What We Learned at Sun Valley

This week’s column comes from Amir Efrati and Tom Dotan, reporting from Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley conference this week. The gathering began more than 30 years ago as a forum for traditional media companies. But the power long ago shifted to tech companies. That’s reflected in the attendee list and much of what goes on during the stage panels and behind the scenes.

This week, there was fresh news about Google’s YouTube live-TV streaming plan, ESPN tip-toeing outside the cable bundle, Verizon hinting it would buy an important digital media company that’s not named Yahoo, a dot-com model for Twitter’s stock, and lots of whispers—probably careless ones—of a mega-deal involving Apple. There also was a notable absence of a Venice Beach hotshot and lots of talk about AI, which is anything but careless. Here’s a look at some of the issues under discussion.