The first supersession of the day, and content and distribution heavyweights: Peter Chernin (News Corp.), Philippe Dauman (Viacom Inc.) , Richard Parsons (Time Warner, Inc.) , Brian Roberts (Comcast Corporation).
Dauman: We want to follow the consumers, and have internal triple play of sorts on the content distribution side. All of these are opportunities....we are looking to make it additive.
Chernin: Threats: Piracy. Second: real threat of disaggregating the programming business models, including cable companies. We’re looking at other acquisitions in video and online space. We consider ourselves as digital production company now.
Roberts: For us cable is the platform and let entrepreneurs come in and innovate on top of it. More after the jump.

About Yahoo and Google and others:
Chernin: The amount of money we get from Google is a fraction of what we get from cable industry...most of our companies have gotten adept of making partnerships...we are partnership and competing with everyone now.
Parsons: The notion that somehow new kids on the block are taking over is a false notion. As we become more coordinated, they (us) will blow away the Internet players.

M&A Scenario:
Dauman: Too much inflation in the market for now...so for us we’re looking at the next thing in creation.
Chernin: This is the world in which the big get bigger...you will see more consolidation. Multiples are extremely high, but over time a platform like Comcast will work well with a big Internet plays.
Parsons: Cable is a scale business...in order to compete with the forces coming (telecos, satellite), I am a believer in consolidation and that’s why we have rolled out our cable division separately.

Wireless:
Roberts: I don’t think it will be like cable TV on mobiles. We are trying some things with Sprint and other three cable cos.
Dauman: Mobile content is the fastest growing part of our company around the world.
Chernin: I don’t think subscription is relevant in the mobile business...but it is the very first pitch in the first innings. We have seen operators experimenting with content and then coming to us and help them do content.

Tiff With YouTube.
Dauman: I am a reluctant plaintiff. Google is a great company...so it only reluctantly after a long period of time to reach a deal, that we found that we could not tolerate have our content taken, when others were compensating us. We will work our way through it.
Chernin: Consumers want stuff, quickly and conveniently and we want to protect our content...those two things are not mutually exclusive. Things will get worse before they get better,
Parsons: Things within a matter of months are likely to get better. We are trying to work with them and I think Google realizes it as well. We are step or two behind Viacom. I am reasonably confident they’ll find a solution. At the end of the day, they lose this war if they do to war, and they know it.