journalist. and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. i began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. how do you define leadership? what is it that makes somebody tick? barry, you have had unusual career. i want to explain this. companies and sometimes run a few other people have built internet companies and sometimes run them. what was it about your abilities to do both? barry: one is curiosity. i am probably more curious than those people who have been on one side or the other. i am -- i am sloppily curious. the other thing is, it is about editorship. i think that certainly in media businesses, which is where you are choosing from i will do this or i won't do that, true editorship. david: you did well in television, movies. how did you gravitate towards the internet? barry: first of all, i don't really like repeating myself. i have been in the movie and television business for 20 years, running multiple movie and television operations. when i left, first of all, my biggest issue was i did not want to work for anyone anymore. i always worked for a company. i got to a point where i was 49 where i said i really, you are or you are not, and i want to be not having anyone's thumb on my neck. i wanted to see if i could create something really my own. david: another way to say this, and maybe i have the same view myself, they can do this, why can i do that? you didn't have that view? barry: no. i have always acted more out of insecurity than security. i probably didn't think the people, i thought a lot of the people i worked for were idiots, but i certainly didn't think, in fact, i could do that. the question for me was, could i do that? david: let's go back to how your career unfolded before what you are doing today. you grew up in beverly hills and went to college initially at ucla? barry: it is a bit of a fake out. i have never absolutely clarified it. i went to ucla for three weeks. david: three weeks, what did your parents say when you dropped out? barry: nothing more than they said before, after, or during. my parents were the most laissez-faire of parents and did not really have a point of view other than they assumed they would support me for the rest of my life. david: were your parents we will any? barry: fairly, yes. david: what did you do? >> hibernated for a while. barry: my interest was pulling me into entertainment. there was obviously a lot around me, my parents, my best friends, and their parents were mostly in various forms of the entertainment business. so, it was the allure, but i had no clue how to get there. there are no starting jobs. i called my best friend's father, danny thomas, who was a famous comedian of the time, a television star, so i started william morris in the mail room. david: what did you do in the mail room. how do you start there and wind up the c.e.o.? barry: i didn't do what most people do in the mail room. most people really, they want to make contacts, to network with people, meet people. through networking, if they impressed people, they will probably get a job, or usually people in the mail room wanted to be agents. the last thing i wanted to do was be an agent. i read william morris for three years, and essentially the history of the entertainment business from a-z. that was my school. david: how do you break out of the mailroom to get into a real job? barry: what happened, serendipity, was my career was a cross between serendipity and curiosity. anyway, i met a middle level executive at abc called leonard goldberg. he was in new york executive moving to los angeles to become the vice president of current programming, very middle level job, but i thought he was really smart and i really didn't have some yen for television particularly. but i was sparky and interested. i knew i couldn't stay at william morris any longer. he asked me if i would be his assistant. i said yes. the day i left william morris and was going to start at abc, they fired the tsar of abc programming and they reached out and picked my guy, leonard goldberg, to be head of programming. i went from this little tiny thing to moving to new york to become the assistant of the head of programming at abc, and within six months i was running the program department. david: you're on your way. eventually you became the president of abc television, right? barry: the entertainment part. david: and you invented something that was novel at the time called the movie of the week. >> abc presents the movie of the week. barry: we had the idea of saying rather than buying bad movies and putting on television series that tend to fail, why don't we see it we can make a movie every week, and we chose this 90-minute form rather than two hours. it was very ambitious. it had not been done before. everybody thought it would fail because that was not the diet of television at the time. as most things, what everybody thinks is going to fail worked. it worked. david: you are doing well and in your mid-30's? barry: i was just 32. david: what you are pretending you're 33, 34. you want to exaggerate how old you are because you are so young? barry: no, i love being young. now i have gone from the youngest person in the room to the oldest person. david: i know this phenomenon, i know it. barry: i was 32. david: you were getting a lot of attention and somebody said would you like to run paramount pictures? is that how it happened? barry: a person i had gotten to know very early when i was one year or two years at abc, he had just bought paramount at the time. paramount had been failing which is how he had bought it. he wanted to sell these movies to television, old movies from paramount's library, all of which were terrible, and i gave him a very hard time. he liked that. we began a relationship. some years later he wanted me to come to paramount and i didn't want to leave abc, but finally 0he said i'm going to make you chairman and chief executive of paramount. i said, charlie, i have no experience in the movie business. yes, we have made 75 movies for television, but you really want to make me chief executive? he said, yes. i said actually kind of reluctantly, i went to leonard goldberg, the founder of abc and i told him, i told him about this and he said, well, you have to go. i said really? and it's true, i know it sounds quite crackers, but that is what happened. david: then you decide to leave? barry: i got to the point where i was 49 and said i have certainly been successful, but none of this is mine, and i went to rupert and said i want to be a principal. ♪ david: now when you are running paramount you produce some of the most famous movies in american history. barry: first we failed. in order to figure stuff out, you are going to make a mess. david: what did you make a mess of? barry: we made a series of awful movies. i was learning the movie business. we were in last place. i was on fumes at that time and saying to charlie, maybe this hasn't worked out. but in that two years we were playing good development tracks for the future. when it turned, which it did in the third year at paramount, when we went literally from sixth to first place, it was a big, dramatic turn. david: some of the ones i remember, "raiders of the lost ark." did you know that would be great from the beginning? barry: it is rare that you really know from the beginning, but if you read -- you remember seeing "raiders of the lost ark?" david: of course. barry: you remember the opening scene. when he goes to the tomb and the big ball. that was about 12 pages of the script. by the way, that 12 pages of the script, we were saying if we can shoot this, this is going to be fantastic, of course. it will cost more than any movie ever made because of whatever, but a script rarely -- it has happened 10 times maybe -- when you finish that script you say, this is a smash. david: you also had television production. you had "cheers," "happy days." "laverne and shirley." you were doing a great job. and all of a sudden you left paramount to run 20th century fox. barry: and rupert murdoch came in. i had already been interested in the idea of a fourth network, so again, he was passing through los angeles and i said to rupert, why don't you buy a television station and start a fourth network? and rupert, the greatest player, gambler, a strong instinct with nothing to back it up, but thinking this is a good idea said, yes. barry: i said it will cost $200 million. david: he said that is ok. not more than an hour later we shook hands. you are building the fourth network and people thought you were crazy. barry: the best position is for people to think you are crazy. david: then you decide to leave? barry: yes, i got to the point, 49, and i said i have certainly been successful, but none of this is mine, and nothing is ever yours, but it wasn't -- and i went to rupert and said, i want to be a principal. rupert said, there is only one principle in this company. it is nice you want to be, but that is reality. i went away thinking, oh my god, what a terrible thing, terrible, harsh thing to be told. now i have to actually either decide that i'm going to act on it or not, so i left. david: you had been successful with everything you touch. you have to start your own business, you don't know which one. barry: i was unsuccessful at each step of the way. it started very unsuccessfully, but worked out. david: so you decided you would change her life and become a principal, but you don't know what you want to be a principal of. barry: the things people wanted me to do was run a movie company, take a chief executive job, and all of that stuff had really no interest to me. david: so you started to buy some things. barry: my wife had gone to a place called qvc. she is a designer. she went to qvc because they wanted her to sell clothing on qvc, and she said you have to see what this thing is. it is the most amazing thing. i go there, west chester, pennsylvania, and i see a 10-foot square, 100-foot square stage. the use of computers and television sets and telephones, and me, who only knew about screens being used for narrative, i saw screens being used for something else. it was interactive. there was a computer screen that when they offered a product, the calls would be on the computer screen, seeing them rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall, and the whole thing was very early convergence. again, my thing about screens was storytelling, and here was another use of a screen, and it intrigued me. again serendipity, i'm having lunch with brian roberts, who owned comcast and they wanted me to do a production company. i was bored with the lunch, when is it going to be over so i can go home. as you do in those situations, i don't want them talking about trying to lure me into this thing. he tells me this story about how he started the so-called qvc. i said stop. tell me more about qvc. i am drawing him out. and i said to him, what are you going to do with qvc? he said the founder is going to retire. i said, really? i said, what is he going to do? i said could i buy his interest. ralph said yes. i walked out of the four seasons hotel knowing what i was going to do. i went to qvc and took an interest. that was three years, the primitive convergence, three years before the internet really started. it was luck and circumstance. david: at that point, people said barry diller -- barry: then they were sure i was crazy. david: low-rent qvc, where is he going? barry: went to westchester, pennsylvania, we will never hear about him again. david: qvc, you had a stake in it. ultimately you grew it. you started buying internet-related companies, things that's all things over the internet, ticketmaster or things like that, and put them into a company called iac. did you know at the time that each of these would probably work? barry: of course i didn't. by the way, many of them didn't. david: the most successful is expedia? barry: expedia is the biggest. they range from live nation, ticketmaster, match.com. david: so you own this company and it's become a public company, roughly $250 million was put into by the company and today that's worth $57 billion. barry: more or less. david: that is pretty good. your stock is up 80% this year. how are you going to top that in the business world? you can't do much better than you have done. barry: i will find something else to fail at first. david: it prompted you to say if i did this, maybe i can do something either. barry: they said they were going to tear down the peer because it was falling apart. would i be interested in building a new pier. i could be ambitious about it. if you are up for it, i am up for it. ♪ david: today, the internet is still very much a part of our lives. what about television and motion pictures. do you think they will continue to be important parts of our lives? barry: i think the movie business is over as a cultural institution of any great value. the movie business is now about primarily making sequels and big, huge mega-movies that are more marketing things than anything else. i think movies have receded. television is having a great period because of the incredible optionality and television. and, the craft. david: are you worried that four or five technology companies could control our culture and our lives or are you not worried about that? barry: i am worried. i always thought too much concentration is bad, and that goes against consolidating principles, which are forcing consolidation everywhere and will continue to. i think that is not a good thing, but -- david: you expect the movie companies and television companies bought by these technology companies -- barry: i'm not so sure they'll buy them. i think they'll actually supersede them. the thing is that the two companies that are really dominating right now are netflix, grown outside the infrastructure of the entertainment business, and amazon, whose business model absolutely antithetical in a way to what the business model of entertainment has been, which is you put on a show and people like it and the audience comes and they pay you. their business model is to sell suspect descriptions to prime and as a subsidiary, they give you good stuff on the side. david: it worked out well. barry: yeah. david: you are committed to the giving pledge that warren buffett and bill gates developed, and one of the original signers of it. one of your philanthropies is called high line. barry: what the high line was was an elevated railroad track that had not been used for probably 50 years. so what we did this take 10 years and created this elevated park. we thought the first year we would have 350,000 people. 3 million came the first year. last year, 7 million. david: it has been very successful. it prompted you to say if i did this, maybe i can do something else. barry: even stupider. it happened this way. they came and said they were going to tear down a pier because it was falling apart, and would i be interested in building a new pier. i said not if it is a pier. what you are planning to do is boring, but if i could be ambitious about building an island in the park that is not a pier, if you are up for that, i am up for it. of course we started with, you know, kind of a narrower vision. and like all crazy projects, it's boom. david: people can go there? barry: yes, the idea is, i love public art, the idea of making a public space is great. it is a park for people. it is also a performance center. it is almost like walking, you get to it by two bridges, and you leave this city of concrete, mostly concrete, and all this stuff and go to oz. david: what is it going to be called? barry: pier 55. david: not diller park. barry: no. david: you don't want that? barry: no. david: if you were starting your career over again, what area would you go to? barry: i don't know. i have never really had a goal. i've never said i want to be that, so me, it was what ever i was curious about. david: one of the things i'd like to ask people about his leadership. what are you the skills you had as a leader? barry: often blind willfulness. will, and from energy to propel it, but the stronger the will, i think, the more, that at least allows people to follow. david: if you were to say today what you are most proud of what you have achieved with your life, what would you say? barry: probably my marriage. david: ok. barry: you got married in 2001 to a very famous fashion designer. does she give you fashion advice in dressing you or not really? barry: take a look. david: i don't know. do you give her device on internet-related things? barry: no. her instincts transcend fashion, and so anything that comes up, her instincts are pretty damn good, so i listen and she occasionally listens to me. david: ok. so you have a very happy life. barry: i'm so lucky. thank you. that is what i do all the time. david: congratulations for what you achieved and thank you for your time. barry: a pleasure. ♪ mega-media mergers. a $39 billion battle for sky. what hurdles still remain. bracing for new roles. the asset managers are bidding for a last-minute rate from a eu policy. desk the scandal. have you go from loki lender to the subject of one of europe's biggest and most brazen cases of money laundering.

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