Moguls' Sun Valley Summer Camp to Focus on Web, Not Mega-Deals
News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley last year. Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak & Co., talks with Bloomberg's Julie Hyman about the outlook for Allen & Co.’s annual media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, beginning today. Shrinking DVD sales and dwindling audiences for traditional TV have media executives looking to the Web for ways to reach viewers. (Source: Bloomberg)
(Corrects sixth paragraph of story that ran July 6 to say Anderson declined to discuss Sun Valley plans.)
Media moguls at Allen & Co.’s annual conference, usually on the prowl for the next big deal, are paying more attention to small screens as they confront rapidly shifting consumer tastes.
With more customers catching a TV show on a mobile phone or tablet computer, officials and analysts say Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.’s chairman and chief executive officer, Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt and Samsung Electronics Co.’s Choi Gee Sung are eyeing small buyouts and partnerships as they gather today in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Shrinking DVD sales and dwindling audiences for traditional TV have media executives looking to the Web for ways to reach viewers. Choi, head of the world’s largest TV maker, is seeking agreements with sports leagues and entertainment companies for programs he can put on a variety of devices.
“This is a tremendous time in the transformation of the media business,” said Dave Goldberg, CEO of Web polling company SurveyMonkey.com LLC and a first-time Sun Valley attendee. “It seems crazy to think about someone talking about the iPad saving the magazine business. It didn’t exist four months ago.”
Samsung plans to send three executives to the conference, including Choi, according to a list of anticipated attendees obtained by Bloomberg.
Eric Anderson, a vice president at Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung’s U.S. unit, declined to discuss the company’s plans for Sun Valley. In coming months, “we’ll be looking for high- definition types of delivery, or 3-D delivery,” he said.
Mobile devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPad are expanding online entertainment options, growth reflected in Walt Disney Co.’s purchase last week of Tapulous Inc., a maker of music- related mobile games, and Hulu LLC’s introduction of a $9.99 a month online subscription to current and archived TV shows.
Lost Audiences
Traditional audiences are shrinking. The 2009-2010 U.S. TV season marked the first time in history that no regularly scheduled show averaged more than 25 million viewers, according to Brad Adgate, with the advertising company Horizon Media Inc.
Executives at the conference, dubbed “summer camp” for moguls by author and guest Ken Auletta, attend presentations on ideas shaping business. Afternoon activities include yoga, golf, tennis, trap and skeet shooting, fly fishing and family relay races, according to the agenda. In past years, deals including Disney’s $19.5 billion purchase of Capital Cities/ABC were hatched at the conference.
No Bargains
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is on the RSVP list in Sun Valley for the first time in five years. Apple, which sold 3 million iPad tablet computers in three months, wants to sell magazine and newspaper subscriptions on its iTunes store.
Global economic turmoil may also mute merger-and- acquisition talk this year around the resort’s duck pond, a well-known spot for dealmaking, said Hal Vogel, an independent media analyst in New York.
Agreements have been tougher to reach, Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said in a June 17 interview. IAC, the New York-based owner of the Ask.com search site and Match.com dating service, has sought candidates for the past two years and held talks on 20 deals, with valuations a frequent sticking point, he said.
Allen & Co., the boutique New York investment bank, invites executives from start-ups in media and technology to mingle with bankers and moguls. The mixture, along with presentations trumpeting their new business models, can lead to acquisitions or investments.
Goldberg of SurveyMonkey.com said he’s looking forward to frank discussions with traditional media and Internet executives about how to adapt after the recession accelerated change in their businesses.
Past Startups
Goldberg is no stranger to start-up acquisitions. In 2001 he sold his Launch Media Inc. music-and-video website to Yahoo! Inc. for about $12 million. Allen & Co. was an investor in Launch, he said.
SurveyMonkey, based in Menlo Park, California, may follow a similar path. While Goldberg said there are no plans to recruit investors or buyers in Sun Valley this year, the site will either go public or be sold “at some point in time.”
Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon Inc., which offers a daily bargain to shoppers through its website, said he is attending the conference to talk with companies about local partnerships, such as one he reached last week to supply content to the websites of newspaper publisher McClatchy Co.
Local Advertising
Mason, attending for the first time, is scheduled to give a presentation on the lessons Groupon, started in November 2008, has learned about local advertising and e-commerce.
“We’re anxious to work with a lot of these media companies,” Mason said in an interview. “We think there are a lot of interesting partnership opportunities with the bigger media companies where we can help them figure out local.”
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell are all on the Sun Valley RSVP list. MLB this year began providing a pay service for all broadcasts of games outside a customer’s home market on devices including Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 video-game console.
“Everyone is trying to figure out how to make their business models work better,” said analyst Vogel. “The Internet and the digital social-networking factors and mobile phones, it’s all changed the way media is distributed or enjoyed or used.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles at afixmer@bloomberg.net; Sarah Rabil in New York at srabil@bloomberg.net.
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