Yahoo Media’s Scott Moore and Al Warms to Depart This Week
by Kara Swisher
Posted on November 3, 2008 at 8:37 AM PT
Aside from upcoming layoffs, it seemed as if Yahoo had stanched the flow of major execs from the company.
Not so, it seems, as several sources with knowledge of the situation confirm that the two top execs of the troubled Internet company’s media unit will be announcing their departures later this week.
SVP Scott Moore (pictured here), who runs Yahoo’s media group out of its offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and also Alan Warms, who came to Yahoo from its BuzzTracker acquisition last year and is head of Yahoo News, Tech and Education, will both be leaving.
It is not clear what their future plans are.
Moore declined to comment when reached by phone, and Warms did not return an email requesting comment. Yahoo also did not yet respond to a request for comment.
In any case, the departures are troublesome as Yahoo (YHOO) tries to right itself, especially since its content operations are among its bright spots. Yahoo’s various sites are some of the largest on the Web, such as its news, finance and sports online franchises.
Overall, the media properties hit more than 70 million unique visitors monthly.
Losing top execs is also a problem as Yahoo also attempts to complete a merger with Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL. Talks between the companies have been ongoing for months.
With high-ranking Yahoo execs like Moore gone, it will likely fall to AOL execs, such as its content head Bill Wilson, who will be more likely to head integration efforts, if a deal is ever struck.
And while no replacement for Moore has been selected, insiders note that Yahoo Sports head James Pitaro, who has reportedly gotten a number of outside offers, would be a likely internal candidate for the job.
Then again, Yahoo’s management might reorganize yet again, creating another new set-up for its content operations or add new execs.
[Update: Later today, Yahoo named former Microsoft digital exec Jeff Dossett, who was the lead for audience, content and programming strategy and execution in the U.S., as its new SVP for Audience. I had reported last month that Dossett was being considered for a big job at Yahoo, although Microsoft denied it at the time.]
Rumors of Moore’s departure have been swirling for months, especially recently outside the company. BoomTown previously reported he was looking at starting a new venture.
I did a video interview in July (see below) with Moore about his plans for the Media Group, where he has worked since he came to Yahoo in mid-2005 from a series of major posts at Microsoft (MSFT).
At Microsoft, he ran its various content operations for many years. Moore came to Yahoo to work for Lloyd Braun, the Hollywood exec who left Yahoo under yet another swirl of controversy.
His portfolio grew when Braun’s other No. 2–Vince Broady–was re-orged out of his job last December, giving Moore purview over the whole Media Group.
In Yahoo’s latest reorganization, Moore has been reporting to U.S. head Hilary Schneider, in a move to better align its media and advertising sales.
Moore and his staff have tried a range of large and small experiments in original content, some of which have worked and some of which have not.
Interestingly, Yahoo has not abandoned its original content effort at all, doing newsy programming like political debates and even an online interview with President George Bush.
But the company seemed to be settling into a pattern best exemplified by its recently launched Tech Ticker, which is a combination of Yahoo’s own inexpensively produced but well done content and videos and that of outside contributors (AllThingsD.com content is featured there, for example).
More to come, but here is the interview with Moore from this summer:
Comments
Kara,
You are clearly all over the YHOO story, but sadly now matter how many times Yang rearranges the deck chairs, the RMS Yahoo is still going to sink as long as three names are still on the payroll:
Jerry, Sue & Roy need to go. All of the rest is just window dressing and is a way for Yang to feed his already bloated ego. He seems to be the ONLY person around that hasn’t figured out that he is the problem, not the solution.
Posted by Mike Kane at November 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 amOver and over see references to yahoo’s content. But Moore in the interview starts out by saying that they mostly just aggregate stuff. Their news comes mostly from AP as far as I can tell.
Google aggregates through automation, Yahoo does the same with a combination of automation and manual tinkering.
Yahoo’s big audience is there through inertia not innovation.
The game changer since Google is their ability to handle more raw data than anyone else. Yahoo hasn’t begun to address that (except with Flickr) and Microsoft seems to be buying buildings and filling hem with servers, but it’s not clear they know what to do with them.
Yahoo is past saving I think.
For Microsoft, who talks down cloud computing as unreliable, it remains to be seen if they can convince users and businesses that the unreliable cloud and their unreliable OS can be somehow combined in a way that doesn’t square the problem.
Posted by Mac Beach at November 3rd, 2008 at 12:49 pmto be fair, hillary schneider also needs to go. she came from knight ridder digital (where? you ask, exactly).
knight ridder digital was famous for, ah, hmmmmm, adding the word “digital” to the dying newspaper masthead
jerry has been duped by executive recruiters sending him the B Team for years now
Posted by Sam Harrison at November 3rd, 2008 at 1:55 pm