Media executives see small deals as key to future

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6655HU20100706

Small-sized acquisitions and strategic buys rather than blockbuster multibillion dollar deals will be on the minds of the media moguls and financiers who gather at this week's Sun Valley conference.

At the top of their shopping lists will be individual media assets such as TV stations, radio companies and newspapers rather than powerhouse takeovers similar to Comcast Corp's acquisition of NBC Universal last year.

Dennis Miller, a partner a venture capital firm Spark Capital, which has stakes in Twitter and Internet TV company Boxee among others, said traditional media executives are torn between the possibilities that social media presents -- and the risk of a foolish investment.

"They're still conflicted between seeing the post-AOL/Time Warner scar tissue and the realization that 'oh my god, my consumers are in places we never expected, there are 450 million people on Facebook'," said Miller.

How hot is the space? This year, mobile media & technology transactions are up by 188 percent, according to Jordan Edmiston. That includes small acquisitions by Apple Inc Yahoo Inc, Google Inc and Twitter.

"You'll see some mid-size acquisitions of Internet businesses in the hopes that it will help them transform, that one of them will hit big. They will place bets, but they will be relatively small bets," said Jonathan Knee, an investment banker at Evercore Partners.