With the white noise of MicroHoo ringing in everyone ears, we asked Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen why he thinks “royal weddings” — idylic mergers between multi-billion dollar companies — in Silicon Valley are few and far between.

You know, because, giant Deathstars are better for everybody, right?

The answer: Even though some merger adviser is probably ringing to talk about “strategic alternatives” (we suppose), Silicon Valley entrepreneur-types are, like, you know, obsessed with minding their own beeswax.

I think the Valley is all about innovation and about charting your own course. And companies seeing opportunities for themselves. I’m focused on how do I continue to drive great new products and deliver value to my shareholders.

I think the zen or the DNA of people there is all about growth and all about driving new innovation.

He was speaking in New York at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecom Summit, where he spoke of his own company’s appetite for mergers.

(Photo: Reuters)

With one high-profile female Silicon Valley CEO swapping her executive office for a more political challenge, another — VMWare co-founder Diane Greene — says she’s sticking around.

I have built VMware. I am really excited about where we are going to be able to take this company and I am quite engaged in doing that. I am here for the foreseeable future.

I feel like we have been through several stages in VMware’s existence. Products-wise we are in a position now where every CIO appreciates what we do and knows that they can trust us, and puts us in a position where we have a pretty exciting future.

However, after running the show at VMWare since founding it a decade ago, its hard to avoid the comparison between Green and Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay.

Whitman stepped down this year, sticking to her mantra that any CEO in charge for more than 10 years has overstayed their usefulness.

Whitman has since been running her family’s foundation, and continues to be talked about as a possible candidate for anything from the California Governor’s seat to a higher office in Washington.

Not so for Greene. At the Reuters Technology Media and Telecoms Summit, she stated plainly…

…I am not planning to be Governor of California.

(Photo: Reuters)

Advertising in its many forms takes the lead on the fourth day of the Reuters Media Summit in New York. Speakers include David Sanderson, head of Bain & Company’s Global Media Practice, where he helps a wide range of clients drive significant improvement in financial performance.

His view will be contrasted by Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer at Group M.

Finally, the Summit will host John Riccitiello, chief executive officer of Electronic Arts, the leading maker of interactive game software, a platform that increasingly is a home for advertising.

Here are some of the highlights from Tuesday:
- Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said he expects the league to set revenue and attendance records in 2008 despite the specter of a long-awaited report on players’ use of banned performance-enhancing drugs.

- The commissioner of U.S. Major League Soccer, Don Garber, said soccer star David Beckham should make $250 million from his five-year deal with Los Angeles Galaxy.

- Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell said it was unlikely the FCC’s planned closer look at cable TV subscriber levels would trigger tougher regulations of the industry.

- MTV Networks plans to make every clip from every episode of hit animated comedy “South Park” available for free online next year.

-  Discovery Communications expects its upcoming Planet Green cable channel to expand its reach within three years of its 2008 launch, with potentially 70 million homes hooked into its eco-friendly programming.

(In addition, check out video interviews with these executives)

Keep an eye on:

• Warner Music, the world’s third-largest record company, posted a fall in quarterly profit, hurt by an industry-wide slump in CD sales. (Reuters)
• Broadway theaters and the striking stagehands union have reached a deal to end a strike which has kept most of the premier U.S. theater district dark since Nov. 10. Performance for all shows could begin today. (Reuters)
• “Metal Gear Solid 4″ is not only one of the most eagerly awaited games for Sony’s PlayStation 3, it is also among the last of a dying breed — games designed exclusively for one gaming console. (Reuters)
• The New York Times newspaper has frozen new hiring and has cut a small number of newsroom jobs as it tries to rein in spending. (Reuters )

(Photo: Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL 08 video game)

Former NBC chief Randy Falco has some advice for TV and advertising industry bigwigs: be more experimental and mindful of the opinions of your viewers and customers.

Falco, now Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL LLC, told the Reuters Technology Media and Telecoms Summit that TV and advertising decisionmakers must have the “guts” to listen to the opinions of their customers, especially as the ways they experience media change.

I came from a business [where] you were a one-way publisher. And so are advertisers by the way. They came up with a show… and you just published it. You didn’t expect to hear back from your customers (or) your viewers. It was a supply economy, and we are so much now into a demand economy.

[Consumers] are not just going to sit there and take it. They are not just going to sit there and watch a 30-second spot if they have an alternative. They are in control. What’s great about the Internet is that it is a constant two-way conversation, and if you have guts enough to listen, you can iterate your way to sucess.

The broadcast side of the business has to open itself up to its customers. Advertisers have to open themselves up to customers, and they have to let go a little bit. Everybody wants to hold to everything and the Web is telling them that in order to be successful, you have to let go. You have to get it out there and let people play with it.You have to let people tell you what they think of it. And you actually have to listen.

Technology spending growth in the United States is likely to lag the pace of 2006 growth, due to caution by corporations, according to David Goulden, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at EMC Corp.

“There will be an increase in spend in U.S. enterprise but it won’t be as large as we saw last year,” he said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

Goulden said he still sees, industry wide global information-technology spending this year growing 5 percent to 6 percent from 2006, about the same as last year’s rate. But in the U.S. he is seeing a low-single-digit growth right now.

“We are talking about a few percentage point change here, but of course it’s a big market,” he added. “There is a little bit of caution right now. As people implement what they bought last year, (there is) a little bit of caution at the beginning of the year about what they are going to spend in 2007.”

Read Reuters full interview with Goulden here.