Jeff Bewkes - FishbowlLA

Coincidence? Finke Fires Back at THR Hours After Bret Easton Ellis Exclusive

Richard Horgan — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:45:33 +0000

TheWrap – or, as Nikki Finke prefers to call it, TheCrap – remains number one on her list of direct-competitor enemies. A close second is The Hollywood Reporter.

This afternoon, just hours after the Reporter posted an exclusive statement from author Bret Easton Ellis about his own war with Finke, she takes dead aim at a July 20 magazine issue item by Kim Masters. Finke torpedoes the article’s claim that Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer turned down a request by Jeff Bewkes to stay on past his scheduled December 2013 departure date:

THR hangs it on “a knowledgeable source.” Time Warner explained to me, “This story is a complete fabrication. We could not lie about it. Why would we lie about this? Because it’s going to come out one way or the other. Everybody who talked to the Reporter explained that no part of this is true – but they kept writing. How ridiculous.”

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Former HBO Exec Chris Albrecth Recalls What Really Happened in Vegas

Richard Horgan — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:00:42 +0000

In the November GQ Magazine profile piece “Violence, Nudity, Adult Content”, Amy Wallace suggests that former HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht, now the CEO of Starz, “understands storytelling better than perhaps any other Hollywood executive.” That’s quite a claim.

So how strange it is to read that after Albrecht was arrested and briefly jailed in Las Vegas on May 6, 2007 for choking his then-girlfriend in a hotel parking lot, he chose not to put those considerable storytelling skills to use. Rather, in speaking for the first time publicly about the events that led to his HBO demise, he tells Wallace that he allowed colleague Jeff Bewkes and a team of crisis PR specialists to concoct a yarn about him having fallen off the wagon.

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The Who’s Who of Media at Sun Valley

Chris Ariens — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:30:12 +0000

Dan Cox, on special assignment for FishbowlLA, covering the 2008 Sun Valley Media Conference.

Though Allen & Company are extremely tight-lipped about everything of interest at the Sun Valley Media Conference, a few small bits and pieces are leaking out on the first day.

A list of attendees surfaced and included such mega-moguls as Paul G. Allen of Vulcan Inc., Emilio Azcarraga of Grupo Televisa, National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, independent writer Ken Auletta, BET chairman and CEO Debra L. Lee, Diane von Furstenberg of her eponymous studio, National Basketball Association Commissioner David J. Stern and Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

Weirder still was the inclusion of celebrity chef Rachael Ray, of Watch Entertainment Inc. The assembled media standing outside the Sun Valley Lodge joke that she might be here to cook dinner for all these moguls.

In true Allen & Co. behavior, the list of those invited also had a schedule, which carefully omitted anything specific with just early morning discussion or meeting events labeled as simply “Presentation.” After that came, “White Water Raft Trip,” “Golf at the Sun Valley Golf Course” and “Biking, Fly-Fishing, Hiking, Trail Rides” and “Yoga.”

Those moguls sure know how to do it right.

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