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)

Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts took time out from strategizing over his company’s reported bid to buy NBC Universal to speak at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. As expected, Roberts declined to comment on any ”specific” deals including NBC. But he did indicate as he has done in the past that content will be an important part of his company’s future and that it is always “prudent” to take a look at opportunities as they come up.

While he remained on message (or is that off message?), Jeff Immelt, his counterpart at NBC Universal’s parent General Electric, was a little more forthcoming, saying the company is considering its options for NBC Universal which could include keeping it.

In this 43 minute interview, Roberts also talked on a range of other topics including the importance of building faster Internet services and gave a demostration of his company’s On Demand Online service which he said will be launching nationally before the end of the year.

Just about everyone who covers media is talking about whether a potential Comcast-GE deal for NBC Universal will kick off a round of consolidation in media.

One executive — one very smart executive — who doesn’t think we’re in for a tidal wave of mergers is Viacom’s Philippe Dauman. (Word is Dauman earned a perfect score on the SAT — at the age of 13). After a speech at Executives’ Club of Chicago on Tuesday, we asked Dauman about consolidation.

“As far as we’re concerned, we ‘re focused on growing our brands, growing our business. We have tremendous brands with a lot of room for growth both in the U.S. and internationally. It’s a big opportunity for us.

“We’ve been involved involved in a lot of consolidation in our corporate history. The record of success in media consolidation has not been all that great for the most part so for ourselves we think the better strategy is to grow organically.”

But what does Dauman think about about the rest of the industry? To that question, he noted that “all of us in the traditional media business have seen the pitfalls” of big mergers, but Comcast may decide to chase a deal because of its unique circumstances. He didn’t elaborate, but we all know that Comcast has longed for more content for quite some time. The structure of the deal reportedly under consideration may work in Comcast’s favor since it doesn’t have to issue any equity.

Dauman isn’t the only smart guy in the media industry of course. Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes made similar though slightly more cutting comments about the prospect of the Comcast-NBC deal last week and about what it said about success of previous big media mergers.

Dauman was more diplomatic.

“There’s a unique set of circumstances here that won’t necessarily in and of itself trigger a wave of other activity,” Dauman said.

If you’ve ever listened to Time Warner chief executive Jeffrey Bewkes speak, you’ll be used to his breezy, languid style. But he sounded even more so than usual on Friday at a conference in Washington D.C.  when asked about the big media story of the year so far: Comcast’s bid to take control of NBC Universal.

Comcast’s bid, led by CEO Brian Roberts, is exactly the opposite of what Bewkes has been doing at Time Warner, where rather than buying he’s spun off the cable assets and hopes to do the same with AOL by the end of this year.  So Bewkes couldn’t resist a little jab at his rival and sometimes partner:

“I don’t want to say anything that would discourage Brian from continuing in this pursuit that he has,” Bewkes said to laughter from the audience.

Bewkes agreed with suggestions that Comcast might be doing this for a share in the growing cable business. 

“They may have concerns about their future in cable and they may want to hedge into what they think is a better long-term business, which is the branded content business. It’s a good business, it’s one that everybody should want to get in. We’re in it, we’re very nicely placed in it.”

But the executive who lived through one of the worst corporate mergers of all time — AOL-Time Warner — is far less supportive of the idea of big combinations, especially in the media space.

“It’s probably true if you look at media deals — not just ours – in the entire industry. In the last 10 or 15 years there’s a lower percentage of deals that have delievered what they said they were going to deliver and have had an actual return on investment versus  what you would find in other more rationally based businesses where you don’t call the CEO ‘a mogul’. So whoever that is doesn’t get lost thinking about what they’re going to write in tomorrow’s paper.”

And while many journalists, investors and Wall Street analysts continue to try to decide whether this deal makes sense, Bewkes has a simple test.

 ”If it’s a synergy idea that takes a week and nine articles to fully plumb the mysterious depths, you’re probably wrong.”

Nice to know someone feels our pain.  

What’s going to happen to MGM?

On Tuesday, the Hollywood studio announced it was replacing its chief executive Harry Sloan with a team that includes a turnaround expert. It’s a well-known fact that MGM, which is owned by private equity firms and Comcast, has struggled with a massive debt load. It has payments due on $3.7 billion of debt and the future isn’t looking too good, given the down market and shrinking DVD demand.

Media and entertainment industry analysts believe MGM won’t last much longer as an independent studio, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times:

Most industry watchers believe that MGM will not survive much longer as an independent studio and is likely to be sold to a bigger media company such as Time Warner Inc. or merged with another movie and TV studio like Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Qualia Capital, a private investment firm headed by Amir Malin and Ken Schapiro, is actively looking at MGM, said a person with knowledge of the situation.

Who else could be a buyer? There were rumors earlier that investor Carl Icahn, who is a major shareholder in Lions Gate, was buying up MGM’s debt in the open market with the intention of forcing a merger between the two studios.

Then, there’s Comcast, which already owns a stake in MGM and could potentially be interested in owning MGM’s rich content librabry, which includes the James Bond films. Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke recently wrote that investors worry that Comcast will make a splashy acquisition soon. Could this be it?

Keep an eye on:

• Travel Channel bids were due on Tuesday. Who’s going to buy it? (CNBC)
• Virtual cooking is a hit on Facebook. (Los Angeles Times)
• The New York Daily News bumped the Wall Street Journal off most-visited sites list. (Editor & Publisher)

Photo: Actor Daniel Craig. the current James Bond/Reuters

Comcast made a bold $54 billion bid for Walt Disney Co. in 2004. It failed — but there are those who wonder today if the cable provider might be considering a play for another media giant.

Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke takes a look at this idea in a story that recounts the speculation about Comcast’s desire to be a major player in Big Media.

Stockholders, who have watched the value of Comcast shares shrink to historical lows, might not be so thrilled about such a move.

Investors worry that Comcast might use growing cash reserves to go after names such as Viacom Inc, owner of MTV Networks and Paramount film studio, or Time Warner Inc, which owns CNN, HBO and Warner Bros despite little evidence of such a move, said analysts.

But then again, the man who fended off Roberts’ move for Disney back in ‘04, Michael Eisner, still thinks there’s a chance Comcast is interested in owning content. The former Disney chief told trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable last week:

Comcast won’t just be sitting there; they may want to recapture their dreams of going after Disney, but not with Disney specifically.

Does Eisner know something we don’t? He says he has “zero information”.

In the meantime Comcast could, of course, use its free cash for anything from a share buyback to a healthy boost of its dividend. Sound economic strategy for sure, just not nearly as juicy as a mega merger.

Keep an eye on:

• Readers Digest may file for Chap. 11 bankruptcy (Reuters)
• The Financial Times is adding paid-content and its rivals are following suit (New York Times)
• Universal Pictures’ chiefs Linde and Shmuger may be under fire for not delivering summer hits (Los Angeles Times)

Comcast is cutting the price of its super fast 50 megabits Internet access service to $116.95 a month in most markets, less than year after launching the service at $139.95.

In fact, now that Comcast has started bundling the service with its phone and video services, subscribers will be able to get the so-called ‘Wideband’ even cheaper that $116.95. Wideband will effectively be priced at $99.95 if it is bought with one of those other services from the largest U.S. cable operator.

The new pricing strategy kicks off nationally on June 15.

Comcast has been aggressively rolling out its version of the wideband cable technology and says it now reaches around a third of the homes its systems pass in the United States.

Many Wall Street analysts think super-fast Internet access could be the killer app for cable companies rather than their traditional dominance in video. The cable operators meanwhile are concerned that programmers are giving away TV shows for free on Hulu and other websites. Their key concern is the fear of ‘cord-cutting,’ meaning that many users will end up canceling their cable TV service.

But the analysts point out that cable operators will continue to have some leverage as they’re well positioned to offer the kinds of Internet speeds that subscribers will need to deliver high-definition video pictures.

(Photo: Reuters of Austrian skier Strobl)

With the end of the economic meltdown so tantalizingly close, and stock markets pricing in the spring thaw, The Consumerist’s annual Worst Company in America competition is just the tonic DealZone readers need to keep their prized sense of perspective appropriately tickled.

“It’s the bailouts versus the monopolies!” the Website’s news release rings out:

The annual 32-company battle royale has whittled itself down to the “final four”: Bank of America, Comcast, Ticketmaster and AIG. One of these disastrous companies will go on to join Halliburton (2006), RIAA (2007) and Countrywide (2008) as “The Worst Company in America.”

AIG and Ticketmaster face-off May 4th, Bank of America and Comcast face-off May 5th, the victors of those contests meet May 6th, and then the “winner” is announced May 7th.

The competition began with 32 companies separated into four brackets. Companies competed in head-to-head match ups and the winner of each match up was determined by the vote of Consumerist readers. The 32 companies included: AIG, Target, Peanut Corp of America, American Express, Walmart, HP, T-Mobile, Best Buy, Ticketmaster, TWC, Apple, United HealthCare, Verizon, Sprint, Home Depot, Citibank, Comcast, DirecTV, US Airways, Capital One, General Motors, United Airlines, Sears, Chase, eBay/Paypal, GE, Dell, Chrysler, AT&T, Circuit City, Starbucks, and Bank of America.

“AIG and Bank of America paved their way to the final four with exorbitant executive compensation packages, reckless management, and tax payer bailouts. Ticketmaster and Comcast drew the ire of voters because they were viewed as monopolies that consumers were forced to deal with,” said Meghann Marco, Consumerist.com.

Deals of the Day:

* French retail giant Carrefour has signed a preliminary memorandum of intent to buy 75 percent in Russia's Seventh Continent and will make a final offer on May 15, a newspaper reported. Sources told Reuters last month that Carrefour had provisionally valued its takeover target at $1.25 billion.

* Commodity trader Noble Group raised its offer for Australian miner Gloucester Coal to A$490 million ($361 million), in a bid to scupper Gloucester's planned deal with rival Whitehaven Coal.

* Sanofi-Aventis announced a 200 million euro ($265 million) plan to convert a factory to biotechnology, highlighting efforts by the world's fourth largest drugmaker to penetrate the growing sector.

* Finland's Metsaliitto said it will sell its 49.9-percent stake in state-controlled renewable energy firm Vapo to a consortium for 165 million euros ($218.4 million) to bolster its balance sheet.

* Azrieli Group said it submitted the winning bid to buy a 4.83 percent stake in Bank Leumi from Cerberus Capital Management and Gabriel Capital Corp.

* Zotye Auto, a Chinese maker of sport utility vehicles (SUV), is raising about 720 million yuan ($106 million) by selling a 20 to 30 percent stake to a private equity fund-led consortium, aiming for a Shanghai initial public offering later, sources said.

* Saab Automobile, the Swedish unit of struggling U.S. carmaker General Motors, said it was not in talks with Italian peer Fiat SpA about a takeover.

(PHOTO: Manchester United's John O'Shea (R) celebrates his goal against Derby County during their English League Cup soccer match at Old Trafford in Manchester, northern England January 20, 2009. Photograph taken on January 20, 2009. REUTERS/Darren Staples)

While we were at The Cable Show last week, Comcast filed a documents with securities regulators detailing its 2008 executive compensation. The filing showed that Chief Executive Brian Roberts received $23.7 million in 2008 up from $20.8 million in 2007 but below his 2006 payout of $26 million.

Roberts, as the AP points out, has long been criticized by shareholders for the size of his pay package. His increase comes after Comcast shares fell some 7.6 percent in the calendar year 2008, but this outperformed most of the major market indexes, which fell between 30 to 45 percent last year.

In February Roberts and other executives agreed to forgo a pay rise in 2009 and cut back on personal benefits, including a previous agreement which had guaranteed the payment of his base salary and cash bonus to his heirs for up to five years after his death — a so called ‘golden coffin’ package.

According to Comcast’s compensation committee, Roberts and other top executives are compensated in line with other executives in similar sized companies both in the entertainment/media sector and beyond.

As Comcast filed on April 3rd, it was not included in the New York Times/Equilar Special Report on executive pay which ran in Sunday’s paper. The Times report was based on data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives that had filed their annual proxies by March 27 and whose companies had revenue of at least $6.3 billion.

Based on the Times’ chart of top earners, Roberts would have come in as the 13th highest paid chief executive — just below the newly appointed Motorola co-CEO Greg Brown ($24.2 million) and above Lockheed Martin chief Robert Stevens ($22.9 million).

In the entertainment/media sector Roberts came in third behind Walt Disney’s Bob Iger ($51.1 million) and News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch ($30.1 million). Motorola’s other co-CEO Sanjay Jha was at the top of the overall list with $104.4, mainly made up of stock options used to lure him to join the company last year from Qualcomm.

(Photo of Roberts/Reuters)

Reuters and others are reporting that Amazon.com is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle electronic reader on Monday.

While the Kindle is a tiny part of Amazon’s web retail business, it gets a ton of buzz, and a new version has been much speculated about on the web.  The question is whether mainstream consumers are really ready to buy it, particularly in the current economic environment.

“We think Kindle will be an interesting product which the high-end consumers love, particularly investment bankers traveling in from Connecticut,” Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay says in the Reuters story. ”We don’t think it will be a large penetration object any time soon.”

To help with mainstreamers, the Wall Street Journal writes,  Amazon is also expected to say it has acquired a new work by best-selling novelist Stephen King that will be available exclusively, at least for a time, on Kindle.

“Many publishers have long feared that Amazon would persuade a major author to write for its Kindle on an exclusive basis. Although retailers such as Barnes & Noble Inc. have long published their own books, they have struggled to find distribution outside their own stores. But Amazon has already proven that it can sell as many Kindles as it can manufacture. Indeed, Amazon is working to overcome the supply problems that have plagued the device,” says the Journal.

We won’t know all the details until later today, so stay tuned. For now, engadget has what appear to be some early images of the new version.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has a piece today on Plastic Logic, which also makes an electronic book device. The article says that Plastic Logic will “announce partnership deals on Monday that it says will bring a number of major publications to its planned device.”

Keep an eye on:

• Satellite mogul Charles Ergen made an unsolicited offer late last year to take control of Sirius XM Radio Inc and was rebuffed, according to people familiar with the situation to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com)
• Most media companies are cutting back on investments but Comcast’s SportsNet is putting money into studio improvements and new programming and revamping its Web sites to bring in more national advertising dollars (NY Times)
• Former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant received a “whole lotta love” at the Grammy Awards Sunday, winning five prizes including album of the year for an acclaimed collaboration with bluegrass queen Alison Krauss (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)