WASHINGTON, D.C. - Emmy award winning journalist Charlie Rose, the host of PBS’s Charlie Rose show and a correspondent for CBS news magazine program “60-minutes II,” will interview Viacom President and COO Mel Karmazin at The Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit next week. Their conversation – the substance of this year’s Chairman’s Dinner and Address – begins shortly after 7:00 p.m. (Mountain) on Tuesday, August 19. The Aspen Summit – an annual gathering of top digital doers and thinkers from business, government and academia – runs August 17-19 at the St. Regis Hotel in Aspen, Colorado.

“Pairing America’s best interviewer with the person who runs Viacom is bound to result in another peak Aspen Summit experience,” says Progress and Freedom Foundation President Raymond L. Gifford. “We are sure to be privy to some useful insights into the future of communications and content, and to learn more about a man who, as much as anyone else, is charting our digital future.”

Other Aspen Summit headliners this year include John Chen, chairman and CEO of Sybase, Inc., FCC Chairman Michael Powell and FTC Chairman Timothy Muris. Also featured are senior executives of AOL Time Warner, Allegiance Telecom, Autodesk, BellSouth, Insight Communications, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Covad, EMI Group, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Movielink, Qwest, Red Hat, Salesforce.com, SBC, Universal Pictures, Verizon and Verizon Wireless, as well as FCC Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy and Kevin Martin, and FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle. Further details and registration information are available.

Following its 1995 debut, the Aspen Summit earned a reputation as one of the most interesting events of its kind. (Wired compared it to the Davos summit in Switzerland and the famed Renaissance Weekend.) Recent speakers include Jeff Bezos, Carly Fiorina, Peter Chernin, Ivan Seidenberg and Les Vadasz. Members of the audience – who often include the likes of Michael Eisner and John Doerr – also contribute to discussions. Last year’s Chairman’s Dinner speaker was Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It is a 501(c)(3) research & educational organization.