Barry Charles Diller was born in San Francisco in California on 2nd February in 1942 and became a billionaire by creating Fox Broadcasting and USA Broadcasting. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of the company IAC (InterActiveCorp).
He went to the University of California in Los Angeles but dropped out after one semester. He then went on to work for the William Morris Agency in the mailroom. In 1964 he started working for ABC and soon after he starting working there got started managing the negotiation of broadcast rights for feature films. In 1965 he was made Vice President of Development. In this role he established ABC Movie of the Week and by doing this he created the idea of movies that were ‘made-for-television’ by having a succession of hour and a half long films produced just for television.
In 1974 he became the Chairman and CEO of the Paramount Pictures Corporation. Under his leadership the studio created many hit TV shows like Taxi in 1878, Laverne & Shirley in 1979 and Cheers in 1982. They also produced the films Saturday Night Fever in 1977, Grease in 1978, Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984, Terms of Endearment in 1983 and Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 as well as many others.
From October 1984 until April 1992 he worked as the Chairman and the CEO of Fox Inc. which was the parent company of 20th Century Fox and the Fox Broadcasting Company. Having Diller serving in this role led to Fox taking on hits such as The Simpsons. In 1992 he left 20th Century Fox and spent $25 million to get a stake in the QVC teleshopping network. In 1995 he also resigned from QVC.
He is now the Chairman of Expedia as well as the Chairman and CEO of IAC (InterActiveCorp) which is a group of commerce companies and is the parent of businesses such as ServiceMagic, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Citysearch, Match.com, Connected Ventures and LendingTree. In 2005 the company bought Ask.com, signalising a tactical move into Internet search sites. The headquarters of IAC are located at 18th Street and the West Side Highway in the Chelsea neighbourhood in Manhattan.
Since 2002 Diller has been a member of the board of The Coca-Cola Company. In 2001 he married Diane von Furstenberg who had been his friend for years and who is a fashion designer.