He may have run Paramount, built the Fox television network, and just pulled a buyout offer for MGM Resorts, but media and tech executive Barry Diller says he’s not done yet.
He has a “motor inside” that just won’t stop, Diller said Thursday at Business Insider’s The Long Play in New York.
“I’m still curious,” he told Peter Kafka, BI’s chief correspondent. “If I can be engaged and hopefully be useful, then OK.”
“At some point, someone will tell me in some masterful way, either it’s over or, in another way, it will be over,” he said, alluding to the final bow. “I will either pay attention, or not, and they will drag me out to the heap.”
Diller’s desire to keep leading companies means staying on top of major technological changes, such as AI.
“I am, at any point, ready to change my mind based on events of that moment,” he said. “I don’t think whatever the past process is should educate that,” he said.
At People Inc., Diller has overseen multiple strategy shifts. The company is evolving from print to a digital business, and like other publishers, it’s had to adjust to significant Google traffic declines.
On Thursday, People Inc. laid off 195 workers, according to a memo from its CEO, Neil Vogel, which Business Insider viewed. The company cut workers from its “print and legacy web businesses,” while adding hundreds of staffers in other business areas that it hopes to grow, the memo said.
Diller told Kafka that People’s layoffs were a sign that its print business was in a “steady kind of decline,” and that it was shifting its workforce to focus on new business priorities.
Diller’s time isn’t solely focused on business: He’s also worked on various public-interest projects, such as developing New York’s High Line and Little Island alongside his wife, Diane von Fürstenberg.
On Thursday, he teased a coming project for Los Angeles, too, but wouldn’t reveal details.
Despite taking joy in seeing satisfied attendees at Little Island on the Hudson River, Diller said he’s not focused on his public legacy.
“I don’t do legacy,” he told Kafka. “If you say legacy, it kind of means all you’re doing is looking backward, and that’s just boring to me.”
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