• by Tom Siebert , Op-Ed Contributor, March 14, 2011

AUSTIN - Longtime media mogul and current IAC chairman Barry Diller was refreshingly frank and almost charming during an interview here Monday during South by Southwest.

Over the course of fast-paced hour, as he was interviewed by CNN's Poppy Harlow, Diller unexpectedly admitted his company's new "Newsbeast" melding of foundering newsweekly Newsweek and fledgling online news site The Daily Beast "may not work." He said "readers would decide" and things would probably shake out one way or another in "six to eight months."

He was even less bullish on News Corp.'s new iPad news publication The Daily, which he castigated for being a single-platform entity, as well as "impossible to download."

Most of all, though, Diller was down on tech stocks, which he said were "puffing up" towards a bubble. He scoffed at certain Internet companies, whose valuations were "mathematically insane," but cavalierly asserted that when they crashed and burned "all the money that's going to be lost is going to be lost by people who can lose money. So who cares?"

] The longest portion of the interview roamed the regions around net neutrality, for which Diller made an impassioned defense and mocked those who said it would stifle innovation. Instead, he charged that "people in the entertainment system want to keep the system the way it is," and "they're going to try and kill Netflix" because it broadens the number of people who profit from the entertainment food chain." He said that the only reason Hulu stands any chance is because of the media companies' fear of Netflix.

As an example, Diller pointed out that, "Right now there are five companies that control all media information," then recounted a discussion with another, unnamed entertainment mogul, about net neutrality, during which Diller claimed he was told, "Fairness has nothing to do with it. We get all the money now. We don't want anyone else to get any money. That's why we are against net neutrality."

Diller said it was reasonable to expect consumers to pay more for additional broadband capacity, the same way they would be expected to pay more for electricity use if they use more power than their neighbor, but to ask a company like Netflix to instead pay more for the bandwidth is akin to "asking a toaster maker to pay for electricity."

The session's most insufferable and depressing moment came after Diller lamented how the American mainstream media was doing the country a disservice by already cranking up the noise chamber on the 2012 election season, pushing other more relevant news aside. Harlow interrupted him to say something along the lines of "Follow CNN for the best political coverage on television. Let's move on." Diller then allowed the conversation to degenerate into a homily about how his wife, Diana Von Furstenberg plays "Angry Birds." Touche, CNN.