Moguls are descending on Herb Allen’s annual Sun Valley retreat this week with guests to include stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffett, Ron Meyer and Les Moonves. New faces will include Activision’s Bobby Kotick and Italian prime minister Mario Monti. Media moguls at this edition, says The New York Post, feel they’ll have equal billing after sitting on the sidelines for a few years while Silicon Valley guys were the darlings of the day.

“We sat around the duck pond last year, looking at these guys and we were feeling all lonely,” one mogul told The Post. “It was like they had all the answers, they were going to impact the culture.” But now, the tech guys need the old media guys again. “Last year it was ‘holy s***,’ these guys are geniuses,” said one attendee. “This year we are feeling a little less wobbly. They have been humbled.”

Among the humbled attending this year, The Post points out Facebook is down 17% since its May IPO, Netflix is down 72% in the last year, Zynga is down 44% and Groupon is off 68% over the same period. Meanwhile, traditional media companies like CBS, Discovery, Disney, Time Warner and News Corp are all up.

Industryites and Wall Street are expecting deals may get underway at the retreat, says Variety, as “the time may be nigh when big tech players eye media takeovers in earnest.” A major Internet player “could buy CBS for $21Bn, or Lionsgate for $2Bn to $3Bn and control two of the biggest young adult franchises out there,” a Wall Street source told the trade. The “weak links” another Wall Street source told Variety include Epix, Lionsgate, DreamWorks Animation and Starz.

Meanwhile, News Corp recently announced plans to separate into two companies and eyes will be on Vivendi which follow suit in the wake of CEO Jean-Bernard Levy’s departure. “Figuring out whether Vivendi will be broken up” will be a key takeaway from Sun Valley, a music exec told Variety.

Sons James and Lachlan will join Rupert Murdoch at the camp with other attendees to include Sony’s Kazuo Hirai and Michael Lynton; Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes and John Martin; Walt Disney’s Bob Iger; Viacom’s Philippe Dauman; Paramount’s Brad Grey; Comcast chairman Brian Roberts; DWA’s Jeffrey Katzenberg; Discovery CEO David Zaslav; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg; Apple’s Tim Cook; Google’s Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Netflix’ Reed Hastings; Liberty’s John Malone; Twitter’s Richard Costolo; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; NYC maory Michael Bloomberg; NJ governor Chris Christie; FCC chairman Jules Genachowski; NFL commissioner Roger Goodell; NBA commissioner David Stern and Yahoo’s interim CEO Ross Levinsohn. ICM’s Chris Silbermann and UTA’s Jim Berkus also both got invitations, according to The Los Angeles Times.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056331?refCatId=13

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/message_to_tech_jUuVq2ehWjZbrR1Am008qO

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-sun-valley-20120706,0,2619167.story