Who's coming to Sun Valley this year? The same people who come to Herb Allen's ultra-exclusive schmooze every year - the men (and occasional woman) at the top of the world's biggest media conglomerates. The Hollywood Reporter has a curtain-raiser on the conference, which kicks off today:
Among those likely to make the trek, besides Murdoch (with son Lachlan) and Redstone, are Warren Buffett, eBay's Meg Whitman, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts co-founder Henry Kravis, Sirius' Mel Karmazin, Viacom's Philippe Dauman, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Sony's Howard Stringer, Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Warner Music's Edgar Bronfman Jr., Universal's Ron Meyer, Disney's Robert Iger and Paramount's Brad Grey.
New media will be repped by such upstarts as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Ning founder and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, Discovery's David Zaslav, Sling Media's Blake Krikorian and Google's Sergei [sic] Brin and Eric Schmidt.*
Missing from this report, however, is speculation about which junior mogul will be crowned the new, new hotness this week. Two years ago, it was the YouTube dudes (What's become of Chad and Steve, by the way?), and last year marked Mark Zuckerberg's coronation. But as we were looking through our archives (we're celebrating our first birthday this month, thank you very much), we recalled that just showing up at Sun Valley doesn't ensure new media success: Last year the Joost guys garnered an invite; a year later, they're in "hope we get it right this time -- or we're screwed" mode.
*UPDATE via Reuters' awesome Ken Li, who took time off from his Sun Valley stakeout to update us on the invite list: Zuckerberg and Redstone aren't supposed to be coming. But Joost guys Janus Friis and Mike Volpi are. So is Joost guy Niklas Zennstrom, but he's coming as a rep for his Atomico investment company. Best candidate for the week's hot digital dude? Digg's Jay Adelson.
UPDATE2 via NYT Dealbook, some more new media names: Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, co-founders of Ning; Michael Birch of Bebo (recently acquired by AOL); Jeffrey H. Boyd of Priceline.com; David Friedberg of WeatherBill; Janus Frilis, co-founder of Joost; Michael Volpi and Jeffrey Jordan of OpenTable; Blake Krikorian, chairman of Sling Media; Max Levchin, chief executive of Slide.com, David Liu, chief executive of The Knot; Gary Marino, chief executive of Bill Me Later; and Peter Thiel of Clarium Capital (also a director at Facebook and co-founder of eBay-owned PayPal).
See Also: Joost CEO: We've Figured It Out This Time
Sun Valley Scorecard
