Barry Diller didn’t fare much better. After losing the battle for Paramount last winter, he was uncharacteristically terse. “They won. We lost. Next,” he wrote in a prepared statement for the press. Later, the QVC chairman took aim at CBS, but that deal was also scuttled. Now, Comcast and TCI are buying QVC, and Diller is expected to pack up his cubic zirconia and go home.
Another victim of the take-over wars: Richard Snyder, canned as head of Simon & Schuster by his new bosses at Viacom. But few employees cried when Snyder was forced out. He was said to fire underlings for merely stepping on the same elevator as he. Little wonder Fortune magazine named him one of the country’s toughest bosses.
Chris Whittle might love that kind of publicity, given the pounding he’s taken in the press. The kiddie-TV magnate watched his media empire cable this year. And the Edison Project, Whittle’s bid to privatize education, is still in the kindergarten stage.
