It’s no shock that the largest story that came out of last week’s so-called “summer camp for billionaires,” the once high-profile Allen & Co. media convention, concerned the investment bank directing its band of goon-squad security guards to thrust back reporters from doing their job of interviewing some of the A-listers who still attend.
The get-together on the lush grounds of the Sun Valley Lodge in Idaho is an also-ran because Big Media isn’t so massive anymore.
Sure, some moguls still have their billions, but most run corporations that are melting away, having been harm by secular forces in their business. Their maintain on American tradition has also waned significantly as shoppers of leisure and information more and more boycott wokeism.
It’s no shock that the largest story that came out of last week’s “summer camp for billionaires,” the once high-profile Allen & Co. media convention, concerned the investment bank directing its security guards to thrust back reporters. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design
That doesn’t imply there was no business going down, though it was a far cry from years previous.
Four years in the past, the Post’s Lydia Moynihan first reported that media heiress Shari Redstone was at the confab purchasing Paramount Global. An $8 billion merger with Skydance Media is now poised to be consummated as it awaits regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission.
From what I perceive, this yr’s Sun Valley chatter was centered on much smaller gamers and offers since the massive guys (think corporations like Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast) are busy spinning off their money-losing property. They’re breaking up into smaller items to strive to protect some shareholder worth. Plus, they have neither the abdomen or the stability sheet in the foreseeable future for main acquisitions, notably the transformation kind.
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The names that I perceive were on the dealmaking watch record were the so-called native broadcasters. Many of them run affiliate stations of the main networks that serve native information to center America.
These are corporations like Sinclair Broadcast Group, Gray Media and Cox Media Group. The latter is personal and majority owned by personal equity store Apollo Management.
Shares of Sinclair are up 16%, while Gray is up 30% – in contrast to a 5% rise in the S&P – based mostly on merger and buyout chatter, telecom bankers and attorneys inform On The Money.
Shari Redstone at Sun Valley in 2021. Getty Images
Apollo is trying for a purchaser for Cox, I am instructed.
So why would anyone guess that Little Media will survive the melting ice dice that is draining the Big Media business model?
First the little guys do make money, though less so because of modifications in the business. There is also a transfer by Trump regulators to protect native TV media since it serves so much of the MAGA base.
That means networks like Paramount-owned CBS will be on a tight leash from DC to jack up charges on the locals to run their programming.
On prime of it all, these corporations run lean and can run leaner, which means you can grow income through cuts, bankers argue.
So who would buy them? Difficult to say since main gamers might not have the stability sheet. Maybe they will merge or start swapping properties among themselves.
Full disclosure: I didn’t attend Sun Valley to report any of the above, which is another purpose to skip the occasion.
