David Zaslav looked like he felt like Superman while in the mountains attending Allen & Company’s annual conference last week.
When I spotted Zaslav in Sun Valley, he was walking around the resort beaming, a hat with a Superman logo perched on his head. He also grabbed some face time with Ivanka Trump during the event.
The Warner Bros. Discovery chief executive had good reason to be on top of the world, with Superman receiving positive reviews, topping the box office over the weekend, and raking in $125 million at North American theaters from Thursday through Sunday. The New York Times wrote that the movie is part of a “startling turnaround for the studio,” crediting Zaslav with putting the teams together to execute for success.
This year’s conference of moguls came at a moment when media companies are grappling with the dominance of tech, which has resulted in a complicated M&A environment. Just last month Warner Bros. Discovery spun off its cable assets from its studios and streaming business, undoing years of consolidation efforts. Elsewhere, Paramount just settled a lawsuit with Donald Trump for $16 million amid a potential sale of the business to Skydance. David Ellison, who is set to take over the company in the acquisition, reportedly quietly met with The Free Press’s Bari Weiss while both were in Sun Valley for the conference, with reports indicating Ellison’s interest in acquiring the independent outlet.
On Friday, after the conference’s morning session—the programming of which included an interview of Sir Richard Moore by David Ignatius, an interview of governors Wes Moore and Glenn Youngkin by Anderson Cooper, and a conversation with Sam Altman and Alex Karp, according to New York Post reporter James Franey—I sat in the sun on a bench and watched from a distance as guests made their way to lunch. Diane von Furstenberg was deep in conversation with Cooper and two other attendees I wasn’t able to recognize from afar. Michael Bloomberg passed by and gave a polite wave in Cooper’s direction. As everyone was heading to lunch, Tim Cook and Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, headed back into the Sun Valley Lodge.
I then strolled past Gayle King, who was chatting with veteran diplomat William Burns. “I like your longer hair,” she told him. Cooper walked out of Konditorei double-fisting what appeared to be either black iced coffee or Diet Coke. “Wow, that was Anderson Cooper,” a woman eating lunch on the patio said to her friend 10 minutes later.
Nearby, a boutique called Panache was advertising von Furstenberg’s fashions out front. On Thursday evening, the shop held an event with the designer herself, and the staff were quick to note its success. The employees said the store has been hosting the event annually for 18 years, holding it whenever von Furstenberg is in town with her husband, Barry Diller, for the conference. “Now she’s invited on her own” to the Allen & Co. event, one staffer said with a sense of pride.
On Saturday, it was time to pack up and head home, unless you were sticking around for 2:30 p.m. knitting in the Lodge’s lobby atrium or 3 p.m. horseback riding.
I emailed Tim Burke, who currently runs the local Friedman Memorial Airport, to ask how the tiny facility handles the high-profile air traffic every summer. “Generally speaking, we’ll see over 1,000 operations using our single runway throughout the week,” he told me.
The airport doesn’t bring in more staff for the conference, Burke shared, though “private entities, customers, and conference organizers will bring on additional security resources and presence.” On my flight over from Salt Lake City on Wednesday, there was a passenger with crew credentials. As we were deplaning, I overheard him mentioning that the specific private jet he works on was in Sun Valley and that he was coming to take care of things for the owner while the plane was stopped here for the conference.
There were around 250 to 300 takeoffs and landings on the airport’s single runway as the moguls headed back home after several days in the mountains, Burke said. While I was at the airport on Saturday, observing that single runway, I watched five planes take off in rapid succession, four of them private—one with an Italian flag on it was just as large as the United Express plane that took off moments later.
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