With financial markets in turmoil and the U.S. economy in recession, we asked top entertainment and sports executives at the Reuters Media Summit for some investment advice.

Our question: "If we gave you $50,000, where would you invest?" One rule: They couldn't pick their own company. But then we thought $50,000 was too little for well heeled executives, so we switched it to $50 million. But that seemed excessive. After all, we're talking about personal investments -- so we settled on giving them a cool $1 million.

Here's what they said:

"In a pillow ... You might look at the energy sector, you might see what happens with gold. I've got cousins who work in the banking industry. When I asked them, they told me put it in my pillow. That is your answer."
-- Havas's MPG Chief Operating Officer Steve Lanzano

"I would be in the most conservative mechanisms I could -- treasury bills, whatever, absolutely. The old trite bromide about cash is king? Well, that is true and more true today than ever before."
-- Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig

"I'd put 40 percent of it into exceedingly high-yielding senior debt securities in a diversified array of businesses. I'd put 30 percent of it with a pretty diverse array of fund managers who have a strong track record of navigating choppy times in an array of strategies. And then I'd take the final 30 percent and buy Time Warner stock ... I will tell you why I love Time Warner. OK, so it's trading at 50 percent of book, and these are people who, post AOL, were incredibly aggressive about writing down their book value. So it's trading at 50 percent of essentially tangible books, tangibles you are going to get for a media company. They are not especially exposed to advertising. A lot of their revenues are very sticky. They still own their cable assets. You are getting a free option on the value of whatever happens in the spin-off. They generate, I think, $13 billion in EBITDA right now, if I'm not mistaken. And all their debt obligations are laddered out well into the future so they have no particular financing risk. So if you figure we have three horrible years ahead of us -- and I don't believe we do, but if you do -- they are perfectly fine from a capital point of view for the next few years. And even after all obligations, all repayments, all capex, they still generate loads of free cash flow. Even if you don't think they are particularly well-positioned strategically -- they are currently yielding 2.7 percent, and I see no reason for the dividend to go down."
-- Take Two Interactive Inc Chairman Strauss Zelnick

"If I had a knife, I would probably put it in my mattress. No, seriously, I think if somebody gave you $1 million today, I think my gut tells me that the market would probably be a good place to put it ... But there's a little bit of hesitancy there. Have you reached bottom yet? Who knows. Do you actually have to actually reach bottom before it's a good time to invest? Probably not. But this might be a good time to put money in the market if somebody just hands you $1 million ... I would avoid the financial stocks for now because I'm not sure all the bad news is out. You know, you would think as low as some of those stocks are, that there would be buys, but some of them may not be around at all. So I would stay out of the financial sector. I probably would steer more toward durables and things that people are going to need year in and year out. They can be a bit volatile too, but you know that they are going to be around for years to come. I don't think I would invest in domestic auto stocks today. You know, natural resources and products that are going to continue to be in demand, even some of the medical and drug companies."
-- Regal Entertainment Group CEO Mike Campbell

"Pay off my mortgage would be number one. Yes, absolutely, I would pay my mortgage. And then other than that I would ... because I live in California and my family does it for a living, I think real estate is a great buy right now in California. There's a lot of depressed prices -- business is out there and real estate out there. I like real estate. It will come back."
-- Live Nation CEO Mike Rapino

"It looks to me like there are buys all over the place. I am not an investor or an economist, but just generally speaking, it looks like these companies that we deal with that I know are well managed, companies like Coca-Cola or Disney that are well managed, many of them are just going to be good buys. But I'm not an investor, so what do I know?"
-- NASCAR CEO Brian France

"So 12 years... I took every dime that I had and I put it into tax-free municipal bonds. And then a year ago, but for what I own in Sirius, every dime that I have is either in insured, tax-free municipal bonds or treasuries. So I have been a terrible investor because if you look at the last 12 years, my portfolio has only grown for those 12 years about 3 percent a year. Now if you looked at the stock market during that period of time, I have left an awful lot of money on the table. But if you look, I guess, over the last year, I have done OK compared to where a lot of people were."
-- Sirius XM Radio Inc CEO Mel Karmazin

"I would invest at least 70 percent of it in stocks. I would put a big chunk in Goldman Sachs. I would put some in GE. I would put some in McDonald's. I would put some in new energy, new innovations. I would definitely put a load in Google, and I would put a chunk in Microsoft. So that's split between technology, and I would think about retailers as well. And then I would keep a chunk in cash, 20 percent. And then I'd put 10 percent in governent bonds. But I believe the valuations at the moment, the prices are so disconnected from values of some great companies with tremendous equities that there's tremendous value for the long term."
-- Interpublic's Mediabrands CEO Nick Brien

Would you put your million in the piggy bank?

(Photo: Reuters)

Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take Two Interactive, has a bone to pick with the media: He doesn't like the two words "Financial" and "Crisis." At least not when they are used to describe the current state of economic affairs.

"I don't think we're in a financial crisis," Zelnick said at the Reuters Media Summit. "The use of the word crisis -- I'm loathe to be critical of the media since I'm every bit a part of the media -- but I don't think the word has been especially helpful. We're obviously in a recession and these are very very trying times."

If not a financial crisis, then what? Well, Zelnick offers up a hospital metaphor. 

"We're still seeing the car crash, and the ambulences are still showing up at the scene. Maybe we're in the emergency room, but we're not even in the intensive care unit yet for a lot of these companies. But they will get there."

Call it what you like. Either way, It's not pretty.

(Photo: Reuters)

Take-Two Interactive CEO Ben Feder told us yesterday the company is in formal discussions with a range of parties interested in its “strategic alternatives,” which could involve a sale.

But they didn’t say with whom.

The “Grand Theft Auto” game maker has been fending off the unsolicited advances of Electronic Arts‘ $2 billion offer since March. At the time, Take-Two management deemed the $25.74 per share offer too low, charging EA with low-balling the company ahead of the release of the latest from its hit criminal action franchise. Take-Two traded at $27.52 on Friday morning.

So, who else might be a potential white knight? Time Warner, which has made no secret of its ambitions in the games arena, would be a nice fit, although we’re hearing they’re not in this one. Just this week the company led a $40 million round of financing for online games developer Turbine Entertainment, on the heels of a $30 million investment in April in “Lara Croft” maker SCi Entertainment Group.

A deal to separate from its cable division, which is expected to net Time Warner about $9 billion in cash, frees up some capital for deals in the content sector. They’re competing with NBC Universal and a consortium of investors to buy Landmark’s Weather Channel.

Viacom would be another rational suitor having struck gold with its purchase of “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” developer Harmonix. But the company has all but taken itself off the market for big deals, repeating a mantra in recent months to grow its operations organically.

Beyond that a universe of domestic and foreign buyers, game developers and other media ventures could have expressed interested. Discuss.

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• AOL expands, integrates Platform-A in Europe. (Reuters)
• Zagat’s pulls self off the market after failing to find a buyer to meet its price. (paidContent)
• Sony CEO Howard Stringer speaks to the Times and ends up asking the questions. “Should we get out of some of these businesses?” (NYT’s Bits)

(Photo: Reuters / Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick)

That was fast. Already, in its first week, Grand Theft Auto IV sold more than 6 million copies globally, rocketing past expectations that were hardly modest to begin with.

So what is it with this game? Well, for one thing, it has been praised by gamers and critics alike who hail it as satirical and multi-layered, the equal of films like “The Godfather” or TV shows like “The Sopranos.”

Made by Take-Two Interactive Software’’s Rockstar studio, the game also has its share of detractors, who say it’s too violent and sends the wrong message to kids and young adults. Given the big sales the first week, the criticism doesn’t appear to have hurt its popularity.

But the real question is what does more than $500 million of first week sales of GTA IV mean for Take-Two?

Silicon Alley Insider says this: “Take-Two management has long argued that Wall Street didn’t understand what a hit GTAIV would be. When they did, the argument held, they’d bid the shares up. Time to find out. ”

And the Wall Street Journal points out, “Depending on how the sales figures impact shares of Take-Two, they could strengthen the company’s argument that videogames rival Electronic Arts Inc. needs to raise its unsolicited bid for Take-Two above $2 billion. EA has launched a hostile tender offer of $25.74 for Take-Two shares, which Take-Two has rejected as too low.”

Keep an eye on:

• Cablevision Systems will acquire Sundance Channel from General Electric Co’s NBC Universal, CBS Corp’s Showtime Networks and entities controlled by Hollywood actor and director Robert Redford.
• Clearwire Corp and Sprint Nextel Corp plan to combine their next-generation wireless broadband businesses to form a new $14.5 billion communications company (Reuters)
• Major studios and the Screen Actors Guild broke off three weeks of contract talks without agreement, stoking fears of renewed Hollywood labor unrest after a 100-day writers strike that ended in February (Reuters)
• Five years have passed since the Jayson Blair scandal shook the New York Times and the media world. MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman takes a look at how media organizations have fared in trying protect themselves from a similar situation (MarketWatch).

(Photo: Reuters)

There were indeed fans lined up along the streets of New York City awaiting the launch of  Grand Theft Auto IV on Tuesday morning. According to the experts, they will not be disappointed.

Even the New York Times lavished praise of a sort on the video game from Take-Two Interactive’s Rockstar studio: “‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun.”

Though the vast majority of gamer blogs were even more emphatic in their love of the game, there were bound to be many naysayers if only because “GTA” deals with such edgy content, in this case an Eastern European immigrant who runs drugs, shoots cops and beats up prostitutes. The Parents Television Council thinks retailers shouldn’t carry the game according to Variety magazine.

Keep an eye on: 

- Rupert Murdoch’s $580 million bid for New York’s Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, puts the News Corp chief on a collision course with the U.S. regulators. (Financial Times)

- Clear Channel Communications said a Texas court dismissed a request by a group of banks to delay a trial over funding for the $20 billion buyout of the radio station operator. (Reuters)

- Blockbuster is in talks about taking a stake in a new Viacom-led premium television channel that plans to compete with HBO, Showtime and Starz. (WSJ)

(Photo: Reuters)