IAC chairman and senior executive Barry Diller said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the entertainment industry could “collapse” if the writers’ and actors’ strikes are not resolved soon.
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: The gears of America’s entertainment industry ground to a near complete halt last week when the union that represents actors, SAG-AFTRA, joined writers on the picket line. A disclosure, some CBS News staff are
SAG-AFTRA members but work under a different contract than the actors and are not affected by this strike. But to understand who is impacted here we are joined by Barry Diller, a former movie studio head who’s currently the chairman of IAC and Expedia. Welcome back to Face the Nation.
DILLER: Thank you.
BRENNAN: You know, we were trying to gauge the economic impact of this. And according to the Milken Institute, it could cause $4 billion in economic damage. What do you think the impact will be? And how long will the strikes last?
DILLER: Well, the problem with this particular- all strikes get settled. The issue for this one is, is when. Because you have almost a perfect storm here, which is you had COVID, which sent people home to watch streaming and television and killed theaters. You- you’ve had the results of huge investments in streaming, which have produced all these losses for all these companies who are now kind of retrenching. So, at this moment, this kind of perfect storm, it’s okay if it gets settled in the next month. But I’ll posit what happens if it doesn’t, and there doesn’t seem to be enough trust and energy to get it settled soon. What will happen is, if in fact, it doesn’t get settled until Christmas or so, then next year, there’s not going to be many programs for anybody to watch. So, you’re gonna see subscriptions get pulled, which is going to reduce the revenue of all these movie companies, television companies, the result of which is that there will be no programs. And at just the time, strike is settled that you want to get back up, there won’t be enough money. So this actually will have devastating effects if it is not settled soon. And the problem with settlement in this case, is there’s no trust between the parties. There are existential issues. Obviously, AI, which I think is just overhyped to death, in terms of the worries that there is and writers are going to be replaced rather than assisted, which is what I think will happen. So- but there’s no trust, you have the actors union, saying, “How dare these 10 people who run these companies earn all this money and won’t pay us?” While if you look at it on the other side, the top ten actors get paid more than the top ten executives. I’m not saying either is right. Actually, everybody’s probably overpaid at the top end. The one idea I had is to say, as a good faith measure, both the executives and the most paid actors should take a 25% pay cut, to try and narrow-narrow the difference between those who get highly paid and those that don’t–
BRENNAN: –I want to talk about what you just said in terms of- go ahead.
DILLER: The only other thing I would do, I would call for a September 1 deadline.There’s a strike deadline. I think there should be a settlement deadline. Because unless it happens by September 1, the actions and you know, of course, who cares about Hollywood, who cares about it. But the truth is, this is a huge business both domestically and for-for world export. And if it is- these conditions- it sounds like I’m crying to the skies. But these conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry.
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