SUN VALLEY, IDAHO — Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger wasted little time setting the tone for this year's Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Getting into his rental car after checking in at the Sun Valley Resort here, Iger held court with the media for a few minutes and declared: "People are going to pay [for] content. . . . We're not worried about monetizing content." Of course, Disney's ABC network started making some of its content available free on the video website Hulu at the same time it is joining News Corp. and NBC Universal as a co-owner.
Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for another media executive to pop up and offer a contradiction. Blake Krikorian, the co-founder of Slingbox, the device that enables people to watch their home TV from anywhere, said the industry was "trying to put the genie back in the bottle." Another naysayer was former AOL executive Ted Leonsis, who thought anyone trying to get consumers to pay for content online would be disappointed.
The Allen & Co. conference, which is expected to draw more than 260 executives from the world's old and new media, politics, sports and government kicked off Tuesday with a big welcome dinner. The real lifting begins today, when there will be panels featuring Iger, Liberty Media Chairman John Malone and IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller discussing the digital future. On Thursday, Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer and General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeff Immelt will talk about the global economic downturn. Also Thursday, Google's Larry Page will appear on an Internet panel moderated by ABC News' Willow Bay, who is also the wife of Disney's Iger.
Allen & Co. also likes to bring in special guests. This year, basketball star LeBron James, who already has a relationship with the investment bank, is expected to make an appearance. On Wednesday there was buzz that Gen. David Petraeus would be popping in.
Moguls are welcomed like royalty at Friedman Memorial Airport by a team of Allen & Co. greeters in green shirts and shorts. A British woman, Andy Kellog, runs the team and warns those renting cars not to speed. "The cops are there," she says sternly.
Already there has been an "incident" here: Universal Studios President Ron Meyer made off with BET founder Bob Johnson's rental car. Meyer realized about halfway around the circle of the lodge that he was in the wrong car and promptly returned.
