deal to exchange assets was on the table, but was squashed because of concerns about HSN’s future; the unit’s 8 percent gain this quarter, under Nike import Mindy Grossman, might have calmed those fears. CONTINUED »
IT’S NOT THAT DIAMONIQUE ISN’T SELLING WELL ANYMORE Giving Liberty Media chief John Malone more ammo in his move to oust Barry Diller, HSN and Ticketmaster.com parent IAC reports a fourth-quarter loss, surprising investors, even though revenue increased 8.1 percent. Damn that LendingTree.com and this mortgage crisis. [Bloomberg]
DILLER’S PICKLE “Insane,” “hogwash,” and “sideshow” are just some of the choice adjectives Barry Diller has used, over the past two days, to describe Liberty Media’s John Malone and his lawsuit that aims to oust Diller as chief of IAC. In this article from Forbes.com’s Lisa LaMotta, you’ll learn that and more, like how these two found themselves in this situation after being best buds during their Paramount era. You’ll also learn at least one analyst thinks there could be compromise found in this duel, with Liberty forgoing their super-voting shares.
The battle over IAC rages on, with Liberty Media chief and IAC shareholder John Malone refusing to let Barry Diller split the company into five units, and effectively stripping Malone of power.
Malone sued last week to stop Diller’s canceling of Malone’s super “B” shares; Diller counter-sued to keep the ball rolling into divesting the company. And now Malone is back in court, accusing Diller of “breaching his fiduciary responsibility” and looking to have him ousted as chief executive.
Naturally, both parties find themselves in the right, though sticking to character, Diller is getting more boisterous about it. Queen.
• John McCain may not have called Hillary a bitch per se, but did concede that she’s a venerable opponent whom he greatly admires…and one day hopes to crush.
• Barry Diller desperately endeavors to buy AOL, completely forgets that it’s no longer 1999.
• “People often say that writing about style is just a way to report on the really wealthy,” observes Alex Kuczynski, “but I try to write about the populace, not just the elite.” Whatever helps you sleep at night, Alex.
• Howard Dean finally acknowledges that Jews can go to heaven, a concession that might have proven more useful to him approximately four years ago.
You probably haven’t logged on to Ask.com since some warped deal between Barry Diller and your computer manufacturer had it set as your default homepage, but perhaps you’re familiar with other IAC properties, like Match.com (where you’ve already exhausted any potential matches), Ticketmaster.com (where you’re still wondering what’s so convenient about “convenience fees”) and CitySearch.com (which you visit to get the address of a restaurant, but not to read visitor reviews).
Still nothing? How about that glacier-like office building on the West Side Highway that got a mention the November Vanity Fair article about Diller’s beard, Diane von Furstenberg? Ahh, there you go.
Is the Internet’s biggest gay married man looking to unload his Home Shopping Network? Analysts sure hope so!
With the stock of Barry Diller’s IAC (nee InterActivCorp) – responsible for that building on the West Side Highway that looks like a glacier – in the crapper, stock trackers are issuing a resounding “sell HSN!” In fact, according to one smarty pants, “a lot of people would be happy if IAC sold off the Home Shopping Network.” Something about HSN’s slipping sales and massive overhead, whereas Diller’s more lucrative properties are performing well, like Match.com’s increasing membership signups.
But if there’s one property Diller must absolutely hang on to, it’s Evite.com. How else is Diane von Furstenberg going to have us RSVP to her trunk show?
Who cares if Barry Diller is bleeding cash on his failed attempt at buying back some Expedia stock? As Kim Masters explains, his deal with NBC programming chief Ben Silverman’s Reveille is going to leave Diller flush with cash should any of the production outfit’s TV tries pan out. And, given Reveille’s sucesses (The Office, Ugly Betty), we’ve got a hankering Diller is gonna be just fine. The Expedia misstep may have cost him nearly $15 million (need it be said, that’s barely a dent for his kind), but his favorable deal with Silverman should more than make up for it.
CONTINUED »
• Here’s the unofficial list of Pulitzer contenders. Sadly, In Touch magazine just missed the mark (again) this year.
• Barry Diller and Dow Jones are making their very own personal finance site aimed at “younger audiences.” Our dad can’t wait for it to launch!
• CSM just doesn’t like the idea of an encyclopedia written for the people, by the people.
• Bob Woodruff, very understandably, has no interest whatsoever in returning to Iraq; Brian Williams respectfully disagrees.
CONTINUED »
• Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet The Press, criticized for being a “boring witness” at the Scooter Libby trial.
• Well known rich guy, Warren Buffet, rumored to be shopping around at the Grey Lady.
• Meanwhile, Arthur Sulzberger pretends not to be worried about the future of NYT’s print edition.
• Barry Diller to YouTube: You’re going down.
• John Edwards fires his controversial, liberal bloggers for being “too controversial, liberal.”
• Even photographers have to contend with that “imitation is the highest form of flattery” crap.
Editorial Director
