Barry Diller is weighing in on CNN and is open to buying the news organization before it’s too late to salvage.
During an appearance at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival, Diller made the bold claim about the news network.
“Absolutely, I would do it tonight and tomorrow night,” he said, according to TWSJ. “Before they ruin it any further. Hopefully, before it’s extinct, which, I mean, it’s not gonna be.”
Diller added that CNN is “so ripe” for innovation and noted that they have invested in becoming a digital property, but he thinks it needs more investment in its on-air programming.
“So how they do that and navigate also running the surviving businesses…I don’t know,” he said.
CNN is currently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, with Paramount agreeing to buy and merge the company in an $81 billion deal. If the merger goes through, Diller noted that the cuts will be a “savage process.”
Diller is familiar with restructuring and layoffs, as his Interactive Corp. (IAC) is renaming itself People Inc. and making drastic cuts.
“We’re transitioning the necessary staff of IAC into the corpus of People,” Diller wrote in a memo to staff on April 28. “That will significantly reduce our overhead.”
The layoffs are expected to affect several dozen corporate staffers, generating $40 million in annual run-rate cost savings, the company estimates.
In the memo, Diller also said, “I plan to continue to do what I have done here for years as Chairman and Senior Executive—be an advisor, instigator, stimulus, and sometimes irritant to the process. I will also continue to oversee our MGM investment.”
