THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

At ABC Entertainment, he created the “Movie of the Week” as well as a genre called “the mini-

series.” As CEO of Paramount Pictures, he developed a cadre of executives (including Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dawn Steel) who went on to run companies and studios of their own. But it’s the Fox Broadcasting Co., launched in May 1986, for which the 47-year-old Barry Diller will ultimately be remembered. If it succeeds (and the odds look good), he will have the last laugh on naysayers who ridiculed his dream of a fourth television network.

Arriving at Twentieth Century Fox in 1984, this elegant, intimidating UCLA dropout (yet another graduate of the William Morris mail room) proved to be the perfect chairman and CEO for Rupert Murdoch--owner of Fox’s parent company News Corp. and a man whose belief in vertical integration (the linking of production and distribution) is even greater than Diller’s. For Murdoch, the Fox Broadcasting Co. was not only a way of establishing a broadcasting toe-hold in his adopted country, but also a way of feeding his far-flung media empire.

After losses of $125 million in the first two years, this high-stakes gamble is paying off. With hits such as “America’s Most Wanted” and “Married . . . With Children,” the network is expected to turn a profit this season, two years ahead of schedule. Projected advertising revenues are triple those of last year. That’s bad news for the Big Three--NBC, ABC, and CBS--whose audiences already have been eroded by the growth of independent stations, pay cable and home video. Diller and company are evidently another force to be reckoned with.

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.