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At Sun Valley, Watching to See if the Chatter Is More Than Idle Talk

SUN VALLEY, Idaho â€" At the Allen & Company media and technology conference here, the name of the game is talk: Mainly, who’s talking with whom?

Stocked with moguls galore, the gathering is best-known for the deals that have emerged from hush-hush meetings that take place by this resort’s duck pond or in conference rooms at the Sun Valley Inn. Chief among those enshrined in conference lore was the merger of Disney and Capital Cities.

But a number of attendees played down the importance of deals hatched immediately at the conference. (That said, John C. Malone, who has reiterated here the need for consolidation within the cable industry, hustled to at least one meeting on Thursday morning.) Instead, coming to the Allen & Company conference largely allows moguls to see peers and discuss the state of their industries, as well as meet with potential new business partners.

With that in mind, here are a few intriguing conversation partners that DealBook has observed so far:

  • Peter Chernin of the Chernin Group and Jonathan Nelson of Providence Equity Partners, the media-focused private equity firm, midday on Wednesday. The two know each other well, with Providence having served as a financial backer to Mr. Chernin. Among their potential discussion topics: Chernin’s bid for Hulu, the online video service. The two are keeping mum about the current state of the sales process: all Mr. Chernin would say on Wednesday night was, “Go ask them,” referring to the media companies that own ulu.
  • Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and the founder of the payments service Square, and Brian Grazer, the film and television producer. The two spent a bit of Wednesday together, even venturing off to skeet-shooting at the resort.
  • Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks Animation and Salar Kamangar, the head of YouTube, in a relatively quiet corner of the Sun Valley Lodge on Wednesday night.
  • Chase Carey, the chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox, and Haim Saban, the media investor, in the Lodge on Wednesday night. It was a conversation that at times drew in a few fellow media players, including Robert Iger, the chief executive of Disney.