@ Forbes MEET: Hollywood's Click & Clack Brothers: Eisner Interviews Diller

• Posted by Staci D. Kramer PaidContent.org
• Tue 24 Oct 2006 06:46 PM

It's only a 30-minute-drive from the yellow Loews in Santa Monica to the oh-so-pink Beverly Hills Hotel but it feels like light years. Some of the faces and panelists will be the same at both Digital Hollywood and Forbes Meet but the atmospheres couldn't be more different. The opening session at Forbes is a case in point: the 100-foot view from IAC/i's Barry Diller as interviewed by Michael Eisner. The forty-plus years of competition and friendship showed as CEO-turned-talk-show host Eisner peppered Diller with questions and Diller just as quickly edited them. (Yes, the obvious thought cropped up - Diller adjusted early and is firmly new media now; Eisner didn't and has a show on CNBC.)
Some highlights:

-- Eisner asked if Diller saw old media absorbing most of the new media companies, suggesting that when you look in the eyes of Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone and the rest, you see panic. .Diller said whatever happens we're on the eve of change as we move away from the distributors of scarcity. "All of these companies were based upon being dictatorial and telling people how they would do business with them." That's not how it works anymore. As for the morphing old media, "as they get more diversified they get less well managed."

-- Would Diller buy NBC with its proven multiples but current problems or YouTube for $1.6 billion? Diller suggested a better question: "Would I buy either? The thing is I didn't buy either." As for the YouTube price tag, from his perspective Google isn't paying anything for the ballyhooed acquisition because it is just a sliver of stock. Diller:  "I don't think they paid anything for it. ... I think the people who received that paper for the time they can cash it in (get something) ..." As for NBC, he views the local affiliates as the network's greatest assets. Asked if he would buy Tribune, he singled out the television stations but upshot is he doesn't want to buy any. Been there, done with that.

-- Diller values editorship, so much so that he repeated the point. The more content, the more editorship "as clear, as narrow as possible, is going to be prized." (I've heard similar thoughts more than a few times in the last 24 hours.)

-- The final convergence: Asked about Steve Jobs, Apple iTV and convergence in the home, Diller said he has no doubt it will happen but when and who is TBD. "No question (there will be) a system in the home that will receive all this data that's coming in ... a home system that will throw what comes in there to any form factor that comes into your house." For the transaction-fixated Diller, it will include a execute button (not for humans, he clarified) that puts transactions a click away. "That really is the final convergence."
Update: Forbes' Peter Kafka rightly raises Disney's status as an early spender online: "It's just that like nearly every other media mogul, Eisner grappled with new media before it was ready for prime time." The MEET Blog has more coverage (and more reporters).