COPYCENSE

“A year ago, Yahoo!’s ambitions in the media industry were nothing short of audacious. Yahoo! Inc. execs spoke of creating smash-hit, medium-defining programming for the interactive world, a sort of I Love Lucy for the Internet. With former movie mogul Terry S. Semel as its CEO and former ABC television Chairman Lloyd Braun running the media outfit, Yahoo looked capable of achieving its aspirations. The company furiously set to work on a number of high-profile content ideas, from adapting the abandoned reality-TV show The Runner into a multimillion-dollar Internet program to developing a home-electronics reality contest, dubbed Wow House.

“Today, after a turbulent year in the media business, Yahoo is singing a much more modest tune. Large projects such as The Runner are in a holding pattern as Yahoo susses out the potential business opportunities. Wow House has been sent back to the drawing board. And headline-grabbing content partnerships, which Yahoo once pursued with zeal, are increasingly ending up at competitors such as America Online, Google, and Microsoft’s MSN.”

“It’s the media education of Yahoo Inc.”

BusinessWeek Online. Yahoo’s Boulevard Of Broken Dreams. March 13, 2006.

See also:

David A. Utter. Yahoo May Run “The Runner.” WebProNews. Jan. 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.