Allen & Co’s. famous yet secretive gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, begins early next month and perhaps the most notable media executives who won’t be attending are Joe Ianniello and Bob Bakish, the CEOs of CBS and Viacom, respectively.
In the case of CBS and Viacom, merger negotiations are allegedly already underway as Shari Redstone and her ailing father, Sumner, control them both and are eager to combine them in order to compete more seriously with Walt Disney after its purchase of most of 21st Century Fox and AT&T in the wake of its acquisition of Time Warner.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg should both be there as the latter takes a break from what some reports call an “apology tour” after Facebook famously allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest users’ personal data for the purpose of political advertising. Also on hand in Sun Valley for the 20th straight year will be Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, one of the world’s largest video game companies, who had until recently been dating Sandberg.
► At the 2009 event, Comcast co-founder Ralph Roberts huddled with GE chief Jeff Immelt to consider NBCU, a conversation that resulted in Comcast purchasing a majority interest in NBCU. Four years later, Comcast assumed 100 percent ownership.