Politics & Power Quote by Barry Diller

A cold little mission statement disguised as a joke: give the audience sex, or at least the gravitational pull of sex, and they will reliably show up. Barry Diller isn’t confessing personal cynicism so much as summarizing the operating system of commercial TV as he learned it - a medium built on anticipation, implication, and just enough transgression to feel like you’re getting away with something in your own living room.

The line works because it’s blunt about the bait while sounding almost managerial about the constraint. “Obviously, we can’t” nods to broadcast standards, advertisers, affiliates, and the constant threat of backlash - the cultural leash that keeps mass entertainment “respectable.” Yet the real directive lands in the second half: “let’s always keep it in mind.” That’s the executive’s version of an artist’s muse. It means engineer everything around the near-miss: the will-they-won’t-they, the tight framing, the charged silences, the episode-ending kiss that resets by next week. Sex becomes not content but a pacing tool, a ratings metronome.

Coming from Diller - a programmer-executive who helped shape modern network sensibilities - it reads as both diagnosis and strategy. He’s pointing at a public that wants intimacy without consequences, then outlining how television monetizes that desire: sell the promise, ration the payoff, repeat. The cynicism is the point, but it’s also an uncomfortable compliment to the audience’s honesty. We’re not watching for plot; plot is the socially acceptable wrapper for wanting to look.