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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
• Absolute resurrects itself just in time to waste someone else's money. Doesn't the luxe market know it's all online? [WWD]
• Kit Seelye weighs in on the newspaper circulation reports, with little or nothing new to say. [NYT]
• Is Tribune faking a sale of the LAT to placate the Chandler family? How disappointed David Geffen will be. [NYP]
• Reese and Ryan split? Keith Urban heads to rehab? Closing dates laugh in their faces! [WWD]
• Dave Price will continue getting up at the ass crack of dawn for CBS. [TV Week]
• Times columnist Thomas Friedman is rich, which makes him the enemy. Or did we miss the point of Norman Solomon's critique? [HuffPo]
• Barry Diller makes it big by going small. [NYT]
• VanityFair.com quietly relaunches. Crickets heard. [WWD]
• Diane Von Furstenberg husband and InterActiveCorp chief Barry Diller reaped some $469.7 million in salary, bonuses, and stock options. Who knew there was so much money to be made investing in CollegeHumor.com? [NYT, DHD]
• Tom Freston .. funny? [P6]
• NBC cuts 700 jobs, which means it shouldn't be hard to find a couple people upset about it. [PI]
• Star publisher American Media Inc. misses, for the third time in a row, its deadline to report earnings. That's "earnings" on top of its $1 billion in debt. [NYP]
• Bravo greenlights Project Runway for your weave: Top Hair, where at least one episode will certainly consist of remaking Kirsten Dunst's Marie Antoinette do. [Variety]
• Members to MySpace: Revolucion! [WSJ]
• Dan Rather's new HDNet show isn't about gimmicks. Unless you count the three that he lists. [NYDN]
• News Corp. and Nielsen make nice. [NYP]
Barry Diller has always satisfied our criteria for a media mogul: He flaunts his brash business decisions; he's got a hot designer wife with a killer rack; he gives the party for the man (Graydon Carter) behind the party (Vanity Fair's Oscar party). And, of course, he's got a proclivity to act really, really gay.
Speaking to Details' Kevin Gray in the current May issue on that little rumor about being in the gay mafia, sparked by ex-Mickey Mouser Michael Ovitz:
It's just so … It's such a juicy lie. It really is. It's so juicy it is irrelevant. It is, of course, absurd. It's just juicy. You know. And Michael Ovitz had people who were homosexual and people who were not as part of the gay mafia. But nevertheless, it's a juicy lie, and – what can I say – its veracity is irrelevant. But I laughed when I read it. I said, "This is great!"
Mafioso, he may not be. And, granted, Diller didn't say "fabulous" three times in the same response. But he did say juicy. Thrice. And that's pretty gay.
Details [Official Site, though the article isn't online]
First online "matchmaking" service Great Expectations fools two members into paying four-figure membership fees — and now Barry Diller's Match.com is accused of something even more (humorously) grotesque: hanging on to paying members by sending staff out on faux dates.
Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive Corp., is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.
To be fair, Match.com denies the practice — though if the two did hit it off and ended up sleeping together, does that make Diller a pimp?
Yahoo, meanwhile, is keeping mum on its own set of accustations that include posting sham profiles to entice paying members. Because you've never posted a fake photo on Hot Or Not to get people to like you, either.
Editorial Director
