Friday, September 23, 2005

Yahoo turns Hollywood as media rivals watch

A New York Times article by Saul Hansell, via The International Herald Tribune, reports that:

As the space shuttle Discovery orbited the Earth in early August, millions of people visited Yahoo, which runs the most popular news site on the Internet, to see the nail-biting conclusion to the troubled shuttle mission. Could the U.S. space agency find a way to bring the astronauts home safely?

Despite the drama and the huge number of users, Lloyd Braun, the television impresario hired last year to oversee Yahoo's media operation, was not satisfied. All Yahoo was offering its users, he fumed, was a white page filled with links to other sites on the Web.

He made his frustration clear to Scott Moore, who had defected from Microsoft to run Yahoo's news operation. Within a few hours, Moore orchestrated a quick fix to make the shuttle page comply with Braun's mantras: "more immersive," "more engaging," and most of all, more original programming.

Braun's handiwork is just starting to be seen at Yahoo. And as he increasingly puts his stamp on the company, the rest of the media - both old and new - are watching carefully, if not nervously.

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