Posted on 07/15/2006 9:21:51 PM PDT by STARWISE
Nowhere is the blurring of distinctions between industries more apparent than in the guest list of an exclusive, invitation-only summer retreat for corporate titans in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Conceived in the early 1980s by banker Herbert Allen as a week-long mingling of Hollywood's elite, the 24th annual gathering kicks off this week with a group of executives unlikely to rub shoulders at other conferences.The informal event, which begins with presentations on Wednesday on topics ranging from healthcare to dependence on oil, was once dominated by media industry chatter.
But this year's guest list suggests the topic du jour will likely be as much about osmosis -- as unrelated businesses double up as media companies -- as it will be about the fresh onslaught of new, disruptive Silicon Valley technologies that have become a fact of life for traditional media players.
The gathering will bring together the likes of Coca-Cola Co. Chief Executive Neville Isdell and Nike Inc. Chairman Philip Knight with conference veterans Time Warner Inc. CEO Richard Parsons, Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone and News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
Warren Buffet, Sen. Bill Bradley
Tom Friedman (L) - NY Times
Chad Hurley (R) - CEO, youtube.com
Jerry Yang - Co-Founder, Yahoo
Candace Bergen
Rupert Murdoch-FNC, etc etc
Jack Valenti, Tom Brokaw
Tom Hanks
Donald Graham - CEO, WashPost
Michael Dell - Dell Computer
Rob Wiesenthal - CFO, Sony
Michael Eisner - former Disney CEO
Monica Crowley (L) - Political Commentator/Host
Well well ...
George Tenet (R)--
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Rest of slideshow of attendees @ link above.
Saving fuel, I see.
How many deals will result .. Ping!
Basically...a major libfest with very minor exceptions.
I love a chummy executive class. The future of capitalism is in good hands...not!
Flathead: The peculiar Genius of Thomas L. Friedman
. . .
The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:
I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins
Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one.
This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.
DONE IN THE SUN
OLD-MEDIA MALAISE SOURS MOGULFEST. . .
Meanwhile, while the weather was sunny, the moods of many of the executives from the so-called "old media" firms was anything but. These execs spent much of their week courting the Internet firms and upstart tech companies such as YouTube.
"Everyone wants to get back into the Internet," said one executive in attendance.
"It's kind of a dour mood. Media stocks are in the toilet, DVD sales are down and movie attendance is down."
MSM moguls agree - Old Media's future looks dim: [Pinch] Sulzberger says that the American newspaper industry is facing its greatest crisis in its 400-year history. RUPERT MURDOCH has sounded the death knell for the era of the media barons. Warren Buffet sees no clear way for papers to stem recent circulation declines or turn Internet operations into highly-profitable enterprises.
You've nailed Mr. President. I think this one needs an entire thread to itself, whadaya think?
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