A panel of top television executives at a Vegas conference yesterday went on the offensive against their digital rivals, blasting the perception that cell phones, the Web, and other digital formats are killing their business. Quite the contrary, pronounced Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons: "The Googles, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux Nation."
The old media barons chided their digital rivals for enabling copyright offenses—panel member Viacom is entangled in a $1 billion legal battle with Google and YouTube over web videos. "We're in a world where we're a partner with everybody and we're fighting everybody," said News Corp. COO Peter Chernin. (More internet stories.)