- 5 minutes ago
Media titan Barry Diller, the chairman of publishing empire IAC, has built and rebuilt his career more than most executives, from network television to Hollywood studios to the earliest internet empires.
As part of Business Insider’s The Long Play, Diller talked to Peter Kafka, Business Insider’s chief correspondent covering media and technology, about what successful businesses require: good timing, nerve, and the willingness to walk away from what’s working.
During this conversation, titled “The Art of the Comeback: A Masterclass on Resilience,” Diller shares his perspectives on AI adoption. He also talks about why his MGM Resorts deal fell apart and how he’s leveraging legacy print publications like Southern Living to create new revenue streams.
The 84-year-old media and tech exec told Kafka he wants to keep working as long as he can be engaged and useful.
As part of Business Insider’s The Long Play, Diller talked to Peter Kafka, Business Insider’s chief correspondent covering media and technology, about what successful businesses require: good timing, nerve, and the willingness to walk away from what’s working.
During this conversation, titled “The Art of the Comeback: A Masterclass on Resilience,” Diller shares his perspectives on AI adoption. He also talks about why his MGM Resorts deal fell apart and how he’s leveraging legacy print publications like Southern Living to create new revenue streams.
The 84-year-old media and tech exec told Kafka he wants to keep working as long as he can be engaged and useful.
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00:05that man was very loud we can we can quiet it down that's okay coming pleasure to be here
00:13thank you for making news that we can talk about what did I do well you've been spending a lot
00:17of
00:17time doing your biography for the last couple years we don't have to do a career retrospective
00:20I want to talk about things that are thank you right now recently a few months ago you decided
00:27that you wanted to buy MGM the casino gambling gaming company it's an 18 billion dollar deal
00:34well we already own 26% of it so we want to buy the whole thing then you said actually
00:39we're not
00:40going to do that then MGM said well maybe we'll buy people Inc then yesterday MGM said actually
00:46we're not doing any of that right where do things stand right now exactly there we're not doing any
00:52of that so you you own a chunk of MGM yes agreed not to buy more of it no that's
00:58not true we can buy
00:59more we can buy up to we own 26% we can buy up to 29% and this is
01:08a kind of tale of I would guess the
01:12best way to say it is you know you start down a path in this case I thought it would
01:19be a good
01:19opportune moment to take our 26% to 51% I'd never done anything in private equity before I had
01:27no
01:27experience so I have no process of going out and asking people for money and also dealing with
01:38abstruse balance sheet issues not that I was totally confused by them but I'd never really done that kind
01:44of process before and as I got into it I found a couple of things first of all I I
01:51thought that
01:51the structure that we had wanted to do was not one that investors wanted to do another structure and I
01:59wasn't comfortable with that because this was an elective I just thought it was really good for
02:03relatively little cash outlay we could double basically our percentage of a company I deeply
02:09believe in and as I got further into the process I thought why we shouldn't we shouldn't be
02:18essentially taking on more debt asking third parties for money I just got uncomfortable with
02:25the process so I said okay thank you very much we're not going to do that then MGM said well
02:31why
02:31don't we buy you and I said I just don't think that's gonna work but why did they want to
02:36own you
02:36because you own that because we own they wanted to they wanted to repatriate a quarter of their
02:41company's they wanted to become a magazine publisher oh highly unlikely to there I actually I can make
02:50my arguments for why that would be a good thing to be even in this weird moment of transformation but
02:58uh they wanted to do that and I was dubious just because I thought it was an it was an
03:07awkward
03:07process and in the end very quickly in the end this took maybe a week they made us a proposal
03:16we
03:16essentially said no and that was that so we remain uh shareholders of MGM will I'm sure over time increase
03:25our ownership of MGM uh I think it's a fine company with great prospects and my rationale very quickly
03:33was uh as much as I believe in Expedia our travel company uh which is now up to about 100
03:41and I don't
03:41know 45 billion in sales so it's a large enterprise uh and we're doing everything in AI both offensively
03:51and defensively but I think anybody who is in any business that can be disintermediated
03:58says oh my god I can't predict I I can I can't underwrite three five seven years completely underwrite
04:07it because of the potential of all the things that we both we really don't know mostly relative to
04:16being disintermediated and then I come upon this city Las Vegas which no one in the world is ever
04:25going to reinvent that is growing with sports and entertainment and all sorts of activities even
04:31though you can now gamble on your iPhone it doesn't matter gaming is is is a third or so the
04:38the it is a huge
04:40entertainment place and I thought no one is going to get between no disintermediation is coming between
04:48a person who wants to go to a place and that place so this is a hedge against the future
04:54absolutely I
04:56cannot it the harder I'd love it if anybody can give me a better one uh I guess uh burial
05:03sites might be
05:04but uh uh uh I I I can't think of anything else that that is a better thing than this
05:15not only just Las
05:17Vegas but all across the country and in uh China and building in Japan than this giant resorts and
05:26and so I I absolutely think they are really forever assets that no one is going to get in the
05:38way of
05:38and you're happy now just owning a minority portion of a forever business I don't think you could ever
05:44say I'm happy but nevertheless I'm fine with where we are and and uh over time I our position sure
05:53will grow
05:53uh but it's it you know when you have the kind of infrastructure you come I'm sure all of you
06:02there are Las Vegas but when you see the 11 properties we have and about 40 share of every dollar
06:10that
06:10goes through Las Vegas goes through one of our properties you say how did I fall into this pile are
06:15you a Vegas guy you're an LA guy you're very much a New York guy I don't think I could
06:19ever be described
06:20as a Vegas guy nevertheless I like going there I'm fascinated by it I'm fascinated by the city
06:26fascinated by what basically Steve Wynn did in redefining the city I think there's more
06:32definite redefinitions to come Las Vegas keeps evolving uh it's now going to have a basketball
06:40team more than likely for which the players are putting up some insane amounts of money to
06:46acquire the license or the whatever it's called the franchise yeah I think we go with franchise
06:51okay so when you take a big swing like that right this is a business that you haven't had really
06:58exposure to and you just said I haven't done a deal that's structured like this how much planning and
07:03thinking and hedging goes into that or you just say we're going well like most things at least for me
07:09it it it it it it kind of begins and ends with instinct it starts with gee is this a
07:17good idea
07:18and then you go through all the stuff and you get reams of uh powerpoint decks and hire a lot
07:27of
07:27bankers and hire bankers and go through all that process and and then in the end I think at least
07:33you put all
07:34that aside and what rests the resting instinct is what tells you whether to do it or not and then
07:41what I guess my my my my mic was not working and then what tells you oh this isn't working
07:46we should
07:47walk away you did that pretty quickly uh I don't know you say what tells me what tells you me
07:53that
07:53it doesn't work or it isn't working or I don't want to do it there just comes a moment where
07:57it doesn't
07:58happen like but it happens where at least with me where first the little germ grows of there's
08:07something I don't feel right about this and you can't really put that stuff to me much on nickels dimes
08:14and paper and and it either grows or gets quieted by events with me it grows to a point where
08:22I say
08:24clearly at least again to me now uh I don't want to proceed with this and I I I in
08:31my company I am
08:32known for at the last minute I don't think I do endless last minutes but I am at any point
08:38ready
08:39to change my mind based upon events of that moment and you think that's an attribute not a weakness
08:44I don't think that whatever the past process is should educate that and that ability to say I thought
08:52this but now I think this I changed my mind that's a good thing I think yeah well for me
08:57it's a good
08:58thing I want to ask I say it has been I want to ask you about a few more interesting
09:03calls you've made
09:04relatively recently in 2021 you guys had this internet publishing business that was called
09:09about.com and then dot dash yep and you said we're going to spend 2.7 billion dollars to buy
09:15meredith which
09:16was the remnants of a magazine business it was time inc and meredith publishing this is well
09:22after the magazine business was in permanent decline and and many years into the fact that
09:26people had soured on digital publishing as well yes you make nearly a 3 billion dollar bet on more
09:32of this stuff what's the rationale there or how what is the decision making process there well in that case
09:39it was it was it was it was just opportunity we saw this very old line very established meredith
09:47company iowa company i don't know 100 and god knows how many years old at that point and they owned
09:55uh people magazine and actually 63 it was 63 individual magazines and we had been through for several years
10:05this process taking about dot com and making those digital sites those vertical sites we we did a lot
10:13of work to actually understand what we thought was coming in digital publishing and so we saw these
10:18magazines which at that time printed i think 325 million uh copies a year uh but really hadn't done
10:30anything digitally they i mean they'd made kind of the attempts that most old line publishers make
10:35when they try and go into digital but they didn't have a digital heart and we thought our digital heart
10:41could take those uh book those magazine hard copy books and make a digital life we're gonna drag you into
10:50the future and we spent three two and a half three years difficult transition difficult to get it all
10:58together and make it swim and we're now in our 11th straight quarter of growth for the business which
11:07i would say puts us ahead of every other publisher probably other than uh in a pure place since the
11:16new
11:17york times so but since 2021 right google which was sort of you guys have based a bunch of your
11:22business
11:23around google that is becoming much more difficult for publishers now we have ai do you yeah
11:28back and go oh maybe we bet wrong oh i don't look i don't think that the due bill is
11:35there yet and
11:36won't be for a couple of years but i would say today without question that no this is this we're
11:46the
11:46largest publisher in the united states maybe the world uh we now print 275 million print copies a week
11:55a year a week uh and our our what we've been able to do is because three almost three years
12:08ago we
12:09recognized what was going to happen with with with digital we recognize what was going to happen with
12:14google search and so we began to diversify our traffic we've lost i'm not sure i'm exact on the
12:20figure but i think it's 60 percent of our google traffic which is extraordinary and most companies
12:26that have lost that have had very difficult times in in publishing we have instead replaced it in all
12:35sorts of different distribution avenues and that's why we've been able to grow while i think other
12:42publishers seeing this tsunami coming from uh coming for from google search and most interestingly was
12:52it yesterday or this morning for the first time i think in history their search results have begun now
12:59to show that they are losing share in search so and they're also having a hard time monetizing their ai
13:07stuff they're having a they're struggling well yeah the other side of it is right now it's virtually
13:14i mean i wouldn't say it's impossible but it's certainly there is no such thing as ai advertising
13:20as i let's call it a category but we've been able to uh pass through this period of exchanging google
13:30traffic
13:31for tick tock instagram youtube all across the spectrum and we haven't yet dealt with what is
13:42going to happen with ai meaning what will happen if in fact the entire model changes but i'm confident
13:50that certainly for the next several years we are going to continue to grow our digital footprint you
13:56announced layoffs this morning what does that tell us about the health of the business it tells you
14:01it's healthy and i'll tell you why this is a few times we've done this we actually uh started uh
14:12our decline our our print business is in a steady kind of decline it's profitable
14:18but you all know i have to tell you about print businesses uh and our some of our legacy digital
14:26businesses unless you have a strong brand you are certainly going to be history we have i'd say
14:34somewhere between 10 and 15 very strong brands so what we've been doing in the last several years
14:40is we've been transferring out of people in these legacy businesses and transferring in
14:49people to do the new work that we're doing we have actually the same employee count that we had
14:57three years ago but we've probably and i'm sure i'll be wrong in this but not too wrong we've probably
15:08mixed in and out a third of our uh uh employees and then wall street seems to not give you
15:15credit for
15:15any of this zero they say basically you're worth the value of your mgm stake and people is basically
15:21a zero and that we have a ton of cash and you've been you've been doing this for a long
15:26time you've
15:26spent a long time running public companies do you think eventually they're going to come around or
15:32event or do you say at some point if they're not going to give me credit maybe i move on
15:35excuse me
15:36where am i going other than uh i i would say that uh on the contrary um
15:48the fact that it is not valued by the market at any one time is a buying opportunity if you
15:55actually
15:56believe in what you got and so uh we are going to be buying stock in our own enterprise as
16:06soon as we
16:06can which is next week i think when we when the uh the uh quarter results get announced that we
16:15are open
16:16to buy right now we're restricted uh so to me it's an opportunity well i'll keep buying it down to
16:24zero
16:24shares i'm happy to buy in all the public stock if the public if the markets are in this case
16:32at
16:32least again my opinion whatever that is worth which is nothing but the air it comes out on
16:38uh i'll take all the stock anyone wants to offer us so on the one hand you're a true believer
16:42in
16:42this business that you've invested in on the other hand we just talked about a scenario with mgm where
16:46you said i think this is a great idea and then a little while later said actually the market's telling
16:50me now the the only issue of with mgm is whether we would we would take the company private and
16:59i
16:59did not think at that time through the process that i was going through that that was a good idea
17:05so thesis was fine it was the mechanics of it absolutely one last one last one that always i think
17:11about because i used to cover this business a lot still do um about 10 years ago when the streaming
17:16wars
17:16were kicked off you said we have this business called vimeo it's basically a b2b video business
17:22good business but not a huge one we're going to be in the netflix business we are going to
17:26we're going to we're going to hire people we're going to make our own content we're going to have
17:30a consumer facing i never said we're going to be in the netflix business i'm not that dumb we we
17:35interpreted it as that and you went ahead and hired people and then a few months before after that you
17:40said actually we're out of this business true walk me through that one
17:43well we thought you know vimeo was very very early uh in uh video streaming let's call it uh and
17:56and vimeo began really as a sharing service uh user generated content and we put a little toe in and
18:07said well art maybe we should believe me not netflix i'm probably the first living person to declare
18:14that netflix won uh the streaming world some five seven years ago uh but we thought we could get in
18:23there and compete and we actually found out after like it was like it wasn't i truly it was a
18:29little
18:29tiny step we said you know what this is ridiculous we're never ever going to be able to
18:36compete at the level necessary to turn this into something uh different than what it was
18:43now by the way i think it was a big mistake i wish we had kept going really what do
18:48you think would
18:49happen who knows but i mean you never know you just try and then as they say god decides um
18:57so this
18:58ability to say i want to do this i think it's a big deal i'm gonna in the case of
19:02mgm throw a lot of money
19:03at it in the case of vimeo not throw money at it but invest time in it and then go
19:08walk away yes i
19:10was wrong this seems uncommon it seems like a lot of your peers either stick with it for much longer
19:15either for ego reasons or it's a sunk cost well either they're dumb or i'm smart or i'm done
19:21have you have you is this is this a is this a trait you've had all your life or is
19:26this something you
19:27came to over time no i think it's always been true with me as i said earlier i'm ready to
19:32turn
19:32on any dime that sounds smarter to me than the previous nickel we've been talking about ai throughout
19:38this conversation um you said you don't know what it's going to be like you uh but also you think
19:44some things like i sure know it's going to be yeah so how do you how so you've you've made
19:49a hedge
19:50with mgm you think that people has life in an ai world but you're not sure what oh no no
19:57i'm quite
19:58sure what i don't know i mean i i can't tell you i can tell you that for now as
20:04i say 11 straight
20:05quarters we have grown while others have not so i'm confident of our path of growth i'm also
20:12increasingly confident that we are taking our uh all of the knowledge we have depth breadth that we
20:22have throughout all of the publishing that we do and looking at each of the properties and saying out
20:29of that what could we make what could we create historically as you know publishers tended to license
20:36other than what they published they licensed every other right to third parties for kind of one or two
20:41percent occurred to me why are we the one two percent side why don't we do the 99 side so
20:47as an
20:48example we have a magazine called southern living it is an extremely strong magazine it's two million
20:54subscribers it is across every part of the anybody here from the south i can't imagine you do not know
21:01of it really beloved magazine so we're sitting with the editors and discover that there's a thing i doubt
21:08well i don't know again i don't know where you're all from but there's a thing in the south called
21:12sweet tea it's a particular kind of tea so we decided that we would instead of licensing it an idea
21:23we would
21:24make our own sweet tea ourselves we would manufacture it ourselves not to a third party you're not just
21:33sticking your name on and we would distribute it and we would market it and next yesterday for the
21:40first time there was a can in my office southern living sweet tea which i drank and thought you know
21:48what it's good now i don't know that it's going to resonate but if here's the theory if we have
21:55a good
21:55idea you know if we have a bad idea nothing will happen but we have a good idea again we
22:01have hundreds
22:02of millions of magazines we print adding an extra page or two is cost zero so if we got something
22:12good
22:13we can promote it i think in unique ways better than anyone else and we have billions and billions
22:19of digital imprints that we can also promote so if we got a good idea we got as good a
22:26megaphone as
22:26anyone in the world i mean there are we've got like 21 of these projects we call inversion which is
22:34essentially taking this knowledge that we have in so many areas it really started i was sitting with
22:40the editors of uh travel and leisure which is the biggest travel magazine by far and they know
22:49everything about travel all over the world they know every beautiful resort every everything so i said
22:55how come you guys didn't uh uh invent white look white lotus why didn't you do that uh uh at
23:03food
23:03they create a show white lotus exactly why didn't we at food and wine another great property
23:10why didn't we make casamigos so why don't we take what our knowledge is in all these different
23:16areas that i would argue no one's got better and out of it come up with ideas that we can
23:23own
23:25produce distribute and market and that's what we're doing silicon valley and we have 21 separate
23:30projects in that vein if that works it will redefine the entire company let me ask you about another
23:37your businesses you brought it up earlier expedia when the silicon valley guys get excited about ai
23:42and agents the first thing they talk about is our agents can book a flight for you and then you
23:48wouldn't have to use expedia how do you protect a business from technology well expedia is a tech
23:56company i mean and these guys have all set their their sights on let's let's disrupt expedia at heart
24:02and at base it is a tech company we will we will continue to prevail not be disintermediated
24:14if in fact we offered the best service and it will absolutely include every ai tool every ai agent
24:21every whistle and bell that anyone else can come up with the question is will the world be a horizontal
24:30world or vertical one it will it be an absolute one or the other there are those that argue
24:35it'll be horizontal meaning you'll put every single bit of your life into one of the three or four
24:43uh uh surface llm services and they'll know so much about you in every category of your life you won't
24:51go
24:52anywhere else or and or i think it is and or i don't think it's definitely not or that there'll
25:00be vertical
25:01brand businesses that have a particular area of expertise and they will do it better and you will trust them
25:09more
25:09and particularly one of the things every they're all my friends well almost all of them uh who run
25:17these uh uh llm companies and the one thing all of them say is yeah we're great at everything except
25:24for one thing what's that well if something goes wrong there's nothing we can do well if something goes
25:30wrong at expedia there's everything that we do and that is our future so right now literally today i'm
25:38booking a flight i'm going to use expedia because you've got all my stuff my credit cards and all
25:42that but i'm using meta's muse to help me figure out what options i want is there anything that's not
25:48on expedia if you use muse which i think is by the way a great product if you use muse
25:53you get to a
25:54point at muse and it refers you to expedia to actually complete the transaction i mean what it wants
26:00to do is go ahead and book the thing itself it does it wants to do that well are you
26:05going to prevent it
26:05from doing that can you block crawl uh bots like muse we can definitely absolutely we can block our
26:13information from being used we can't block if somebody wants to book directly on united airlines
26:19rather than going through us they can do so right nothing will ever prevent that but if i'm using muse
26:24to figure out what i want yes the mark zuckerbergs of the world's like the next step is you just
26:30do
26:30everything through us and you run around it is at least in travel it's interesting travel is the one
26:36thing that everybody says as soon as they talk about agents they talk about travel and yet interestingly
26:42travel is the most difficult thing to actually do because of its extraordinary complexity when you're
26:50dealing with literally millions of alternative like uh tech pathways whether it's supply or distribution or
27:00all the things that go into this cookery uh it's it's a hard trick i'm not saying they won't quote
27:08figure it
27:09out uh but i really do believe that uh the full service ability we have to not only make
27:19the booking the transaction but to follow it up in ways that almost no one else other than us big
27:27players us and really booking.com and uh internationally trip.com can do i mean it's the tech guys love
27:34this idea do you think regular humans the regular humans who use services like expedia want a digital
27:40agent doing this stuff for them it's so much too early i think anybody who would give you a take
27:46on
27:46that as a fool i think that uh that we don't yet know the applications i think all we know
27:53it's all i know i'm fooling
27:56around with this thing i'm in it a lot i'm playing with it and i'm finding it shocking i mean
28:05magic i'm
28:06finding it extraordinary it's all the stuff you all know what's the magic part of it for you
28:13what's what's that you can ask it things and it tells you these things i mean that is magic in
28:20the
28:20at the scale the the ability of it to do so and the ability of it clearly to think in
28:28in ways and
28:30terms and means greater than a human can that's magic at least it it is for human magic to a
28:42computer system it is not it's math but to all of us humans uh until we get in the simulation
28:49uh the
28:51what we're just now and we're so early at this we're just now finding out these applications
29:00everybody talks about agents and agents doing work for them i would that that the amount of agency work
29:10that is actually completed is almost nothing right now will it grow absolutely how it will grow i
29:20don't know i do the only thing i know or it's no i think my take is is if you
29:25have a strong brand
29:26that is of service and you adapt as technologically forward as you can with investment you have a
29:34chance is this something where a lot of a lot of the retailers that are sort of in the crosshairs
29:39say like an amazon or a target or a walmart say well we we're going to have our own agents
29:43and
29:43you'll come to our site well that's the issue horizontal versus vertical do you think that is
29:48an adequate answer and do you think these companies or your company is equipped to come up with a
29:53magical agent like this oh yeah i mean i'm sure of that i know what we're doing and i know
29:59how far we are
30:00on doing exactly what can be done by the most advanced agent in our own system in our own domain
30:08and we will of course everyone will have that that that is the magic of the system and that makes
30:14sense for you everyone is going to have that it's there's no thought that well maybe we let the mark
30:19zuckerbergs of the world do all the heavy lifting and then we have our own special sauce
30:23we do something that's specific that they don't do but we're not going to try to compete
30:26to have look you have to have whatever the advances in technology are you have to have them homegrown
30:36in some way that you own and operate or you will be toast who guides you through this world you're
30:43not
30:43a native tech person you came up through entertainment gee don't i look like it you look great
30:48is this something where you do the reading on your own and or do you rely on someone like a
30:52mark
30:52zuckerberg to say well here's what we're doing i listen uh try and stimulate uh and i've got a lot
31:00of people who are who are true pros and that's the way i'm going to ask you a big big
31:09broad question oh god
31:11you're 84 yes you could be not do you could be not facing my wife says to me why don't
31:18you finally
31:19be happy with your age i i have a similar question why are you running these businesses because i have
31:25a motor inside me that i would that by the way it will stop i guess but i can't stop
31:31stops for all of
31:31us uh hello yes but i can't stop it and i don't want to i thought um i thought that
31:41uh being engaged to
31:43me is is i'm still curious so be if i can be engaged and hopefully be useful then okay at
31:54some point
31:54someone will tell me in some masterful way either it's over or in another way it'll be over and i
32:04will either pay attention or not or they'll drag me out to the heap you are you are running these
32:10businesses you're looking at the future you're also building a lot of stuff for the rest of us you
32:15you built a little island i always forget the name of it little island little island basically redeveloping
32:20the entire west side of manhattan you did the high line yeah a lot of you yeah you got a
32:24frank
32:24gary building there project in l.a big projects in l.a what what gives you more satisfaction building
32:30something like that that the whole public can enjoy or being successful in business i don't have
32:36it on a weighing scale i can only tell you i probably had you talk about really you know happiness
32:42thing a little island for those of you who have seen it but it's the two bridges that go up
32:49to
32:49this island and when i'm there and i go as much as i can and i'm either seeing people come
32:57across the
32:58bridge expectantly and looking somewhat awesomely at this odd it's like they're in a resort thing we've
33:07built and then i see them coming off and how happy they are that i mean you know how do
33:15you get to feel
33:16good i mean what would you what else would you feel good about if you can't feel good about that
33:21so
33:21why not be in that business full time in the in the happiness business and the making public stuff
33:26for everyone to enjoy business is is it a what's it gonna be or another way of putting it what's
33:32the
33:32what legacy do you want do you want to be the guy who did people and expedia or the guy
33:37who did little
33:37island uh first of all i don't do legacy because because i think it's dangerous i think if you start
33:46thinking that way i mean i don't know i can't do it i can't do it because if you say
33:52legacy it kind
33:53of means all you're doing is looking backward and that's just boring to me i mean i'm happy that i've
34:00done things that and yes the public projects that we've done and the new one we're doing which i
34:07hope i'll be telling everyone about in a few weeks month or so which is really it's in los angeles
34:12and it's it's probably the most exciting you're not going to share that news with us now i can't
34:17yeah uh i mean uh yeah no i can't anyway uh but but those are great but then there are
34:26other things
34:27i mean i i mean i don't have all that capacity but whatever capacity i have gets distributed around
34:34and the things i'm curious about i cannot let you go without asking about paramount you ran that
34:39uh studio back when that was a really big deal it's smaller deal now larry and david ellison think
34:45it's going to be a big deal again what are the prospects for for this combined company at skydance
34:51would you be making that bet um
34:58well look i'm not really in favor of concentration for scale i have never thought
35:05uh so long as you have sufficient scale to get your product out and get it distributed you don't
35:13need any more scale scale is not the answer to really much of anything it is it it it it
35:22it is not
35:22to me a determinant so i don't really believe in consolidation you're really you're really swimming
35:28against the tide there everyone says no no we've got to be bigger to take on the netflix's you don't
35:32have
35:32the amazon's netflix won now that doesn't mean you can have a perfectly good and profitable and
35:39growing business you are simply never going to beat netflix i do not think ever uh unless they
35:48do something weird uh i mean truly weird which they won't do so that game if you want to call
35:55it a game
35:55is to me over now it does not mean you can't have wonderful profitable businesses and frankly the
36:02more the better it makes me sad i ran 20th century fox fox for over eight years and uh and
36:12i adored the
36:14company i adored what we did both in the movie area and television area and building the broadcast
36:19company uh and it no longer exists 20th century fox is gone i mean yeah there may be little pieces
36:29remnants paramount i suspect notwithstanding and i'm not predicting anything but over time
36:37i suspect paramount will be gone does it matter if paramount the brand the company goes away but
36:42they're still making stuff from that with the entity well no you can't whatever the commitments made to
36:50keep the same level of production over time they'll make as many things as the market demands not
36:55withstanding what happened before uh but the loss of you know when we had six major studios was a very
37:04healthy environment to make good stuff and as you have fewer i'm not saying this stuff is getting
37:12worse will get worse by the way i do think it has gotten worse i mean i don't know about
37:17all of you
37:18but in the last couple there was there a period when it was being splattered around the world post
37:24covid with endless stuff and even before that for 5 10 15 years the quality that came out of just
37:32television is extraordinary i think generally the quality that has come out for whatever reasons in
37:38the last couple of years has not really because there is a bubble that's deflated it
37:42no but i'm not talking about the number i'm talking about the quality just when was the last great
37:49defining show that you've seen or multiples of them all of which we had i think that's part of
37:59this consolidating trend and i just think it's not that healthy and i think at a time which is amazing
38:09to me the shocking thing about this world we live in is you can press a button and publish to
38:17the world
38:17whatever it is you can make your own movie you can make your own journal you can do whatever you
38:23want
38:24publish essentially free to the world so this is why youtube is has if you want to talk about declaring
38:36the next quote
38:37big winner it's absolutely youtube because that's thousands and thousands and thousands of people
38:45same true obviously of tick tock creating publishing and getting stuff out there the established major
38:52companies uh and the fact they're contracting the other is expanding but still i'd like these these
39:02these engines of let's call it quality production i want them to thrive i would like to talk with you
39:12about this forever i cannot so we're going to go off stage and talk some more about it
39:15barry dillard thank you thank you all