Oops, Never Mind: Braun Says Yahoo Doesn’t Need Original TV-Like Shows; Shelves Burnett’s “Runner”

Call it “Lost: The Sequel” … Yahoo Media Group chief Lloyd Braun has a double-barreled message to insiders and outsiders via the New York Times: he’s not going anywhere and he’s not following through on the ballyhoo. And he’ll even hold a staff meeting Friday — with CEO Terry Semel present to explain what they’ve read about his dramatic change in strategy. Yahoo isn’t dumping its current originals like “Richard Bangs Adventures” and “The Hot Zone With Kevin Sites.” But Braun says he now realizes his expectations and ego outpaced reality. He’s cancelled “The Runner” — which he worked on with Mark Burnett at ABC and had an estaimted cost of at least a few million dollars. (Burnett was working with LivePlanet, owned by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.)
One understatement given how often we’ve heard over the past months that Braun was leaving/was being ousted: he “was the subject of speculation in recent weeks that he was leaving Yahoo over differences with its chief executive, Terry S. Semel.” No comment from Semel but COO Dan Rosensweig said, “We are very happy with Lloyd, and Lloyd is very happy with Yahoo.” Braun talked about differences such as the rejection of his intial 2006 budget requests. (BTW, the resignation scenario we were following a few weeks ago included a Friday staff meeting and a battle with Burnett over dropping “The Runner.”

As for the strategy shift, essentially Braun is saying he didn’t have a clue about what he was getting into — fair enough given the combination of his TV network background and the rapidly evolving broadband TV landscape — and he couldn’t let go of the idea that he knew what was best. “I didn’t fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going to look like. This is not about creating one-off hits like in my old business. That is not going to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term.”
Instead, he told Saul Hansell, he now sees user-gen content as the key to stickier traffic and a greater advertising opportunity: “I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work.” His example: Yahoo’s Flickr-enhanced Torino site.

Yahoo spokesman Joanna Stevens told me tonight that Braun would not do any other media interviews in the next couple of days and reiterated that the meeting Friday is private.

Related: Yahoo Attempts To Revive The Runner

A Hollywood Intrigue: Once Again, Rumors Of Braun Departure Jump The Gun

Yahoo Names Ex-ABC Chairman As Media Head

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