Background
He was born and brought up in San Francisco, he is the son of Reva (Addison) and Michael Diller. He is of a Jewish origin.
He was born and brought up in San Francisco, he is the son of Reva (Addison) and Michael Diller. He is of a Jewish origin.
He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles but dropped out in favor of starting his own carreer.
Diller is responsible for what the media dubs "The Killer Dillers" – people whom Diller mentored and who later became big-time media executives in their own right. Examples include Michael Eisner (who was President & COO of Paramount Pictures while Diller was Chairman & CEO of Paramount Pictures, who went on to become Chairman & CEO of The Walt Disney Company), Dawn Steel (future head of Columbia Pictures and one of the first women to run a major movie studio, who worked under Diller at Paramount), Jeffrey Katzenberg (head of PDI/DreamWorks Animation, principal of DreamWorks SKG, former head of Walt Disney Studios, and a head of production of Paramount under Diller), Garth Ancier, President of BBC America, and Don Simpson, who was President of Production at Paramount under Diller and Eisner and later went on to run a production company based on the Disney lot with Jerry Bruckheimer.
Diller worked with Stephen Chao at Fox Television, whom he later hired as President of Programming and Marketing at USA Network. Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, served as Diller's General Counsel during their tenure at USA Broadcasting, and again as Chief of Business Operations and a member of Barry Diller's Office of the Chairman at IAC/InterActiveCorp.
Owns LendingTree.com and RealEstate.com, which provide mortgage and property listings for the residential real estate market.
Owns United States of America Networks and its interactive subsidiaries.
Owns Match.com.
In 1996, Diller's IAC/InterActive Corp, acquired Savoy Pictures Entertainment Incorporated when the film production/distribution company faced major financial setbacks in 1995. The deal was finalized in 1997.
Barry Diller is a member of the Democratic Party and supporter of related political causes.
Quotations:
"I still believe in synergy, but I call it natural law.",
"I don't have answers for anybody else. What I know is that internal complexity makes for superficiality. There's never essentially a pure story unless there's a pure product line that has its own shining clarity."
"I never thought I was a very good manager."
He is married and has 2 children Alexander von Fürstenberg, Tatiana von Fürstenberg (both step-children).
