Media and technology executives are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in New York City at a conference hosted by private equity firm Quadrangle. Note the word private.

When they meet at the Plaza, they will talk about a ton of different things that their customers, their investors and other readers want to know. I have to apologize for them because they’re not letting in any riff-raff. And that includes reporters who get paid to spend all day figuring out how these people decide what kind of entertainment you want, what kind of technology you pay them for and what deals they pursue with the money that you give them when you buy their stock. This event always excludes press, but that’s no reason not to highlight what you probably are missing because of this. After all, who wants to wait for the 8-K filing?

Some press will be allowed, but it will be an assortment of celebrity journalists who will moderate panels and, according to Peter Kafka, author of “MediaMemo” at News Corp’s AllThingsD blog, will not write about the event (I’m talking about Maria Bartiromo and David Faber of CNBC, The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, etc).

Peter wrote two posts about this, here and here. He also issued me a challenge to sneak into the conference, but horror of horrors, I’m on a deadline that I can’t shirk any longer. So consider this an invitation from me to you to go to the Plaza and catch these guys on the way in and out of the building. It’s a fun way to spend the day, and maybe you’ll learn something interesting.

Here is the agenda, courtesy of Peter Kafka. Below that is a list of speakers. Outrage breeds corrections: I have to amend the record: The list I had posted here of topics is last year’s agenda. My mistake. The list of speakers appearing THIS year still appears below.

2009 SPEAKERS
EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA President, Board of Directors and CEO, Grupo Televisa
DENNIS CROWLEY Co-Founder, foursquare
BARRY DILLER Chairman and CEO, IAC; Chairman, Expedia, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.
BRIAN DUNN CEO, Best Buy
CHARLES FORMAN Founder, OMGPOP
REED HASTINGS Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix
REID HOFFMAN Executive Chairman and Founder, LinkedIn Corporation
CHAD HURLEY CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube
JEFF IMMELT Chairman and CEO, GE
PAUL JACOBS Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
OLLI-PEKKA KALLASVUO President and CEO, Nokia
JASON KILAR CEO, Hulu
LESLIE MOONVES President and CEO, CBS Corporation
ANNE MULCAHY Chairman, Xerox Corporation
JAMES MURDOCH Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe & Asia, News Corporation
BRIAN PHILLIPS CEO and Co-Founder, Thread
DAN PORTER CEO, OMGPOP
BRIAN ROBERTS Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation
PAUL SAGAN President and CEO, Akamai
ERIC SCHMIDT Chairman and CEO, Google
IVAN SEIDENBERG Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications
BIZ STONE Co-Founder, Twitter
HOWARD STRINGER Chairman, CEO and President, Sony Corporation
BEN VERWAAYEN CEO, Alcatel-Lucent
DAVID ZASLAV President and CEO, Discovery Communications

MODERATORS
MARC ANDREESSEN General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
KEN AULETTA Author and Writer, “Annals of Communications”, The New Yorker
MARIA BARTIROMO Anchor, Closing Bell; Host & Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC
JAMES CITRIN Co-Leader, Board & CEO Practice, North America, Spencer Stuart
DAVID FABER Anchor, Reporter, CNBC
MICHAEL HUBER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
BECKY QUICK Co-Anchor, Squawk Box, CNBC
GEOFFREY SANDS Director & Leader, Global Media, Entertainment & Information Practice, McKinsey & Co.
JOSHUA L. STEINER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Anchor, This Week; Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News

(Photo of Barry Diller, who will remain away from prying eyes at Quadrangle’s confab: Reuters)

Few in the media business know dealmaking better than Barry Diller.

So it comes as little surprise that the head of IAC/Interactive was asked about both the Microsoft-Yahoo deal and the AOL separation during an earnings conference call today. He sounded upbeat on both situations.

Here are some excepts:

Microsoft-Yahoo:

One significant thing that happened is we’re not going have to talk about whether or not it’s going to happen anymore [Ed -Amen to that!]. Look, Microsoft will be able to report a greater share in terms of search and get — at least in some minds of the talkers — into being up there in competing terms with Google. And Yahoo doesn’t have to spend anymore money on search. As far as being able to execute, that is very complicated.

For us, I think that the significance is we want, need, must have at least two competitive forces, big competitive forces… I want to have two players out there wanting to get our incremental business, which is, of course, of real value to the companies.

So, I think it’s good for all parties.

AOL:

On AOL, I have a lot of confidence in Tim Armstrong. I think he’s coming there as a great whoosh of energy and real change, I think, for the first time, in my god, in I don’t know how long.

I have high expectations for what he’s going to be able to do.

As far as strategies with the spinoff company or the company’s configurations in the future, we’re talking with them about ideas about commercial relationships and both in the local area and search area. We’ll see what happens.

There is no possibility of really speculating beyond the fact that it’s obvious there are interesting relationships between what AOL does and what aspects of IAC does.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Perhaps the next time we hear from Diller, he’ll be talking about his own deal, maybe how he’s used the near $2 billion in cash he still has on IAC’s balance sheet.

(Photo: Reuters)

Allen & Co’s Sun Valley media and technology conference forbids journalists from attending the morning sessions that executives and other media power players attend before they go out to play and talk about deals in the afternoon. That means the last, best hope they have is to get the low-down from a journalist who was invited.

There’s no pride in it, but at least you hear what happened from a reliable source.

In this case, that’s Ken Auletta, New Yorker media writer and author of several books about the media business. He moderated a panel about surviving in the digital age.

The answer? No answer, Auletta said.

Among the big minds pondering the issue were IAC/InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller, Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger (who on Tuesday told reporters that he’s not worried about how to get people to pay for content) and Liberty Media Chairman John Malone.

Questions asked at the session, Auletta said: How do you “monetize” on the Web? Can you? Is your “brand” an advantage?

Twitter, which is one of the media-anointed darlings of this year’s session, was also up for discussion, Auletta said. According to him, Diller said he was pessimistic about Twitter’s chances of making money. Auletta quoted Diller as saying it’s about “how to advertise in a way that doesn’t feel like an interruption.”

Interestingly, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was in the audience at the session, Auletta said.
In keeping with the spirit of gloom and economic recession hanging over the 27th year of the Sun Valley conference, Auletta also told reporters about a session on finance hosted by CNBC anchorwoman Erin Burnett. The mood? Glum as well, he said.

Who was the most bearish guest there? Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, Chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co. Does that mean asset values are improving, leaving Ross fewer banks and other distressed properties to chase? Or is he just reflecting the spirit of the age?

Judging by the tenor of the conversations at this conference, it’s the latter.

(Photo: Ken Auletta, via Reuters)

Nearly every powerful media and technology executive you can think of will be camping out in the idyllic and affluent ski resort town of Sun Valley this week. Here are just a few…

Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, Michael Larson of Cascade Investments and Ron Meyer, president and COO Universal Studios arrive at the Sun Valley Inn.

Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and her husband Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActivecorp, arrive at the Sun Valley Inn with Eric Eisner.

Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom, arrives at the Sun Valley Inn with his wife Debbie

Chairman of Liberty Media John Malone (and a gaggle of press)

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corporation

Herb Allen, president and CEO of investment bank Allen & Company, which hosts the event.

(Photos:Reuters/Rick Wilking)

The Bald Mountain resort in Sun Valley offers moguls for advanced skiers all winter long. Media reporters show up every July for the other kind of mogul, who lands among the picturesque Idaho mountains on a private jet and has a name like “Rupert Murdoch” or “Barry Diller.”

Reporters are supposed to be part of the scenery — not part of the conference itself.* They must stand around and hope that one of the more than 200 invitees decides to speak to them, and hopefully dispense a few nuggets of news. Fortunately, this week’s weather is supposed to be sunny, dry and warm during the day, and comfortably chilly at night.

For a Sun Valley freshman like this Reuters reporter, it sounds scary terrifying, despite the clement weather forecast. I asked New York Times media columnist David Carr, who covered the conference in 2007, for some advice. Here are some excerpts from our phone conversation;

Why did you go to the Sun Valley conference?

I was sent because (NYT deals columnist) Andrew Ross Sorkin was getting married. I was actually on vacation at the time, (but) Andrew is somebody at the paper who, whatever he asks for, we have to do. I was actually happy to step into the breach.

What kind of reporting do you do?

You’re arguing over real table scraps and taking deep meaning from people sitting physically
adjacent to each other by the duck pond, but you can’t hear what they say… I got a big get. I saw Rupert Murdoch in a parking lot walking and talking to somebody. I can’t remember who he was talking to, but that constitutes a huge get in the context of Sun Valley. (Was it CNN’s Anderson Cooper? We don’t know.)

Where does a reporter fit in to the Sun Valley pecking order?

Your status there is non-status. When people say you spend your time jumping out of the bushes, they’re not kidding. … You’re all confronted by the same miserable circumstances. … The Allen people make it clear that no accommodation at all will be made, and that you are not invited. They’re not nasty about it, they’re not pernicious about it, but they’re very clear about it. (Read about Carr’s close-up shot with a burly security guard if you want proof.)

How do you make news there?

At Sun Valley, you’re more or less handed some lint balls, a couple of twigs and some rocks and told to make a narrative out of that. It can get ugly and it can lead to some fatuous journalism. … If you’re willing to leave your dignity at the door, keep your expectations under control and make sure to manage your editor’s expectations, you’re going to get your moguls in frolic. There’s worse things than that.

We’re not above asking for some avuncular, reporterly advice about how to handle Sun Valley. Leave your comments here!

* Some journalists do get invited, and this year’s elite include CNBC anchorwoman Erin Burnett, interviewer of the high-and-mighty Charlie Rose, New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta, longtime NBC news anchorman Tom Brokaw, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Huffington Post Senior Editor Willow Bay and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

(Photo: The sign says it all for reporters and photographers covering last year’s Sun Valley media and tech conference. Reuters/Rick Wilking)

Allen & Co’s 27th Sun Valley media and technology conference starts on July 7 and ends on July 12. In the meantime, expect media writers to breathlessly report, blog, tweet, photograph and record the event. Why the fuss? There are literally hundreds of people coming who are known to do nothing else than run the universe when it comes to TV shows, movies, telecoms, the Internet and all sorts of other electronic communications. We have lists of all the people who bankroll them as well, along with a list of other interesting people you will find there.

Here, meanwhile, are the big men and women of media and technology who justify the travel budgets that increasingly hard-up news organizations have to put out for your favorite folks in the press corps to hide behind the hedges and hope for a handout that will break news, move markets and excite our editors. Keep in mind: this list is not a guarantee that these people are showing up; it’s just an invitation list (arranged alphabetically by company). We’ll update it as we learn more. (Our boldface names indicate some general viewpoint that they’re the stars of the stars.)

• James McCann, CEO, 1-800-flowers.com.
• Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard Inc. Also Brian Kelly, co-chairman.
• Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com Inc.
• Tim Armstrong, chairman and CEO, AOL
• Michael Ovitz, AMSEF LLC, former uber-talent agent at Creative Artists Agency and former Walt Disney Co executive.
• Gerhard Zeiler, CEO, RTL Group, Bertelsmann AG.
• Bill and Melinda Gates, of the foundation of the same name. Bill, of course, co-founded Microsoft Corp.
• Mark Vadon, executive chairman, Blue Nile Inc.
• James Dolan, president, CEO, Cablevision Systems Corp.
• Leslie Moonves, president, CEO, CBS Corp. Also Neil Ashe, president, CBS Interactive. Also Quincy Smith, CEO, CBS Interactive. (And a former Allen & Co man.)
• Charlie Rose, interviewer and anchor on the Charlie Rose Show
• Anthony Bloom, Cineworld plc
• Richard Parsons, chairman, Citigroup Inc. Former CEO, Time Warner Inc.
• Lowry Mays, chairman, Clear Channel Communications Inc.
• Ralph Roberts, founder, chairman emeritus, Comcast Corp. Also Stephen Burke, president and COO, Comcast Cable.
• Patrick Condo, president, CEO, Convera Corp.
• Jimmy Hayes, CEO, Cox Enterprises Inc.
• Richard Lovett, president, Creative Artists Agency Inc. Also Bryan Lourd, managing partner.
• Michael Dell, chairman and CEO, Dell Inc.
• Richard Rosenblatt, chairman and CEO, Demand Media. He used to work at MySpace’s parent company before News Corp bought it.
• Chase Carey, former DirecTV CEO and Rupert Murdoch’s new No. 2 man at News Corp.
• John Hendricks, founder and chairman, Discovery Communications. Also president and CEO David Zaslav.
• Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO, DreamWorks Animation SKG.
• John Donahoe, president and CEO, eBay Inc.
• Dara Khosrowshahi, president and CEO, Expedia Inc.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (We’ve heard conflicting reports about whether he’ll show. Either way, he’s still on our list.)
• Tom Freston, principal, Firefly3 LLC. Former Viacom executive.
• Martin Varsavsky, CEO, FON
• Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO, General Electric Co.
• Jeff Zucker, CEO, NBC Universal. (GE)
• Ronald Meyer, president and COO, Universal Studios. (GE)
• Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google. Also co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
• Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO, Grupo Prisa. Also Ignacio Polanco, chairman.
• Emilio Azcarraga, chairman and president, Grupo Televisa. Also Alfonso de Angoitia, executive vp.
• Christopher Schroeder, CEO, HealthCentral. Also former CEO of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.
• Cathleen Black, president, Hearst Magazines.
• R. Todd Bradley, executive vp, personal systems group, Hewlett-Packard Co. Also CEO Mark Hurd.
• Barry Diller, chairman, CEO, IAC/InterActiveCorp. Also chairman, Expedia Inc. Also Victor Kaufman, vice chairman, IAC/InterActiveCorp.
• Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman, Illyria Pty Ltd. Son of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch.
• Craig Barrett, former CEO, chairman, Intel Corp. Also Sean Maloney, executive vp, chief sales and marketing officer.
• Jeffrey Berg, chairman and CEO, International Creative Management. Also president Christopher Silbermann.
• Michael Volpi, formerly of Cisco Systems Inc and Joost.
• Eric Eisner, L+E Pictures. Son of former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner.
• Kevin Reilly, CEO, Lamar Advertising Co.
• Michael Fries, president and CEO, Liberty Global Inc.
• John Malone, chairman, Liberty Media Corp. Also Greg Maffei, president and CEO.
• Reid Hoffman, chairman, president of products, LinkedIn Corp.
• Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO, Loopt Inc.
• Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, advanced strategies and policy, Microsoft Corp. Also Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment and devices division, and Henry Vigil, senior vp, strategy and partnership.
• Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp. Also with him is his second son, James Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp’s Europe and Asia operations. Also Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chairman and CEO for its digital media group. Former president and COO Peter Chernin, whose last day was June 30, is coming along too, in tow with CFO David DeVoe and new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta.
• Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning Inc.
• Jorma Ollila, chairman, Nokia Corp.
• Greg Wyler, founder, O3B Networks Ltd.
• Jeffrey Jordan, president and CEO, OpenTable Inc.
• Jeffery Boyd, president and CEO, priceline.com Inc.
• Maurice Levy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe.
• Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Inc.
• Robert Johnson, founder and chairman, the RLJ Companies.
• Jay Y. Lee, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Kenneth Lowe, chairman, president and CEO. Scripps Networks Interactive.
• Mel Karmazin, CEO, Sirius XM Radio Inc.
• Max Levchin, CEO, Slide Inc.
• Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO, Sony Corp. Also Kazuo Hirai, president of networked products and services group; Robert Wiesenthal, executive vp and CFO, Sony Corporation of America; Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment; Hiroshi Yoshioka, executive deputy president, president of consumer products and devices group; and Nicole Seligman, top lawyer.
• Nick Grouf, CEO, Spot Runner Inc.
• Thomas Glocer, CEO, Thomson Reuters Corp, along with Niall FitzGerald, deputy chairman.
• Michael Eisner, the Tornante Company LLC. Former Walt Disney Co CEO.
• Lars Buttler, CEO, Trion World Network Inc.
• Evan Williams, co-founder and chairman, Twitter Inc.
• David Levin, CEO, United Business Media plc.
• James Berkus, chairman, United Talent Agency.
• Brad Grey, chairman and CEO, Paramount Pictures Corp (Viacom).
• Sumner Redstone, chairman, Viacom. Also Philippe Dauman, president and CEO.
• Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO, Vivendi.
• Robert Iger, president and CEO, Walt Disney Co. Also Thomas Staggs, CFO.
• Edgar Bronfman Jr, chairman and CEO, Warner Music Group.
• Donald Graham, chairman, CEO, The Washington Post Co.
• Casey Wasserman, chairman and CEO, Wasserman Media Group LLC.
• Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman, The Weinstein Co.
• Shelby Bonnie, CEO, Whiskey Media LLC.
• Jim Wiatt, William Morris Endeavor.
• Terry Semel, chairman and CEO, Windsor Media. Former Yahoo CEO.
• Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP.
• Anne Mulcahy, chairman, Xerox Corp.
• Jerry Yang, chief Yahoo.
• Mark Pincus, founder, CEO, Zynga Inc.

IAC chief Barry Diller has spent the last year building and then sitting on a pile of cash, which rose to $2 billion in the first quarter — only some $400 million less than its entire market cap of $2.4 billion. Journalists and Wall Street have asked Diller repeatedly how he intends to use the cash. A big M&A move perhaps? A generous one-time dividend maybe? Or share buybacks?

Diller is focused on adding to his empire of Internet units in small increments rather than making major acquisitions. That empire includes dating site Match.com, search engine Ask.com, event planning site evite and many others.

Here’s Diller back in April on the first quarter conference call with analysts: “While I can’t say what we’ll do, obviously, other than invest in the businesses we have, because we believe they’re worthy of investments, relatively small scale, we’re open but I am actually not optimistic about being able to extensively spend the enormously large amounts of cash that we have. It could change on a dime, but there it is at the moment.”

True to his word Match.com said on Tuesday it has signed an agreement to buy People Media, an operators of targeted dating sites for $80 million in cash from American Capital Ltd.

People Media owns 27 dating sites incluing BlackPeopleMeet.com, SingleParentMeet.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com with a combined 255,000 paying subscribers.  IAC said People Media generated $11.6 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) in 2008.

Facebook has been mapping swine flu discussions among its members for the past few days using its Lexicon application, and it’s pretty cool to see how the conversation on Wall posts shot up over the weekend as more and more cases of the disease came to light in the United States.

Lexicon, for those who don’t have to follow Facebook’s every move, is a tool the social networking site uses to follow trends on words and phrases that are being used on “Walls,” the open space on each member’s profile where friends can post comments. Kind of like how you can take the pulse of topics trending up or down in Twitter search.

The chart below, courtesy of Facebook, shows how there were no mentions of the term “swine flu” before the evening of April 23 on any of its 200 million members’ walls, but people start discussing it quite a bit over the next two days, causing a sharp upward spike.

Facebook also mapped the swine flu discussions geographically, showing the percentage of Facebook users mentioning the term on Wall posts in each U.S. state, as well as the U.K. and Canada.

And guess where in the United States swine flu talk was the highest?

Texas, followed by California — two states that share a border with Mexico, where as many as 159 people have died of swine flu. Facebook members in New York, and border states like Vermont, Maine and Washington, were also talking swine flu more than in the interiors of the country. Here’s the map, also courtesy Facebook:

Keep an eye on:

• Today’s Twitters are often tomorrow’s quitters, according to data that questions the long-term success of the latest social networking sensation. (Reuters)
• Time Warner posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit (Reuters)
• Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp posted a quarterly loss, and bought UrbanSpoon.

(Photo: Facebook)

Safe haven. Two magical — and mysterious — words. Cable and satellite companies didn’t fit the safe haven bill in 2008, but 2009 just may be there year.

According to a Reuters story out today, “cable and satellite service providers now hold the promise of strong free cash flow growth as they retain old customers but spend less on deploying set-top boxes and digital video recorders due to a fall in new subscriber growth.”

Remember, however, that before the economy fell apart, a number of investors considered the pay TV industry “recession proof.” The argument went that even in the toughest of times, Americans would stay home and watch TV, saving money on trips to movies or out to dinner.

But this argument overlooked a number of factors that have really undermined the industry. For example, fewer people are moving into new homes, and those that do aren’t likely  to spend their savings on discretionary channels like HBO.

Before jumping on the bandwagon, however, it may be wise to take a look at some of the earnings coming up over the next couple weeks. Start with Time Warner Cable tomorrow, that should be a good gauge of whether these guys really can provide shelter from the storm.

Keep an eye on:

• The age of Obama dawned with a wake-up call to the U.S. television industry to get serious about Internet-based sources of revenue (Reuters)
• Barry Diller’s Internet media company IAC/InterActiveCorp posted a fourth-quarter profit on Tuesday after benefiting from the sale of a Japanese TV shopping channel last December (Reuters)
• Sirius XM Satellite Radio later this month will have to find a way to handle $174.6 million in debt that is coming due (Wall Street Journal)

(Photo: Reuters)

IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller took several groups to task at the Reuters Media Summit, but he reserved special disgust for CEOs at profitable companies who add to the country's rising unemployment rate.

Also targeted by the former Hollywood executive were "incredibly, shockingly stupid" Big 3 auto executives, the Internet's strange and growing dictionary, and Hollywood's lack of creativity.

Diller said companies had a higher obligation, especially in tough times like these:

"The idea of a company that's earning money, not losing money, that's not, let's say 'industrially endangered,' to have just cutbacks so they can earn another $12 million or $20 million or $40 million in a year where no one's counting is really a horrible act when you think about it on every level. First of all, it's certainly not necessary. It's doing it at the worst time. It's throwing people out to a larger, what is inevitably a larger unemployment heap for frankly no good reason."

A few seconds later, he added:

"It's not that you don't want to earn as much money as you can -- it is your obligation, of course -- but companies have obligations beyond that and they certainly have obligations beyond that at certain times, in the times in which they operate. And they also certainly ought to know that meeting and beating expectations is probably yesterday's game and it will be increasingly so, which would be by the way very healthy for companies. Running a company that meets and beats expectations, and that runs their company accordingly, are companies that I would question why anyone would invest in."

Diller was equally confounded by the top three U.S. auto executives, who recently were criticized for separately flying corporate jets to Washington before hearings to request a $25 billion taxpayer bailout.

"It's incredibly, shockingly stupid if you're going, when you think about it. On that count alone I wouldn't give them any money. And not because of any reason other than why would I give money to someone so dumb to go to Washington to ask for money and fly in a Gulfstream. You'd say, 'You're not qualified. Unless you leave, I'm not giving you money.'"

Other topics:

* When discussing social networking: "Think of the bimbo words this Internet has created: portal, social network; I could riff on .... networking, horrible word too."

* Hollywood: "Margins used to be very good in the movie business. They're now, what, 4, 5 percent in a decent year, so where's the joy in that? Is there really a joy in 'Superman 17' or "Iron Man 2'?"

* Movie studio executives: "'Mogul' is yesterday. It just doesn't apply. You use the word 'mogul' and what you do is conjure up the fantasy, the memory of when there were actual movie moguls who made their decisions, believed in what they did, were outsized personalities. There's no outsized personalities in the movie business anymore."

* Indiscriminate spending: "There is a reluctance, even with people who have vast resources. Right now, it just isn't the order; it isn't the day. You're not going to see a birthday party for three million bucks. I don't care how many billions you have or paying Mick Jagger $3 million to come and sing for your birthday. I notice this with my friend. I just notice this as a condition of this period."

To hear the always entertaining Diller riff, go ahead and click on the links...

(Photo: Reuters)