- 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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TechTranscript
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 percent of it so we want to buy the whole thing then you said actually
00:39we're
00:40not going to do that then MGM said well maybe we'll buy people Inc then yesterday MGM said
00:46actually we're not doing any of that right where do things stand right now exactly there we're not
00:52doing any of that so you you own a chunk of MGM yes agreed not to buy more of it
00:57no that's not true
00:58we can buy more we can buy up to we own 26 percent we can buy up to 29 percent
01:05and this is a kind of
01:08tale of I would guess the best way to say it is you know you start down a path in
01:16this case I thought
01:18it would be a good opportune moment to take our 26 percent to 51 percent I'd never done anything in
01:26private equity before I had no experience so I have no process of going out and asking people for money
01:35and also dealing with abstruse balance sheet issues not that I was totally confused by them but I'd never
01:42really done that kind of process before and as I got into it I found a couple of things first
01:48of
01:48all I I thought that the structure that we had wanted to do was not one that investors wanted to
01:58do another
01:58structure and I wasn'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 believe in and as I
02:11got further into the
02:12process I thought why we shouldn't we shouldn't be essentially taking on more debt asking third parties for money I
02:24just got
02:24uncomfortable with the process so I said okay thank you very much we're not going to do that then MGM
02:30said well why don't we buy you and I
02:33said I just don't think that's going to work but why did they want to own you because you own
02:37that because we own they wanted to they
02:39wanted to repatriate a quarter of their company's they wanted to become a magazine publisher oh highly unlikely to there
02:47I actually I can make my
02:50arguments for why that would be a good thing to be even in this weird moment of transformation but they
02:59wanted to do that and I was dubious just because I thought it was an
03:05it was an awkward process and in the end very quickly in the end this took maybe a week they
03:14made us a proposal we essentially said no and that was that so we remain
03:22shareholders of MGM will I'm sure over time increase our ownership of MGM I think it's a fine company with
03:30great prospects and my rationale very quickly was
03:34uh as much as much as I believe in Expedia our travel company uh which is now up to about
03:41a hundred and I don't know forty five
03:42billion in sales so it's a large enterprise uh and we're doing everything in AI both offensively and defensively
03:53but I think anybody who is in any business that can be disintermediated says oh my god I can't predict
04:01I can I can't
04:03underwrite three five seven years completely underwrite it because of the potential of all the things that we
04:12both we really don't know mostly relative to being disintermediated and then I come upon this city Las Vegas
04:23which no one in the world is ever going to reinvent that is growing with sports and entertainment and all
04:30sorts of activities even though you can now gamble on your iPhone it doesn't matter gaming is is is a
04:36third
04:37or so the the it is a huge entertainment place and I thought no one is going to get between
04:45no disintermediation
04:47is coming between a person who wants to go to a place and that place so this is a hedge
04:53against the future
04:54absolutely I cannot it the harder I'd love it if anybody can give me a better one uh I guess
05:02uh burial
05:03sites might be but uh uh I I I can't think of anything else that that is a better thing
05:13than this
05:16not only just Las Vegas but all across the country and in uh China and building in Japan
05:22in Japan than this giant resorts and so I I absolutely think they are really forever assets
05:34that no one is going to get in the way of and you're happy now just owning a minority portion
05:41of
05:42a forever business I don't think you could ever say I'm happy but nevertheless I'm fine with where we
05:48are and and uh over time I our position sure will grow uh but it's it you know when you
05:57have the kind
05:59of infrastructure you come I'm sure all of you there are Las Vegas but when you see the 11 properties
06:06we
06:06have and about 40 percent share of every dollar that goes through Las Vegas goes through one of our
06:12properties you say how did I fall into this pile are you a Vegas guy you're an LA guy you're
06:17very much
06:17a New York guy I don't think I could ever be described as a Vegas guy nevertheless I like
06:23going there I'm fascinated by it I'm fascinated by the city fascinated by what basically Steve Wynn did
06:30in redefining the city I think there's more definite redefinitions to come Las Vegas keeps evolving
06:38it's now going to have a basketball team more than likely for which the players are putting up some
06:44insane amounts of money to acquire the license or the whatever it's called the franchise I think we
06:50go with franchise okay so when you take a big swing like that right this is a business that you
06:57haven't
06:57had really exposure to and you just said I haven't done a deal that's structured like this how much
07:02planning and thinking and hedging goes into that or you just say we're going well like most things at
07:09least for me it it it it kind of begins and ends with instinct it starts with gee is this
07:17a good idea
07:18and then you go through all the stuff and you get reams of uh powerpoint decks and hire bankers and
07:29go
07:29through all that process and and then in the end I think at least you put all that aside and
07:36what rests the
07:37it resting instinct is what tells you whether to do it or not and then what I guess my mind
07:42my
07:42my mic was not working and then what tells you oh this isn't working we should walk away you did
07:47that
07:47pretty quickly uh I I don't know you say what tells me what tells you me that it doesn't work
07:54or it
07:54isn't working or I don't want to do it there just comes a moment where it doesn't happen like but
08:00it
08:00happens where at least with me where first the little germ grows of there's something
08:08I don't feel right about this and you can't really put that stuff to me much on nickels
08:14dimes and paper and and it either grows or gets quieted by events with me it grows to a point
08:22where
08:22I say clearly at least again to me now uh I don't want to proceed with this and I I
08:30I in my company
08:32I am known for at the last minute I don't think I do endless last minutes but I am at
08:38any point
08:38ready to change my mind based upon events of that moment and you think that's and I do not think
08:44the
08:44past I don't think that whatever the past process is should educate that and that ability to say I
08:52thought this but now I think this I changed my mind that's a good thing I think yeah well for
08:57me
08:57it's a good thing I want to ask I say it has been I want to ask you about a
09:02few more interesting calls
09:03you've made relatively recently in 2021 you guys had this internet publishing business it 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 was the remnants of a magazine business it was Time Inc and Meredith Publishing
09:21this is well after the magazine business was in permanent decline and and many years into the
09:26fact that people had soured on digital publishing as well yes you make nearly a three billion dollar
09:31bet on more of this stuff what's the rationale there or how what is the decision making process there
09:38well in that case it was it was just opportunity we saw this very old line very established Meredith
09:48company iowa company i don't know hundred and god knows how many years old at that point and they
09:55owned uh people magazine and actually 63 it was 63 individual magazines and we had been through for
10:05several years this process taking about.com and making those digital sites those vertical sites we we did a
10:13lot of 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
10:38and we thought our digital heart could take those uh book those magazine hard copy books
10:47and make a digital life we're gonna drag you into the future and we spent three two and a half
10:54three
10:54years difficult transition difficult to get it all together and make it swim and we're now in our 11th
11:03straight quarter of growth for the business which i would say puts us ahead of every other publisher
11:12probably other than uh in a pure place since the new york times so but since 2021 right google which
11:21was sort of you guys have based a bunch of your business around google that is becoming much more
11:25difficult for publishers now we have ai do you look back and go oh maybe we bet wrong oh i
11:31don't look
11:32i don't think that the do bill is there yet and won't be for a couple of years but i
11:38would say
11:40today without question that no this is this this we're the largest publisher in the united states
11:47maybe the world uh we now print 275 million print copies a week a year a week uh and our
11:59our
12:01what we've been able to do is because three almost three years ago we recognized what was going to
12:10happen with with with digital we recognized what was going to happen with google search and so we
12:16began to diversify our traffic we've lost i'm not sure i'm exact on the figure but i think it's 60
12:21percent of our google traffic which is extraordinary and most companies that have lost that
12:27have had very difficult times in in publishing we have instead replaced it in all sorts of different
12:36distribution avenues and that's why we've been able to grow well i think other publishers seeing this
12:45tsunami coming from uh coming from from google search and most interestingly i was it yesterday or this
12:53morning for the first time i think in history their search results have begun now to show that they
13:01are losing share in search so and they're also having a hard time monetizing their ai stuff they're
13:07having a they're struggling well yeah the other side of it is right now it's virtually i mean i wouldn't
13:14say it's impossible but it's certainly there is no such thing as ai advertising uh as i let's call it
13:21a
13:21category but we've been able to uh pass through this period of exchanging google traffic for tick tock
13:33instagram youtube all across the spectrum and we haven't yet dealt with what is going to happen with
13:43ai meaning what will happen if in fact the entire model changes but i'm confident that certainly for the
13:51next several years we are going to continue to grow our digital footprint you announced layoffs
13:57this morning what does that tell us about the health of the business it tells you it's healthy
14:01and i'll tell you why this is a few times we've done this we actually uh started uh
14:12our decline 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
14:33i'd say somewhere between 10 and 15 very strong brands so what we've been doing in the last several
14:40years is we've been transferring out of people in these legacy businesses and transferring in people to
14:49do the new work that we're doing we have actually the same employee count that we had three years ago
14:59but we've probably and i'm sure i'll be wrong in this but not too wrong
15:06we've probably mixed in and out a third of our uh employees and then wall street seems to not give
15:15you credit for any of this zero they say basically you're worth the value of your mgm stake and people
15:20is basically a zero and that we have a ton of cash and you've been you've been doing this for
15:26a long
15:26time you've spent a long time running public companies do you think eventually they're going to come
15:32around or event or do you say at some point if they're not going to give me credit maybe i
15:35move
15:35excuse me where 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 that the air comes out on uh
16:38i'll take all the stock anyone wants to offer us so on the one hand you're a true believer in
16:42this
16:42business 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
17:11think about because i used to cover this business a lot still do um about 10 years ago when the
17:16streaming
17:16wars would kicked off you said we have this business called vimeo it's basically a b2b video
17:21business good 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 are 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 well we thought
17:45you know vimeo was very very early uh in uh video streaming let's call it uh and uh and vimeo
17:56began
17:57really as a sharing service uh user generated content and we put a little toe in and said well maybe
18:08we
18:09should believe me not netflix i probably the first living person to declare that netflix
18:15won uh the streaming world some five seven years ago uh but we thought we could get in there and
18:23compete and we actually found out after like it was like it wasn't i truly it was a little tiny
18:29step
18:30we said you know what this is ridiculous we're never ever going to be able to compete at the level
18:38necessary to turn this into something uh different than what it was now by the way i think it was
18:45a big
18:45mistake i wish we had kept going really what do you think would happen who knows but i mean you
18:51never
18:51know you just try and then as they say god decides um so this ability to say i want to
18:59do this i think
19:00it's a big deal i'm gonna in the case of mgm throw a lot of money at it in the
19:04case of vimeo not throw money
19:05at it but invest time in it and then go walk away yes i was wrong this seems uncommon it
19:12seems like
19:12a lot of your peers either stick with it for much longer either for ego reasons or it's a sunk
19:17cost
19:17well either they're dumb or i'm smart or i'm dumb have you have you is this is this a is
19:24this a trait
19:25you've had all your life or is this something you came to over time no i think it's always been
19:30true
19:30with me i'm as i said earlier i'm ready to turn on any dime that sounds smarter to me
19:34than the previous nickel we've been talking about ai throughout this conversation um you said you
19:41don't know what it's going to be like you uh but also you think some things like i sure know
19:45it's
19:45going to be yeah so how do you how so you've you've made a hedge with mgm you think that
19:52people has life
19:54in an ai world but you're not sure what oh no no i'm quite sure what i don't know i
20:01mean i i can't
20:01tell you i can tell you that for now as i say 11 straight quarters we have grown while others
20:07have
20:07not so i'm confident of our path of growth i'm also increasingly confident that we are taking our
20:18all of the knowledge we have depth breadth that we have throughout all of the publishing that we do
20:25and looking at each of the properties and saying out of that what could we make what could we create
20:32historically as you know publishers tended to license other than what they published they licensed
20:38every other right to third parties for kind of one or two percent it occurred to me
20:43why are we the one two percent side why don't we do the 99 side so as an example we
20:48have a magazine
20:49called southern living it is an extremely strong magazine it's two million subscribers it is across
20:56every part of the anybody here from the south i can't imagine you do not know of it really beloved
21:02magazine so we're sitting with the editors and discover that there's a thing i doubt well i don't
21:09know again i don't know where you're all from but there's a thing in the south called sweet tea it's
21:13a
21:13particular kind of tea so we decided that we would instead of licensing it an idea we would make our
21:25own 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
21:47you know what it's good now i don't know that it's going to resonate but if here's the theory
21:54if we have a good idea you know if we have a bad idea nothing will happen but we have
21:58a good idea
22:00again we have hundreds of millions of magazines we print adding an extra page or two
22:08is cost zero so if we got something good we can promote it i think in unique ways better than
22:15anyone
22:16else and we have billions and billions of digital imprints that we can also promote so if we got a
22:24good idea we got as good a megaphone as anyone in the world i mean there are we've got like
22:3021 of these
22:31projects we call inversion which is essentially taking this knowledge that we have in so many areas
22:38it really started i was sitting with the editors of uh travel and leisure which is the biggest travel
22:45magazine by far and they know everything about travel all over the world they know every beautiful
22:52resort every everything so i said how come you guys didn't uh uh invent white look white lotus why
22:59didn't you do that uh uh why didn't they create a show white lotus exactly why didn't we at food
23:07and wine another great property why didn't we make cas amigos so why don't we take what our knowledge
23:14is in all these different areas that i would argue no one's got better and out of it come up
23:21with
23:21ideas that we can own produce distribute and market and that's what we're doing silicon valley
23:29and we have 21 separate projects in that vein if that works it will redefine the entire company let
23:37me ask you about another your business as you brought it up earlier expedia when the silicon valley
23:41guys get excited about ai and agents the first thing they talk about is our agents can book a flight
23:46for
23:47you and then you wouldn't have to use expedia how do you protect a business from technology well
23:54expedia is a tech company i mean and these guys have all set their at heart their sights on let's
24:01let's disrupt at heart and at base it is a tech company we will we will continue to prevail not
24:11be
24:12disintermediated if in fact we offer 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 anywhere else or and or i think it is and or i don't think it's definitely not or that
25:00there'll be
25:01vertical brand businesses that have a particular area of expertise and they will do it better and you
25:08will trust them more and particularly one of the things every they're all my friends well almost all
25:15of them uh who run these uh uh llm companies and the one thing all of them say is yeah
25:22we're great at
25:23everything except for one thing what's that well if something goes wrong there's nothing we can do
25:29well if something goes wrong at expedia there's everything that we do and that is our future so right
25:36now literally today i'm booking a flight i'm going to use expedia because you've got all my stuff my
25:41credit cards and all that but i'm using meta's muse to help me figure out what options i want is
25:47there
25:47anything that's not on expedia if you use muse which i think is by the way a great product if
25:52you use muse
25:53you get to a point at muse and it refers you to expedia to actually complete the transaction i mean
25:59what it
26:00wants to do is go ahead and book the thing itself it does it wants to do that well are
26:05you going to
26:05prevent it from doing that can you block crawl uh bots like muse we can definitely absolutely we can
26:12block our information from being used we can't block if somebody wants to book directly on united
26:18airlines rather than going through us they can do so right nothing will ever prevent that but if i'm
26:23using muse to figure out what i want yes the mark zuckerbergs of the world's like the next step is
26:29you just do everything through us and you run around it is at least in travel it's interesting
26:34travel is the one thing that everybody says as soon as they talk about agents they talk about travel
26:41and yet interestingly travel is the most difficult thing to actually do because of its extraordinary
26:48complexity when you're dealing with literally millions of all of alternative like uh tech pathways
26:57whether it's supply or distribution or all the things that go into this cookery uh it's it's a hard
27:05trick i'm not saying they won't quote figure it out uh but i really do believe that uh the full
27:15service
27:16ability we have to not only make the booking the transaction but to follow it up in ways that almost
27:25no
27:25one else other than us big players us and really booking.com and uh internationally trip.com can do
27:32i mean it's the tech guys love this idea do you think regular humans the regular humans who use
27:38services like expedia want a digital agent doing this stuff for them it's so much too early i think
27:44anybody who would give you a take on that is a fool i think that uh that we don't yet
27:51know the
27:51applications i think all we know it's all i know i'm fooling around with this thing i'm in it a
27:59lot
28:00i'm playing with it and i'm finding it shocking i mean magic i'm finding it extraordinary it's
28:10all the stuff you all know what's the magic part of it for you what's what's that you can ask
28:15things and it tells you these things i mean that is magic in the at the scale the the ability
28:23of it
28:23to do so and the ability of it clearly to think in in ways and terms and means greater than
28:32a human can
28:34that's magic at least it it is for human magic to a computer system it is not it's math
28:45but to all of us humans uh until we get in the simulation uh the what we're just now and
28:53we're
28:54so early at this we're just now finding out these applications everybody talks about agents and agents
29:03doing work for them i would bet that the amount of agency work that is actually completed is
29:13almost nothing right now will it grow absolutely how it will grow i don't know i do the only thing
29:21i
29:21know or it's no i think my take is is that if you have a strong brand that is of
29:28service and you adapt
29:29as technologically forward as you can with investment you have a chance is this something
29:35where a lot of a lot of the retailers that are sort of in the crosshairs say like an amazon
29:40or a target
29:41or walmart say well we we're going to have our own agents and you'll come to our site well that's
29:45the issue horizontal versus vertical do you think that is an adequate answer and do you think these
29:49companies or your company is equipped to come up with a magical agent like this oh yeah i mean i'm
29:56sure
29:56of that i know what we're doing and i know how far we are on doing exactly what can be
30:03done by the most
30:04advanced agent in our own system in our own domain and we will of course everyone will have that that
30:11that that is the magic of the system and that makes sense for you everyone is going to have that
30:16it's
30:17there's no thought that well maybe we let the mark zuckerbergs of the world do all the heavy lifting and
30:21then we have our own special sauce we do something that's specific that they don't do but we're not
30:26going to have to have look you have to have whatever the advances in technology are you have to have
30:34them homegrown in some way that you own and operate or you will be toast who guides you through this
30:42world you're not a native tech person you came up through entertainment gee don't i look like it you
30:47look great is this something where you do the reading on your own and or do you rely on someone
30:51like a mark zuckerberg to say well here's what we're doing i listen uh try and stimulate uh and
30:59i've got a lot of people who are who are true pros and that's the way i'm going to ask
31:09you a big big
31:09broad question oh god you're 84. yes you could be not do you could be not facing the future why
31:18don't
31:18you finally be happy with your age i i i have a similar question why are you running these businesses
31:24because i have a motor inside me that i would that by the way it will stop i guess but
31:30i can't stop
31:31stops for all of us uh hello yes but i can't stop it and i don't want to i thought
31:37um
31:38um i thought that uh being engaged to me is is i'm still curious so be if i can be
31:49engaged and
31:51hopefully be useful then okay at some point someone will tell me in some masterful way either
31:59it's over or in another way it'll be over and i will either pay attention or not or they'll drag
32:07me
32:07out to the heap you are you are running these businesses you're looking at the future you're
32:11also building a lot of stuff for the rest of us you you built uh little island i always forget
32:17the
32:17name of it little island little island basically redeveloping the entire west side of manhattan
32:21you did the high line yeah a lot of you yeah you got a frank gary building there project in
32:26l.a
32:26big projects in l.a what what gives you more satisfaction building something like that that
32:31whole public can enjoy or or being successful in business i don't have it on a weighing scale
32:37i can only tell you i probably had you talk about really you know happiness thing a little island for
32:45those of you who have seen it but it's the two bridges that go up to this island and when
32:52i'm there
32:52and i go as much as i can and i'm either seeing people come across the bridge expectantly
33:00and looking somewhat awesomely at this odd it's like they're in a resort thing we've built
33:08and then i see them coming off and how happy they are that i mean you know how do you
33:16get 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 why not be in that business full-time in the in the happiness business and the making public
33:26stuff for everyone to enjoy business is is it a what's it gonna be or another way of putting it
33:32what's the what legacy do you want do you want to be the guy who did people and expedia or
33:37the guy
33:37who did little island uh first of all i don't do legacy because because i think it's dangerous i think
33:46if you start thinking that way i mean i don't know i can't do it i can't do it because
33:51if you say legacy
33:52it kind of means all you're doing is looking backward and that's just boring to me i mean
33:58i'm happy that i've done things that and yes the public projects that we've done and the new one
34:06we're doing which i hope i'll be telling everyone about in a few weeks month or so which is really
34:11it's in los angeles and it's it's probably the most exciting you're not going to share that news with
34:16those now i can't yeah uh i mean uh yeah no i can't anyway uh but but those are great
34:25but then
34:26there are other things i mean i i i mean i don't have all that capacity but whatever capacity i
34:31have
34:32gets distributed around the things i'm curious about i cannot let you go without asking about
34:37paramount you ran that uh studio back when that was a really big deal it's smaller deal now larry and
34:44david ellison think it's going to be a big deal again what are the prospects for for this combined
34:50company at skydance would you be making that bet um well look i'm not really in favor of concentration
35:03for scale i have never thought so long as you have sufficient scale to get your product out and get
35:11distributed you don't need any more scale scale is not the answer to really much of anything
35:18it is it it it it it it is not to me a determinant so i don't really believe in
35:26consolidation you're
35:27really you're really swimming against the tide there everyone says no no we've got to be bigger
35:31to take on the netflix's you don't have to take netflix one now that doesn't mean you can have a
35:37perfectly good and profitable and growing business you are simply never going to beat netflix i do not
35:45think ever uh unless they do something weird uh i mean truly weird which they won't do so that game
35:54if you want to call it a game is to me over now it does not mean you can't have
35:59wonderful profitable
36:00businesses and frankly the more the better it makes me sad i ran 20th century fox fox for over eight
36:09years and uh and i adored the company i adored what we did both in the movie area and television
36:17area and
36:18building the broadcast company uh and it no longer exists 20th century fox is gone i mean yeah there
36:28may be little pieces remnants paramount i suspect notwithstanding and i'm not predicting anything
36:35but over time i suspect paramount will be gone does it matter if paramount the brand the company goes
36:42away but they're still making stuff from that with the entity well no you can't whatever the commitment's
36:49made to keep the same level of production over time they'll make as many things as the market demands
36:54notwithstanding what happened before uh but the loss of you know when we had six major studios was a
37:04very healthy 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 a period when it was being splattered around the world post-covid
37:25with endless stuff and even before that for 5 10 15 years the quality that came out of just
37:32television was extraordinary i think generally the quality that has come out for whatever reasons
37:38in the last couple of years has not really because there was a bubble that's deflated no but i'm not
37:43talking about the number i'm talking about the quality just when was the last great defining show
37:51that you've seen or multiples of them all of which we had i think that's part of this consolidating
38:02trend and i just think it's not that healthy and i think at a time which is amazing to me
38:10the shocking thing about this world we live in is you can press a button and publish to the 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 big winner it's absolutely youtube because that's thousands and thousands and thousands
38:44of people same true obviously with tick tock creating publishing and getting stuff out there
38:50the established major companies uh and the fact they're contracting the other is expanding
38:59but still i'd like these these these engines of let's call it a quality production i want them to thrive
39:10i would like to talk with you about this forever i cannot so we're going to go off stage and
39:15talk
39:15some more about it barry diller thank you thank you all