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☆ Sam Altman is tech’s next household name — if we survive the killer robots
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( David Ingram | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, walks from lunch during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 6, 2022, in Sun Valley, Idaho. Sam Altman may be tech's next household name, but many Americans probably haven't heard of him. To anyone outside San Francisco, Altman would probably seem like just another young tech CEO. That worldview flared up into controversy in 2017 when Altman wrote a blog post criticizing political correctness, saying tech entrepreneurs were leaving San Francisco over it. "I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco," he wrote.

One of the really interesting questions here – this will be fascinating – the core of linear TV is sports rights. When you look at the size and scope of the linear TV business, it's huge. Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty ImagesByron Allen, Entertainment Studios founder and CEO: I think linear TV will exist for a very, very long time. Simmons: I believe Apple, out of nowhere, will start making their own awesome televisions that have Apple TV embedded in them. We are witnessing early stages of this dynamic with deals like "NFL Sunday Ticket" on YouTube and the MLS deal with Apple TV.

☆ Activision Blizzard pays SEC $35 million to settle probe
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, attends the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2022, in Sun Valley, Idaho. "Mr. Kotick would not have been informed of every report of misconduct at every Activision Blizzard company, nor would he reasonably be expected to have been updated on all personnel issues," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said at the time. The SEC filing claimed Activision Blizzard required "a significant number" of departing employees who signed separation agreements to tell Activision Blizzard if regulators tried to contact them, or even if those employees wished to make a complaint of their own. "As the order recognizes, we have enhanced our disclosure processes with regard to workplace reporting and updated our separation contract language," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said on Friday. 2022 for $18 million over related claims of retaliation in connection with sexual harassment claims.

☆ ChatGPT maker OpenAI comes up with a way to check if text was written by a human
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, walks from lunch during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 6, 2022, in Sun Valley, Idaho. Artificial intelligence research startup OpenAI on Tuesday introduced a tool that's designed to figure out if text is human-generated or written by a computer. The release comes two months after OpenAI captured the public's attention when it introduced ChatGPT, a chatbot that generates text that might seem to have been written by a person in response to a person's prompt. "In our evaluations on a 'challenge set' of English texts, our classifier correctly identifies 26% of AI-written text (true positives) as 'likely AI-written,' while incorrectly labeling human-written text as AI-written 9% of the time (false positives)," the OpenAI employees wrote. The new version is more prepared to handle text from recent AI systems, the employees wrote.

☆ Rupert Murdoch calls off proposed Fox-News Corp merger
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Lillian Rizzo | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp and co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, arrives at the Sun Valley Resort of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 10, 2018 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Rupert Murdoch has withdrawn the proposal to re-combine Fox Corp and News Corp .Fox said Tuesday its board received a letter from Murdoch, its chairman, and his son Lachlan Murdoch that "determined that a combination is not optimal for the shareholders" of either of the companies at the time. The potential merger had faced opposition from shareholders in recent months, who didn't believe a merger would show the true value of News Corp. if it merged with Fox. A combination of the two companies would have unified leadership in Murdoch's empire and cut costs. News Corp. owns Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.

☆ Rupert Murdoch deposition in Dominion-Fox lawsuit delayed until next week
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Lillian Rizzo | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp and co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, arrives at the Sun Valley Resort of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 10, 2018 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is now slated to appear for a deposition later in January as part of Dominion Voting's defamation lawsuit against the company and its cable news networks. The deposition is set to occur Thursday and Friday next week, according to court filings. Most recently, his son and Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch faced questioning as part of the lawsuit. The trial is set to begin on April 17, with pre-trial conferences in the days prior, according to court filings.

☆ I'm the former head of Mark Zuckerberg's security detail. Here's when I knew I had to leave — and how I found a job I love.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Jenna Gyimesi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

I got to know Meta's security team; we hung out all week. Within two hours of the final interview, I'd decided to move to CaliforniaI worked on Zuckerberg's executive protection team for two years. "Once I'm done building your security team," I told him, "I want to transition to something different." A colleague recommended I become a coachI'd never really heard of executive coaching before, so when a coworker said it, I laughed. Even when I was unsure what I wanted to do, I knew it wasn't security anymore.

☆ 12 media executives anonymously predict 2023's biggest deals, trends and changes
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Alex Sherman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Candle Media has acquired intellectual property assets including Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine production company and Moonbug, which owns the animated kids series "CoComelon." Executive 3: Iger extends his contract There's been lots of speculation over who Iger will choose as his successor. History suggests he has a hard time leaving the role of Disney CEO. Christine M. McCarthy, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer The Walt Disney Company. "I love Shari [Redstone], but ViacomCBS is not long for this world as it stands today," said a media executive last year.

☆ From Disney to Target to Boeing, retirement is a thing of the past for CEOs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-11 | by ( Bob Woods | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 13: (L-R) Bob Iger, chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, Dick Costolo, former chief executive officer of Twitter, Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman of Twenty-First Century Fox, Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google, and Randall Stephenson, chief executive officer of AT&T, mingle during the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 13, 2018 in Sun Valley, Idaho. The average tenure for departing CEOs during that same time period was about 11 years, up from nine years in 2020. That's not surprising, because of the impact of the pandemic and [other] crises, where boards put CEO succession on hold," Anterasian said. "In our research, boards put CEO succession on hold during crises," Anterasian said. At Disney, Iger has said he will only stay on for two years before a successor takes over.

☆ Rupert Murdoch will be deposed in Dominion's $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Lillian Rizzo | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Fox Corp . Chairman Rupert Murdoch is scheduled to appear for a deposition next week as part of Dominion Voting's defamation lawsuit against the company and its cable TV networks. In its $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox, Dominion has argued that Fox News and Fox Business made false claims that its voting machines were rigged in the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Earlier this year Fox's TV personalities, including Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, appeared for depositions. Dominion has argued Fox and its top executives played a role in Fox's TV personalities spreading misinformation about voter fraud. And with the Dominion case moving closer to the trial's expected start date in April, neither side has shown signs of entering settlement talks.

☆ CNN chief Chris Licht has big ideas, but employees are nervous, and more job cuts are coming
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Alex Sherman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +13 min

Courtesy: CNNShifting from ZuckerPart of Licht's challenge as the new leader of CNN is he's not the old leader. There's also a hangover effect from the sudden collapse of CNN+, which Zucker pushed relentlessly as the future of the business. The comments heightened anxiety for many CNN staffers, according to six people who were at the company at the time. The changes should also bring workflow alignments to CNN digital and linear, which should help both entities' content and organization. CNN still hasn't named a chief digital officer, although the company's job posting now says it's filled.

☆ Snap plunges more than 25% on third-quarter revenue miss
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Snap shares plummeted more than 25% in extended trading on Thursday after the social media company reported weaker-than-expected revenue for the third quarter. In August, Snap announced that it would lay off 20% of the company's roughly 6,000 employees as part of a major restructuring plan. Snap added that revenue growth is likely to keep decelerating in the fourth quarter, as that period "has historically been relatively more dependent on brand-oriented advertising revenue," which declined in the latest period. Snap also ended the production of its Snap Originals premium shows. Snap debuted the subscription service in June as a way for users to access exclusive and pre-release features for $3.99 a month.

☆ NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell says movie business benefiting from new release model
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-04 | by ( Lillian Rizzo | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

CEO of NBC Jeff Shell arrives for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 06, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho. NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said Tuesday the company's movie business is performing well on the hybrid model of releasing some films simultaneously in theaters and on streaming services, while waiting to make others available for viewers at home. That changed when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down theaters, leading some companies to release films directly on streaming services for a period of time. "That construct of the windowing combined with the fact that streamers really want movies, movies are driving platforms, has in my opinion made the movie business economically better," Shell said. Some evaluated releasing movies directly on streaming services on a case-by-case basis, which Shell said NBCUniversal continues to do.

☆ How Bryan Lourd became one of the most powerful people in the history of Hollywood
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-25 | by ( Alex Sherman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +18 min

Lourd, 61, isn't a household name, but he wields a stunning amount of influence in Hollywood. Lourd's Hollywood clients aren't just A-listers, they're A+-listers: Brad Pitt. An old-fashioned talent agent who loves discussing old movies and doesn't mind pointing out the flaws in his own clients' work, Lourd has become arguably the most powerful person in Hollywood. "He's one of the most powerful people in the history of Hollywood," said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. But Lourd's clients are such bankable stars that it's equally important for Hollywood executives to be friendly with him as it is beneficial for Lourd and CAA.

The complaints, obtained by CNBC, were filed by nonprofit law firm Whistleblower Aid, which is representing Twitter's former head of security, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko. Whistleblower Aid, which also represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, verified the authenticity of the documents with CNBC. A Twitter whistleblower is alleging "extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter" related to privacy, security and content moderation, according to complaints filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. If government regulators were to find Twitter misled consumers about its security protocols, that may be considered a violation of its 2011 agreement with the FTC. At the time, Twitter was barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about how it protects their security and private information.

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