Photo: Patrick McMullan
“There's probably no momentum to maintain Barry Diller in his current role,” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay told Bloomberg. And Forbes suggests that John Malone just go ahead and “close the coffin” on Diller's reign at the company.
When the topic of a merger with AOL, newly liberated from Time Warner, came up in the IAC conference call yesterday, Diller played it cool. Too cool, for some people. “I just doubt we have very much interest in it,” he said, causing the Times' Saul Hansell to snipe, “Diller couldn’t do anything even if he was interested,” and note that “entrusting AOL to Mr. Diller may be too much of a risk for Time Warner.” Meanwhile, Diller, who was forced to celebrate his birthday this past weekend modestly, with several old queens, who now doesn't even get to hold his annual pre–Oscar party, and who recently called his Liberty backer “insane” for trying to push him off the board, is toning down his rhetoric. “I do wish Liberty hadn't raised the roof on this in such an aggressive way, but they have,” he whined during his conference call yesterday. Then he slunk off and cried.
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