Telecoms Media Technology: Meet the `daddy cool' of dot coms

His infatuation with home shopping became the butt of jokes, but in retrospect it is clear that he understood two crucial things: the importance of interactivity, and the need to keep a cool commercial head. Unlike so many dot-com entrepreneurs who crashed and burned, Mr Diller never saw the internet as a new market. Rather, he was interested in harnessing its power as a delivery system for services that already existed.

A canny San Francisco economist called Kent Sims recently observed that the dot-com economy was, in fact, "perfectly sound; it's the fluff on top that collapsed". And Mr Diller now looks like the embodiment of that point of view.

One pitfall he has carefully avoided has been trying to push the internet in the media market. One of his first tasks at Vivendi Universal last summer was to look at the billions of dollars thrown into the company's online division. Mr Messier's ambition had been to set up a global network rivalling AOL, but Mr Diller quickly realised it was way too soon to try to deliver films and music on a large scale when most domestic computer users did not have the bandwidth to deal with them. And he closed the online division down.

That is not to say that online entertainment won't be an exciting new prospect one day. Just not yet. In recent weeks, there has been much feverish speculation that Mr Diller might decide to take over Vivendi Universal himself, possibly in conjunction with a major partner such as John Malone of Liberty Media. But it seems more likely that he will bide his time, keeping one foot in the media- market door while focusing on his less flashy but more lucrative core businesses.

"Recently, I resigned my position as CEO of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, which clarified with great punctuation where my work would be concentrated," he said in a letter to investors last week. Mr Diller may have clearer insights than most into the future, but he is still determined to live - and make money - in the present.

Diller thriller

t 1941. Born in San Francisco.

t 1959. Drops out of university. Gets work as a mailroom clerk at William Morris, the talent agency. Becomes an agent.

t 1964. Moves to ABC as a programmer. Becomes vice-president of Prime Time Television for ABC Entertainment.

t 1974. Moves to Paramount Pictures, becoming chairman and chief executive and enjoying success with films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and TV series such as Cheers and Taxi. His second in command is Michael Eisner, now chairman of Walt Disney.

t 1984. Chairman and chief executive of Fox. Responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting and the company's motion picture operations. Fox becomes part of News Corporation in 1985.

t 1992. Becomes chairman and chief executive of QVC Network.

t 1995. Buys stake in Silver King Communications, owner of 39 television stations. Merges Silver King with Home Shopping Network (HSN).

t 1997. HSN acquires Ticketmaster, then the USA and Sci-Fi channels. The new company is named USA Networks. Ticketmaster buys the CitySearch guides.