Forbes has published The Midas List, its annual list of the top 100 dealmakers across Angel, Banking, VC, BO, Academic and Legal. Many old hits (John Doerr is #2) as well as some new blood.

Tony Perkins’ (former owner of the Red Herring) Always On conference started last night in NY and goes through COB tomorrow. As always, Tony streams his events live, so you can watch them on the web as they occur. Check it out if you have time.

Re the VOD/DVR, Sky’s rebranded VOD service, Sky Anytime (formerly Sky by Broadband) is announcing that it has delivered over one million movies. Whether or not that’s accurate, perhaps satellite with broadband backchannel has a competitive shot in markets with less cable infrastructure. Guess we’ll find out.

Apparently it was too crowded this year – but what wasn’t? That’s the nature of a boom. We had a party at CES at the Palms with Tim Chang of Gabriel Ventures… Chad Hurley and Steve Chen came by – both very nice guys as far as I can see. As they did at Sun Valley, YouTube were the young bucks of the World Economic Forum, and a big improvement over the previous year’s buzz story, Angelina Jolie. Good to see people who do this stuff on the international stage. That’s crunk. Video of Chad’s panel at Davos (with Gates) here; his comments about it here.

The battlefront for the technology-challenged satellite industry now hinges on two fronts: HD and DVR. DIRECTV is having trouble on both. A lawsuit this summer alleged that DIRECTV has dropped its data allocations to its HD channels below the ATSC standards, to the point where DIRECTV HD is not actually HD quality.

Meanwhile, the company is spinning the performance of its mediocre DVR line (and its dubious decision to abandon TiVo). Strategy is to pepper the street with long-term plans for DIRECTV On Demand, the company’s (net-dependent) VOD via DVR service. Comcast’s repsonse has been fairly candid: the DIRECTV “faux VOD” service (their term) is over a year behind. And even when launched, it will be much more complicated than what cable MSOs offer today. It will be interesting to see what Malone and co. do with this mess when thay assume control of the company from News Corp. Odds are it will be a vast improvement.

Guest Commentator, KenRadio

Sundance Film Festival, Park City Utah

The launch event Redford spoke at is Chicago 10, a mixed media take on the 60s counterculture Yippies and their 1969 trial. The group included Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, as well as former Fonda spouse Tom Hayden, who attended the event. Reviews are mixed.

This year’s first breakout appears to be Laura Linney/Philip Seymour Hoffman starrer The Savages from Fox Searchlight, directed by Tamara Jenkins of Slums of Beverly Hills fame.

We were lucky to be coming in directly from NATPE – Vegas to Salt Lake was easy; lots of other folks are delayed in airports today. We didn’t get into our place in Upper Deer Valley till 3AM (cab driver dropped us at the wrong place) but we are here and it’s beautiful. Redford’s took a swipe at Bush during the opening remarks yesterday, relative to the value of documentary.

As anticipated, focus of this show has been deal structure and alliances for digital. Simon Assaad of Heavy and Greg Spiradellis of JibJab had some interesting thoughts about the nature of advertising and brand identity on their respective sites – audio is available here, courtesy of the moderator our friend Rafat Ali. Broad themes of that panel and the show are that the length of ads – 5 sec, 10s, 30s or 2 min – is still completely up for grabs. Whatever feels organic and unobtrusive is good and ads matched to specific content are obviously ideal. On the rights side, buyers are backing off on exclusivity – multiple deals across multiple platforms and partners are becoming the norm, which is better for everyone. It’s a big world, for now, and we should play together as nicely as we can. The nasty kids will eventually be found out and be removed from the sandbox. But we learn by doing so let’s do.

Back in Vegas. It grows on you; I get how people get sucked into it. I used to have a girlfriend from here and it creeped me out how there were no shadows during the day… the archetypal desert you could never cover up. But now I get it. Vegas is simple. Everyone is just passing through, like life.

NATPE is the Natl Association of Programming Execs and it’s OK so far. Much smaller than CES obviously, which is a mercy. Peter Guber and Peter Bart had a very good panel with Harry Sloan and Jon Feltheimer but I missed most of it cause I was having lunch with my friend Lori Schwartz. I had two Manhattans and we had a swell time.

1:30 AM inVegas we go for NATPE, the TV Programming Exec show. Usually I’m not a huge fan but this one should be good. The proliferation of variables in TV deals in the past year is unprecedented… VOD, DVR, ITunes, other download services, YouTube, all with exclusivity and rev share decisions… the deal matrix gets prettty thick for a business that’s been boilerplate for a generation. And to quote Mr. Goldman, no one knows anything. All bets are off as everyone looks for the right combination of elements in pricing, UI, rev share, branding, windowing etc. May you live in interesting times!