All Things Digital

Scott Moore, who runs the Yahoo Media Group, sat down with BoomTown at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters last week, to talk about the future direction of content at the company.

While the Media unit has had its ups and downs over the years about exactly what it should be–such as the controversial Hollywood-esque Lloyd Braun strategy–one thing that Yahoo (YHOO) has consistently done well is to aggregate and distribute its own and others’ content.

So well, in fact, that May’s comScore monthly unique visitor numbers show that sites like Yahoo News (38.8 million), Sports (22.2 million), Finance (18.5 million), Entertainment News (12.5 million), TV (15.3 million) and Games (18.3 million) are the No. 1 destinations for their genres on the Web.

Overall, the media properties hit 70 million uniques monthly.

That’s probably a plus these days, given all the turmoil around the company in the wake of the Microsoft (MSFT) takeover bid and the ensuing proxy fight mess–coming to an annual meeting near Santa Clara soon!–with activist investor Carl Icahn.

The whole mess has thrown Yahoo’s future into question, demoralized employees and given the company a decidedly sad-sack image, in spite of all the powerful assets it has like its many media properties.

Moore (pictured here) came to Yahoo to work for Braun in mid-2005, after toiling for many years at–wait for it–Microsoft, running MSNBC, Slate and MSN.

(I met him back when he was at Microsoft, in fact, where he tended more to suits and ties and geeky glasses–and I have the picture to prove it–rather than his current hipster SoCal look.)

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 now reports 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 seems 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 content is featured there, for example).

So, as part of our exciting new “Meet the Yahoos: Survivors Edition” series, here’s a video where I chat with Moore about all that, ad monetization and more:

It’s starting to feel like a murder mystery over at Yahoo these days, as one vice president after another drops off the senior management rolls at the Internet giant.

Next to go are VP of Media Engineering Bharath Kadaba and the higher profile Rachel Glaser, a senior vice president of operations finance. (Both are pictured here.)

It is not clear when either will leave, although a Yahoo spokesperson said Glaser would indeed be leaving “in [20]08.” Sources said that would likely be sooner than later.

Was it Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in the conference room with a knife? Or was it President Sue Decker in the cafeteria with a rope?

Whoever it was and for a variety of reasons (some jumping, some being pushed), there have been yet another passel of high-level executive departures of late–such as Vice President and Editor in Chief of Yahoo News, Finance and Sports Neil Budde, Marketing VP David Riemer and VP Jennifer Dulski, who headed shopping, travel, autos, real estate and local.

“They’re not saying it explicitly, but there just have been too many chiefs and not enough Indians,” said one person close to Yahoo. “This is a continuing acknowledgment of that by this effort at streamlining the executive ranks.”

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This weekend, as first reported by the most excellent Staci Kramer at paidContent, Yahoo did yet another Yet Another Hierarchical Officious (re-)Organization (YAHOO!).

Memo to CEO Jerry Yang, who is apparently still so annoyed with BoomTown’s spiky posts on Yahoo’s troubles–we have sources too, you know–that lunch together seems a distant dream: We like it!

Of course, it’s true that Yahoo has become well known of late for its cloddish reorgs, but this one is a sensible one and even bold.

This time, its Network division gets the redo, with the big move in its media area, marked by the ascension of Scott Moore (pictured here) taking over virtually all content at the Internet giant.

Along with his news and information (news, sports, financial), Moore now gets all of entertainment (television, movies, games), video, lifestyle (youth, women), real estate and autos.

And contrary to rumors, the Yahoo office in Santa Monica, Calif., where a lot of the media action is, will remain intact.

“I see huge opportunities for Yahoo as an online media leader,” said Moore, who came to Yahoo from Microsoft three years ago. “We have enormous audiences across every category on the Web, and this change sets us up to continue the dramatic progress we have made in the last year.”

But there’s more, including adding to the portfolios of other Network chieftains, in an attempt to streamline the top-heavy organization and make fewer people accountable for more.

“Our goal is to better align management around assets,” said Network head Jeff Weiner in an interview last night, who noted his reports drop to four from six. “We think this is much better coordinated and we want to think about the network more holistically.”

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Despite a lot of noisy speculation all around the Internet yesterday about big changes afoot, let me give you the skinny on exactly what is going to happen today at Yahoo when all its top brass gather at its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters for an all-day confab.

Some lovely breakfast pastries. Blah, blah, blah, better corporate culture! A doubtlessly tasty lunch. More blah, blah, blah, more content and ad coordination! Some yummy afternoon snacks. Blah, blah, blah, we really appreciate your efforts and goodbye!

Other than that: A whole lot of nothing.

First off, let’s set the record straight about this “confidential meeting” of Yahoo’s leadership team–meaning everyone with a vice president or higher in their title. I am not sure exactly how sneaky CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker can be when that means about 300 VPs and several dozen senior VPs, as well as the clutch of tippy-top execs.

Yahoo is a VP-heavy culture and so it is likely the event will be pretty packed, but also pretty dull. In fact, corporations have these kind of gatherings all the time, which are usually about as spontaneous as a presidential debate. Wait, make that a vice presidential debate.

Wait, both of those are less scripted and more exciting than this meeting will be.

“I want to figure out a way to sneak out,” said one VP to me about it, sick as this exec is of Yahoo’s meeting-centric culture.

So as much as I would love it if Yang gathered all the VPs in a room, split them into two tribes and declared that Yahoo’s new plan for reinvigorating itself was to conduct a corporate version of “Survivor,” let us all level set our expectations.

(Although it would be a lot of fun to watch wily Brad Garlinghouse vs. energetic Jeff Weiner in a reward challenge to see who could, as on a Vanuatu episode, “deliver coconut juice from the starting line through a series of obstacles and finally into a glass jar.”)

But this is Yahoo, after all, which so far in Yang’s 100-day No-Sacred-Cow Vision Quest–he told investors on July 17 that he was going to take that long to refurb Yahoo with all company bovines at risk of death–has been less than gripping (even though BoomTown has been following it all as if it were the first season of “Heroes” and saucy cheerleader Claire Bennet’s in danger again from that creepy Sylar!!!)

Sure, there have been some nice baby steps, like axing some minor crappy products (such as yesterday’s dumping of its moribund podcast offering). And some of the acquisitions have been pretty good, like BlueLithium and Zimbra, although none are the kind of game changers needed to really get things going.

In fact, while Time Warner execs are busy torching AOL’s HQ in Dulles, Va., laying off scads of people and pretty much decimating the service to become a glorified ad network (now that’s certainly cheeky of CEO Randy Falco!) and while Facebook is hard at work trying to ransack Bill Gates’s wallet and while widget companies are Hoovering up audiences with their zombies and superpokes, Yahoo feels preternaturally calm.

Well, about as calm as you can be living in the eye of the hurricane, I guess, which is why it is probably a good idea to gather the troops at HQ and give them a more meaty idea of direction, given all the unrest and uncertainty of late.

But there’ll be no sudden announcement of cuts in, say its Santa Monica, Calif., office, which has often been rumored. (Anyway, why do that when most of those properties, save its premium music service, are doing OK?)

Indeed, Entertainment and Video head Vince Broady’s blog post about better integration of its entertainment properties today practically screamed: You’ll have to do a beach invasion to unseat us from our cushy Colorado Center offices!

That post said a whole lot of nothing too, although it was breathtaking in its mastery of Web 2.0-speak: “We’ll be investing in the development of next-gen media platforms, applications and services, creating cool new opportunities for third-party publishers and media companies while also harnessing the power of social media and user-generated content.”

I have absolutely no idea what that means, but sign me up!

As to its also rumored Project Apex, which Valleywag wrote about yesterday and which will be discussed today, too–that’s about three months old already and simply a renewed push to coordinate ads and content to compete better with Google’s similar services. Another good idea, but it’s just another obvious fix that needs to be made.

So what else? Probably the most important part of tomorrow’s gathering will be to give Yahoo’s culture a kick in the pants.

I cannot tell you how many Yahoo execs at all levels complain about the inability to launch products and services easily, to make decisions without fear of getting a no from on high, to take the kind of crazy risks needed to succeed (and sometimes fail, which can also be a good thing).

There’s an old bromide that it’s always better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

So maybe the best takeaway that herd of Yahoo VPs will get from their bosses is simple: Success means always having to say you’re sorry.