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Barry Diller was raised in Beverly Hills and started out in the mail room of the William Morris Agency . He joined ABC in 1966 and was soon placed in charge of negotiating broadcast rights to feature films. He was promoted to vice president in charge of feature films and program development in 1969. In that position, Diller created the ABC Movie of the Week, a regular series of 90-minute films made exclusively for television.
Diller served for ten years as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures Corporation starting in 1972. With Diller at the helm, the studio produced hit television programs such as Laverne & ShirleyLaverne & Shirley was a popular American television situation comedy which ran on ABC from 1976 to 1983. It starred Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams as roommates working in a Milwaukee brewery in the late 1950s. It was a spinoff of Happy Days''. The open ( 19761976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). Events January January 12 UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization January 15 Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is s), TaxiTaxi was the name of an acclaimed American sitcom that aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The show was about the every day life of a handful of New York City taxi drivers working for the Sunshine Cab Company, as well as their abu ( 1978Events January January 1 The Copyright Act of 1976 takes effect, making sweeping changes to United States copyright law. January 1 Air India's Boeing 747 explodes near Bombay 213 dead. January 4 Referendum in Chile supports policies of Augusto Pinochet.), and CheersCheers is the name of a long-running sitcom made by Charles-Burrows-Charles Productions in association with Paramount Television for NBC. The show premiered on September 30, 1982 and had its widely-watched series finale on May 20, 1993, followed by a long ( 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du) and films ranging from Saturday Night FeverSaturday Night Fever is a 1977 movie starring John Travolta based around New York discotheques of the disco era period, the associated music and dancing, and the subculture surrounding such. The movie significantly helped to popularise disco music around ( 1977), and Grease ( 1978) to Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981) and its sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ( 1984) to Terms of Endearment ( 1983) and Beverly Hills Cop ( 1984).
From October 1984 to April 1992, he held the positions of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fox, Inc, parent company of Fox Broadcasting Company and 20th Century Fox. Diller quit 20th Century-Fox in 1992 and purchased a $25 million stake in QVC teleshopping network. Diller resigned from QVC in 1995.
Diller is currently the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, the parent of companies such as Expedia, Home Shopping Network and Ticketmaster among others.