Yahoo’s Santa Monica Move: Not Really a Hollywood Ending

If you sit on a story too long, this is what happens: someone else goes ahead and writes it. I’ve been following the simmering discontent within Yahoo’s ranks for the last 3 months and have spoken to a bunch of people inside and outside the company. To be clear, it is not all black and white, as this WSJ story tries to portrays.

So anyway, here’s the skinny: Yahoo’s Media group consists of Yahoo Movies, Yahoo Music, Yahoo TV, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Games, and Yahoo Finance (I might be missing a couple). Of these, the first three have more or less been OK moving to Santa Monica (well, at least the rationale is there). But the rest are questioning the move to Hollywood and this has resulted in some people leaving, some people being shuffled around, and possibility of delay in moving to the offices here is very real.

Among the people who’ve left, as the WSJ story says, are Douglas Hirsch, GM of movies and TV; Nathan Richardson, GM of finance (joined Dow Jones); and Brian Grey, GM of Sports, who’s joining Fox Sports.

Among the people who’ve shuffled within the company include Craig Forman, the former VP of media and information (overlooking Yahoo news and Yahoo Finance), who’s now working in some special project related to content management, according to sources. He chose not to move to Santa Monica.

As I said earlier, it is not all black and white: Lloyd Braun is known to be barking orders through e-mail. This from a very senior executive within the company I spoke to a month ago: “He seems to act on instinct rather than a plan. That’s fine if you’re picking shows to put into production, but not so good for a long-term business that needs to have a more even keel.”

He is bringing all his favorite people in positions to head the units under him, according to people within the company. Scott Moore, Shawn Hardin, David Katz, Ira Kurgan were brought in within the last six months or so.

At the same time, people in the entertainment focused divisions say that Lloyd does bring in the sex appeal to a decidedly staid dotcom company. But the company’s changing as its size grows, and the dotcom/Silicon Valley ethos is fast disappearing from everywhere except the Search Group.

I contacted Yahoo Media Group’s PR in May to discuss these issues, but initially they weren’t really interested in offering Lloyd, Scott or Shawn to speak on the Santa Monica move. My main contention was: let Lloyd speak and let’s see what his vision for the media group is.

Some miscommunication on my part: they did offer to speak late June, through a voicemail, but I missed it somehow..

Anyway, with Yahoo’s earnings call coming up tomorrow, expect analysts to jump on this…

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