IAC’s Content Honcho: Comedy Ventures Forthcoming

This is an interesting story and gives an insight into Diller’s IAC’s plans for developing or acquiring original content. This is an interview with Michael Jackson, the recently appointed president of programming at IAC, and report on his speech at MIPTV earlier this week.
In the interview, he beats down vertically integrated TV networks: “In the US TV market there are no American independent producers…Vertical integration has led to a creative deficit.”
He also looks up to, and says his benchmarks are Huffingtonpost.com and Gawker Media.
IAC is keen on comedy sites and has held talks with a number of companies about launching or acquiring ventures with comedy content. He added that it would not make a big acquisition along the lines of ViacomNBC-iVillage, or News Corp-MySpace: “IAC has been very entrepreneurial but realistic. It has avoided the big mistake.”

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