Sun Valley, Idaho – The sun always seems to shine in Sun Valley, a pristine mountain resort, when the top brass from media and technology companies convene every July for a deep-think retreat hosted by investment banker Herbert Allen.
But it’s the darkest of thoughts that are racing through the minds of the media power elite as they move among high-level meetings, golf and family activities: How can they survive the rapid-fire technological changes that are transforming their industries and changing the way people get news and entertainment? Conveniently, many of the power players who control major Internet and technology companies will also be on hand at Sun Valley to discuss strategies for the future of distributing video, music, text and other content through the Internet, Web-enabled cellphones and other digital means.
“Bucolic it may be, but this is a chess board,” said Heather Goodchild, chief media analyst for the Standard & Poor’s credit-rating service. “You’ve got major, major players there thinking through some big strategic questions.”
This year’s five-day conference, whose proceedings are private, formally kicks off today. Attendees are among the most powerful figures in media, including:
Facebook is a leader in the big trend of social networking, which allows people to post profiles, share content and interact with friends over the Internet.
Media companies are intrigued by Facebook and companies like it because they represent an efficient, fast and potentially low-cost way of accumulating audiences and attracting ad dollars online – just as off line media outlets such as newspapers, radio and TV struggle to keep the audiences they still have.
Murdoch pulled off what many consider a master stroke two years ago by acquiring the online social hangout MySpace for what turned out to be a bargain price of $580 million. Now, Murdoch appears to be having second thoughts about holding on to MySpace, which had been considered the prize catch of social networking.
Reports have circulated that he would like to swap MySpace for an ownership stake in Yahoo, and in early June he lamented to an interviewer from The Wall Street Journal that online users weren’t necessarily abandoning newspapers for My Space.
“I wish they were,” Murdoch said. “They’re all going to Facebook at the moment.”
