Barry Diller said he does not get this whole “visionary” thing.

The chief executive officer of USA Networks and latest guest of the University Lecture Series, Diller said that although the compliments are flattering, he is not so sure that they are warranted.

“The first time that someone called me a visionary I thought they were talking about my eyesight,” said Diller, speaking to a standing-room only crowd Thursday in Studio A of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications II.

“Everyone is just so nice to me,” he added. “But when I hear the word icon, I think fossil.”

Diller, who has amassed a resume that includes building the Fox network from the ground up, working with QVC and the Home Shopping Network as well as owning Expedia.com and Ticketmaster, offered opening comments before taking questions from the audience.

Although he held his first major media position at ABC as director of prime time operations, it was an earlier job as mail boy that gave him his first taste of the rough and tumble world of Hollywood.

“I was driving the CEO of the company to one of the studios when he told me to stop short,” Diller said. ”Since he is about 5-foot-9, he fell into the well between the seats. He just looked up and told me ‘Get out of my car.’ So I did.”

He said that the media and entertainment world is in the midst of a “radical revolution” that shows no signs of decline. Upheavals of generally accepted norms and trends of business consolidation have resulted in an increase of interactivity and consumer options in the entertainment industry.

“These are the big-ticket issues of our time,” he added.

Questions from the audience ranged from why he allowed the World Wrestling Federation to leave his USA Network, to new television channels that he is developing through his new job as head of Universal Studio’s film, television and theme park operations.

“The thing I most like to do is sit in a room with five of my executives and scream at each other,” Diller said of coming up with programming ideas.

He also spoke at length about his role as a movie executive and his pride in USA Films, the 3-year-old independent movie outlet that has released “Being John Malkovich,” “Pitch Black” and Best Picture nominee “Gosford Park.”

He said that “Traffic,” which won director Steven Soderbergh an Oscar for Best Director, was turned down by every company in Hollywood before USA decided to take it.

“It was a big fight and we said yes to it,” he added. “In the movie industry, you cannot really abdicate the editorial role.”

Diller was introduced by both Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw and Newhouse Dean David Rubin.

Elysa Greenberg, who attended the lecture for a class, said that Diller was not only informative but proved to be less “businessy” than she thought he would be.

“He was really down-to-earth,” said Greenberg, a junior speech communications major.

Yang Yu, a television, radio and film graduate student, said that she hoped Diller would have expanded more on the questions that were asked, especially those involving the interactive media and his experiences in the entertainment field.

Audience members were invited to meet Diller personally in a reception immediately after the speech, although he only had time to answer a few more questions before leaving.

With all of the praise heaped on him in the publicity before his appearance and in his introductions, Diller told the audience that if anything has gotten him to the point he is at today, it is curiosity.

“My life has been about curiosity,” he said, “and following that curiosity.”

Published on February 21, 2002 at 12:00 pm