What started as an informal get-together of the Hollywood elite 24-years ago is now a closed door gathering of corporate titans from around the world. Reuters takes a look at whos hot this year.
 Emilio Azcarraga, Chairman and President, Grupo Televisa S.A. Azcarraga sued Univision a year before attempting to buy it and was outbid by Sabans group. Could a chance meeting with Saban at Sun Valley change things? |
 Robbie Bach, president Entertainment and Devices division, Microsoft Bach, who helped put Microsoft within reach of Sonys grip on video games, now plans to do the same to Apples iTunes and iPod. Can he pull a classic Bill Gates again and dial back Apples 80 percent-plus market share in music to 5 percent? |
 Craig Barrett, Chairman, Intel Corp. As CEO of Intel he guided the world’s biggest chip maker through the dot-com bubble burst. Now as chairman and defacto chief evangelist, Barrett aims to convince others that chips with names like “Xeon” can make PC users think “buy” the way “Pentium” once did. |
 Jeffrey Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com Inc. He conquered the stock market by founding the Internets biggest bookstore and then conquered cyberspace by transforming Amazon into the nets mega-bazaar. Now, Bezos has cast his sites upwardat real spacewith plans to develop a spaceship fleet for passengers. All aboard. |
 Warren Buffett, Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The Oracle of Omaha has pledged most of his fortune to Bill Gates charity, but hes showing up anyway. (Gates was not on the attendee list this year). In years past, hes been known to whip out his banjo to serenade Herb Allen and dole out M&A advice. |
 Jeffrey Bewkes, President, Chief Operating Officer, Time Warner Inc. Under his watch, HBO rose from a distributor of movie reruns to an Emmy winning powerhouse. Can he do the same with the oh-so-1990s AOL? |
 Michael Eisner, former Chairman, CEO Walt Disney Co. Like the college freshman who returns to scope out the scene at the high school parties, the self-confessed micro-manager returns to mingle with the underclassmen. Hell have a captive audienceunlike his CNBC showon Friday when he grills Rupert Murdoch, Sonys Howard Stringer and Barry Diller on stage in a panel. |
 Tom Freston, Chief Executive Officer, Viacom Frestons got the fast growing units of the former company. But the king of (mainstream) cool now lives in the shadow of one of the oldest remaining media moguls, Rupert Murdoch. |
 Michael Dell, Chairman, Dell Computer Inc. He parlayed a college dorm room enterprise into the world’s largest computer maker . But THAT was then. With Dell shares at a 2-1/2-year-low, the former “Entrepreneur of the Year” may be eyeing partnerships to help navigate the PC price decline . |
 Barry Diller, Chief Executive Officer, IAC/InterActiveCorp Diller will be the first to volunteer that he is no longer a `media mogul. ‘ Yet every year, he returns to the Herbert Allens shindig. |
 Chad Hurley, CEO, YouTube Inc. Hurley will be playing Mr. Nice Guy at Sun Valley to ease tensions with traditional media companies. Afterall, YouTube was where everyone who had something better to do on a Saturday evening than watch TV found the best snippets of NBC Universal’s “Saturday Night Live” skits, to the chagrin of the GE-owned network. They eventually signed a deal. Maybe they’ll get some more ideas from the money-pros in attendance on where to begin generating revenue through advertising or media partnerships to support the big investments in computers and network bandwidth required for fans of its mostly short-form comic videos. |
 Robert Iger, CEO Walt Disney Co. Hes done what his predecessor could notbroker peace and a deal with Apple/Pixars Steve Jobs. Whether it was a good idea to let Jobs in the Magic Kingdom in the form of a seat on the board remains to be seen. |
 Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO, DreamWorks Animation SKG Regulators in May dropped an inquiry into Dream Works earnings related to slack DVD sales, but this former Disney chieftain will need to find something to rekindle the Shrek flame. |
 Blake Krikorian, CEO, Sling MediaNot since TiVo has one gadget wreaked as much havoc on media. Slingbox sits atop the cable/satellite box and lets the peripatetically inclined watch their cable TV streamed from their living room to any wirelessly connected laptop or smartphone on the globe, to the horror of programmers. |
 John Malone, chairman Liberty Media There was a time when Malone, whose U.S. cable TV company TeleCommunications Inc. was dubbed the Death Star, owned a piece of just about every big programmer. Hes still got a few tricks up his sleeves these days, including an 18 percent of chunk of News Corp. |
 Leslie Moonves, Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corp. It seemed he pulled the short stick when Viacom split. Yet units he inherited - broadcast TV, radio came out blazing with not-so-slow-growth Internet projects. In six months, CBS has launched an online news and entertainment network. |
 Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, News Corp. Old media was dead until the 75-year-old media high roller picked up MySpace.com for a steal last year. Now, hell stop at nothing until Your Space becomes HisSpace. Prepare to see Microsoft and Google duke it out for MySpaces search business. |
 Michael Ovitz, AMSEF LLC Ive had seven years of no fun, Ovitz once said in 2004 amid a trial to recover some $140 million in severance pay after getting fired from Disney. But with a June ruling absolving the Disney board of wrong doing related to his departure, Ovitz now has a clean slate again. In case youre wondering AMSEF does consulting work for the entertainment industry. |
 Richard Parsons, CEO, Time Warner Inc. The class diplomat outfoxed a corporate raider and tamed internal warring factions. Hell most likely be found by the duck pond with the Google guys, discussing the light at the end of AOLs tunnel. |
 Sumner Redstone, Chairman, Viacom Inc. The super senior of media returns to Camp Allen with progenies, CBSs Les Moonves and Viacoms Tom Freston, in tow. Shares of CBS barely moved since the January split-off, will he be hunting for alternative strategies in Sun Valley? |
 Haim Saban, Chairman, CEO, Saban Capital Group A small stake turned into a big deal in June after a group Saban joined beat out favored winner Televisa in a bid to purchase Spanish-language broadcaster Univision. Could a possible chat with Televisa chairman Emilio Azcarraga at Sun Valley pave the way for convincing Televisa to join the $12.3 billion merger plan? |
  Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google Larry Page, co-founder and president, Google Google co-founder Larry Page together with CEO Eric Schmidt, are likely to spend their time reassuring media moguls that Google remains focused on building software and harbors little interest in creating media content of its own. Could Google line up a deal with Rupert Murdoch to supply Web search technology to News Corp.’s explosively popular MySpace site? Will media executives trip over themselves to do deals with Google, or continue to eye the Web search leader as more of a threat? More importantly, will they commit the massive faux pas and fly into Sun Valley in a jumbo jet, and not a Gulfstream? |
 Lee Scott, president and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Its unclear if Scotts got the best or worst job at the company. Hes put himself in the unenviable spot of cleaning up the companys image as the Bully of Bentonville. Defending the reputation of one of the world’s most admired and despised companies is a full time gig. |
 Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO, Yahoo Inc. Yahoo’s top executive has sought to strike a balance between the largely technology focus of rival Google and his Hollywood media roots as the former head of Warner Bros. studio. With broadband video delivery a hot topic, Semel could look to strike more media partnerships to get access to coveted video programming. Chief Yahoo and company co-founder Jerry Yang will pal along, perhaps bringing a focus on Yahoo’s ambitions in Asian markets. |
Richard Zannino, CEO, Dow Jones & Co. Inc. The new chief of the company that publishes The Wall Street Journal has been on the job for less than a year. |
Martin Varsavsky, CEO, FON Varsavsky is either public enemy No. 1 or a visionary to the media industry. The founder and CEO of controversial Spanish start-up FON, backed in part by the founders of Google and Skype , is seeking to create a worldwide grassroots movement of consumers who share Wi-Fi connections with nearby users. His “Wi-Fi for the masses” campaign, which aims to create a million Wi-Fi hotspots by next year , sets FON up for potential legal battles with major cable and telecom broadband providers who own the underlying Internet connections FON encourages consumers to share. Will some media owners break ranks and join his crusade? |
 Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay With competive challenges from Google in search and payments, the maturing growth of its core online auction business and turmoil in its executive team, Whitman is likely to be looking to find additional partners beyond eBay’s recently announced U.S. market pact with Yahoo Inc. |
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Hmmm, so many moguls, only one of them female.
- Posted by Jonathan Mardukas