Forgive the media moguls if they don’t have their usual Masters of the Universe swagger when they touch down in Sun Valley this week for Allen & Co.’s annual conference.
The event, dubbed “summer camp for billionaires,” is the place to be seen for business leaders. This year’s Hollywood contingent includes Walt Disney chief Bob Iger, Comcast head Brian Roberts, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja and Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav, some of the most powerful men in the entertainment space. Only this time, these corporate titans are looking less titanic. The market caps of their companies are a fraction of those of tech giants like Apple and Amazon, which have elbowed into their space by launching streaming services. Now legacy media look like minnows compared with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, all of whom will be at Sun Valley, rocking their sweater vests and enjoying the view from the upper echelons of power.
The conference is a closed-door affair, with tech and media CEOs enjoying talks on the environment and higher education. But between sessions, many of these chieftains are scouring the posh resort, looking for companies to partner with, sell to or buy.
Here are four major issues facing the media barons who once ruled the roost at Sun Valley.
1.) Corporate Slim Fast
The arms race has ended. A few years ago, media companies were all about acquiring rivals, believing that was the best way to add to their intellectual property arsenal and thus compete with the streaming players. How things have changed. Streaming has turned out to be a lot less profitable than the cable business of old, which is a problem given pay TV’s rapidly declining popularity. Traditional companies like Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery have decided that the solution is to spin off the underperforming parts of their businesses — namely their television networks. Disney insists it won’t follow suit, but how long will it hold out? After a decade of merger fever, media companies no longer believe that bigger is always better. That could put a damper on Sun Valley, which is a locus of deal-making. It’s where everything from Time Warner’s disastrous union with AOL to NBCUniversal’s sale to Comcast kicked off.
2.) Sycophancy and Surrender
Donald Trump’s return to office put media companies in a bind. Many operate news organizations, the institutions meant to hold the powerful to account. But Trump’s transactional nature and insistence on fealty has scrambled the dynamic. The Disney-owned ABC News paid $16 million to settle a libel lawsuit with the president, while CBS shelled out the same amount to wrap up another Trump-initiated suit. That legal standoff ended so CBS’ corporate parent, Paramount Global, could get regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance. Shari Redstone, the company’s owner and a Sun Valley mainstay, is skipping the conference this year, but the bruising saga Paramount Global endured is a cautionary tale. The business community hoped Trump’s return would mean the government would rubber-stamp M&A activity. The Paramount Global experience shows that will come only after Trump exacts his pound of flesh.
Even the tech giants aren’t immune to presidential pressure. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai and Cook all attended Trump’s inauguration; Netflix’s Ted Sarandos made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago; and Amazon shelled out a reported $40 million for a documentary on Melania Trump, a decision that must have been made purely out of love for non-fiction film.
3.) The Long Goodbye
Disney has promised to name its successor to Iger by early 2026. That means all eyes will be on Alan Bergman, Josh D’Amaro, Jimmy Pitaro and Dana Walden, all viewed as potential candidates, as they follow Iger around the resort for any sign of who is currently the fairest of them all. As for Iger, who was lured back to his old gig after his first successor, Bob Chapek, flamed out, is this really farewell?
4.) Much Ado About AI
OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang and Tempus AI’s Eric Lefkofsky are some of the artificial intelligence innovators making the trek to Idaho looking to proselytize about the world-changing technology. For now, media overlords are undertaking a delicate dance with AI. They hope it makes everything from special effects to marketing cheaper and more efficient, but they worry that AI makers are using their content without compensation. Does Disney and Universal’s decision to sue AI image company Midjourney for copyright infringement signal a more litigious phase or will Hollywood reach a grand bargain with the Altmans of the world that gives them access to its content for a price?
variety.com
#Moguls #Grappling #Trump #Disney #Succession
