Musk is due to be interviewed onstage at the Sun Valley Lodge resort on Saturday, less than 24 hours after announcing he was ending his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter Inc. The news quickly dominated conversations at the conference of four days.
“It just seems like an absolute mess,” said a senior media executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The guy makes his own rules… I would hate to be in Twitter’s place, where you have to take this guy seriously.”
Sun Valley is usually covered like an athletic version of the Met Gala, with photographers capturing the arrivals of fleece-clad media moguls and journalists taking note of power lunches at the Konditorei cafe on the property.
On Friday, a Hollywood broker expressed hope that Musk’s interview would liven up the static and cerebral atmosphere of the conference this year.
Hours later, Musk’s lawyers delivered an eight-page letter to Twitter, saying he planned to cancel the deal to acquire the social network. The document, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleges that Twitter failed to respond to its repeated requests for information over the past two months, or failed to obtain its consent before taking actions that would impact on its activities — such as the dismissal of two key executives.
Up to that point, talk in media circles focused on the stock market’s revaluation of the streaming industry in the wake of Netflix Inc.’s subscriber losses. A digital media executive said Hollywood, which has t usually insulated from recessions, suddenly worried about how a deteriorating economy will affect their multi-billion dollar investments in streaming services.
“For the first time, people are aware that the economy is impacting the entertainment industry because inflation is impacting the attrition rate,” the digital media executive said, referring to subscribers. who leave a service. “People are now thinking, ‘Wow, are people really going to pay for three of these things?'”
After Musk’s announcement, one business leader noted the elephant in the room: Saturday’s remarks may well make two conference attendees uncomfortable: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal.
One of Musk Agrawal’s last public posts came in the form of a tweet of a poo emoji in response to the Twitter CEO’s defense of how the company takes spam bots into account.