The schedule of activities is circulating at this year’s “summer camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley, Idaho – and “knitting” is on the agenda, On The Money has learned.
Yes – Allen & Co.’s annual shindig for media moguls and tech tycoons is featuring the usual panel discussions. On Thursday, Pennsylvania Sens. John Fetterman and David McCormick will get interviewed by CNN’s Erin Burnett.
That’s after Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday interviewed Ken Griffin – who repeated how Zohran Mamdani’s Bolshevik-style TikTok outside his Manhattan penthouse “creeped him out” because of what happened with the UnitedHealthcare CEO, according to one attendee.
But it was the “knitting” activity – slated for 2:30 p.m. Mountain Time, both Wednesday and Thursday – that seemed to capture the zeitgeist at this year’s festivities, I am told. It was as if the bankers at Allen & Co. had set out to prove that big media as we know it is on its last legs.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts – who rocked the media world last week when he revealed plans to spin off the cable giant’s NBCUniversal division – was onsite with Mike Cavanagh, who will lead NBCU while Michael Angelakis will run the cable unit.
“Brian is looking a little depressed,” a source at Sun Valley told me.“Even after the split, the stock hasn’t moved at $23. He got no bounce and his personal net worth has taken a beating in recent years because he is held too long into two declining businesses.”
That would be news and entertainment content (ie NBCU) and cable, which throws off cash but – because of cord cutting and wireless competition – a lot less than it used to.
“Look, he’s number 499 in the S&P and Charter, the company he wants to buy, is number 500,” the source wisecracked. (In reality, Comcast is number 141 and Charter 422.)
Elsewhere, Jeff Bezos and venture capitalist Marc Andreesen took the stage with Fox anchor Bret Baier also on Wednesday. Microsoft boss Satya Nadella then got interviewed by Reid Hoffman, the lefty LinkedIn founder lately dogged by his Jeffrey Epstein ties.
That’s not all. There’s hiking, fly fishing and yoga classes for our media mavens. There’s also pilates and something called “hard core fitness,” but sorry – I can’t quite visualize 84-year-old Barry Diller throwing around weights in the gym. Maybe he’ll opt for mahjong instead? (That’s at 2 p.m., just before knitting.)
As for knitting – true, it’s supposed to be therapeutic. Recall that legendary NFL lineman Rosey Grier took up needle point for that very reason. Still: The bosses of an industry that’s getting downsized, cutting mergers to keep flailing businesses afloat as star anchors are being eclipsed by MrBeast and Clavicular on YouTube, have nothing better to do than take knitting classes on what’s supposed to be a business trip?
“It’s going to be fun,” one attendee said of the confab, shrugging off the latest industry’s woes. Still, he clarified, he himself wasn’t planning to attend the knitting classes.
