Comparing the recent era of cheap credit to the Dutch tulip bubble, Steve Rattner, principal at the PE firm Quadrangle Group, offered his outlook on a range of media issues. As noted in his keynote interview, at the Media and Money Conference, Rattner’s perspective is a function of his firm’s longstanding and broad participation across the industry.

-- Investment thesis: “We’re really good at finding good businesses at making them better.” It’s not a function of buying the fastest or cheapest business… It’s all price-to-valuation.” On Quadrangle’s Maxim acquisition: “There are two parts to the answer, for us, a lot of this is price to value” The magazine business was acquired for a good value and it has a fast growing online side.  Also, there was a chance to improve the business with a superstar CEO. He added that, “If investing were simply running a bunch of excel spreadsheet, everyone would pay the same price and get the same return.”

-- Ad market: “We believe advertising is great, continuing source of revenue.  “Historically, ad spending has been closely tied to GDP.” As long as you believe that we’ll have a strong economy, advertising will exist… whether the economy is currently strong can be debated.

-- Value of portfolio: There are many firms that invest in discreet industries, “We’re doing it the easy way,” by sticking to an area that it knows very well. It’s a huge help. On FiOS: “Cable is at one of its many inflection points—we love the cable business and we still believe that cable is an unbelievably robust pipe… but Fios is a very robust product… it costs a fortune to build.” U-Verse… is okay, not as robust.  Still, cable is taking away telephony. “On balance, the cable industry is still growing revenues at a double digit rate.” On wireless: “We really are headed towards a much better wireless experience” AT&T (NYSE: T) will use its recently acquired spectrum (Aloha) to deliver broadcast to cell phones. Some people will want content served that way. “Wireless broadband is coming”

-- Content vs. Distribution: It’s an age-old debate. “The content guys feel they have a strong hand because they have the content.” But it depends on how you define content. “Is the Weather Channel content?… What does the national weather service need the Weather Channel for?” The true owners of content will do very well, packager (networks) will have greater challenges.” “If you’re the creator of the next West Wing, what do you need NBC for?” Still, the packages do have a role: “People do still like to have their content organized for them.” On Hulu, he noted that the company has learned the lesson of the music industry: if you’re going to apply the stick (DRM, etc.), you need to offer the carrot of free content.

-- Economy and credit: “Like tulips 400 years ago, we had irrational exuberance.” “We are still in the relatively early stages of a repricing of risk”

-- Cablevision: “I think the shareholders were out of their minds.” “There’s no way you could put that debt package back together again.”