“It’s devastating because you just drive anywhere, walk anywhere and you see local destruction,” he added.
Diller also noted that “it is almost impossible” for businesses to survive in New York City following the coronavirus closures and the violence sparked by protests after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis police custody.
IAC, which owns media and Internet brands, is headquartered in New York City. Diller told host Maria Bartiromo that on Labor Day, when the company’s headquarters was reopened, the 750 employees were given the option to come back to the building and only about 5% returned to the office.
“Truthfully, no one comes,” Diller said.
“If you give people the choice, generally, they’re going to say, ‘No. If I’m getting full pay, I am working at home doing whatever I want,’” he added. “What could be better? So that’s true for all offices in New York.”
Diller went on to say that “New York’s not going to get back again until we get clear signals that you can go about without taking these extreme precautions.”
“We’ve got to get Broadway back,” he continued. “Broadway supports [a] huge amount of small businesses and all sorts of derivatives that are just idle.”
He went on to say that “so much of the city” is currently idle and “it is not sustainable.”
“It can’t go on for nine months, which is one of the predictions, is that you won’t get theater back, Broadway back for one year from today,” Diller said. “That’s devastating.”
“Every day it’s just kind of a drip drive of various scares that is just inhibiting life and at a point, [we] got to get used to where we are, but we’ve got to get used to the risks, and we’ve got to take some risks, particularly people who are not vulnerable and get back to full life.”
