Viacom Inc Chairman Sumner Redstone and BET Holdings Inc founder Robert Johnson, in between white-water rafting, fly fishing and golfing breaks, sat down in Idaho last July and talked business.
Four months later, Viacom, which owns the CBS television network, announced that it would pay US$2.9 billion in stock and assumed debt for the company that controls Black Entertainment Television, the top cable-TV channel aimed at black people.
For years, New York investment firm Allen & Co's summer conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, has proven to be far more than a playground for the very rich and famous -- Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Rupert Murdoch among them. The five-day, invitation-only conference, which begins Monday, is an incubator for big media transactions.
"It's a casual atmosphere with just about every heavy hitter in the industry there, and this is an industry that acts like there's always room for another deal," said James Goss, a media analyst with Barrington Research Associates in Chicago.
It seems a major transaction is hatched at Sun Valley most years.
The biggest was Walt Disney Co's US$19 billion purchase of Capital Cities/ABC, announced shortly after 1995's conference.
Wayne Huizenga, the Florida billionaire who co-founded the Blockbuster Video chain, met Viacom's Redstone at Sun Valley in the early 1990s, a relationship that culminated in Viacom buying Blockbuster in 1994 for US$7.7 billion.
In 1999, Terry Semel, then co-CEO of Warner Bros, met Yahoo! Inc co-founder Jerry Yang at the Allen & Co retreat. Two years later, Semel was hired to run Yahoo.
Allen & Co, controlled by billionaire Herbert Allen, is mum on the details of the gala. In step with the firm's normal routine, spokesmen decline to disclose the guest list, the companies scheduled to make presentations or even the exact dates of the 19th annual conference.
Reporters are kept at arm's length and attendees are instructed by Allen himself not to disclose any details -- or they won't be welcome back.
On Monday, about 400 guests and their families will begin descending on the 60-year-old Sun Valley resort, according to guests who received invitations.
The agenda includes meetings all morning and then a myriad of activities including mountain-bike riding, hiking and panning for gold -- or huddling and mapping out a big transaction.
Last year, while Redstone and Johnson were laying the groundwork for their transaction, Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, golfed with Allen & Co Chairman Donald Keough. Barry Diller, head of USA Networks Inc, went for a bike ride, after he drove newspaper magnate Katharine Graham in a golf cart to her condo. Computer company founder Michael Dell went shopping in Ketchum, Idaho.
And money manager Mario Gabelli hopped on a bus taking guests to white-water rafts a couple of hours north on the Salmon River.
Allen & Co picks up all expenses, raising concerns among some of the invited guests that the end may in sight for this pricey gathering.
Among media companies that are on the acquisition prowl are AOL Time Warner Inc and Viacom.
AOL Time Warner Chief Executive Gerald Levin, who attended the conference last year, said in June that he expects to make some acquisitions -- perhaps rival cable-TV operator Cablevision Systems Corp.
"Does that mean there's a transaction happening now? No. Would I like [one] to happen in the future? Yes," Levin said in June.
The mood might be somewhat subdued this year. The NASDAQ Composite Index has tumbled by about 50 percent since the middle of last July, hammering the stocks of most of the Internet entrepreneurs who attend the conference.
And the world's biggest media companies similarly are dug in for a siege. They have announced firings of more than 6,400 people this year and shut unprofitable businesses.
Still, next week will be a busy one at this small town in the shadows of the Sawtooth Mountains. Managers at the airport at Hailey, Idaho, about a dozen miles from Sun Valley, expect as many as 100 private Gulfstream and Falcon jets. Rental-car companies are bringing up extra cars from Salt Lake City to handle the crush.
One media mogul will miss the event, though: Ted Turner, vice chairman of AOL Time Warner.
"I stopped going a couple of years back, and they stopped inviting me," he said.
"I guess I made it known that I found it too boring hanging around all those people."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique