Yahoo is closer to naming a new international head, according to sources, the last big slot left in the top management structure of CEO Carol Bartz.

While BoomTown is endeavoring to get the name of this international man of mystery, several sources said the company has come close to settling on a London-based media exec, who will move to and operate out of its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ in Silicon Valley.

But it is unclear if or when a final appointment will be made.

That exec could be a lot of people, since Yahoo’s headhunter for the job–Heidrick & Struggles–has pretty much talked to the gamut of international Web muckety-mucks since the search started six months ago.

The many chatted up include: Former Bebo head Joanna Shields (nope, she has a noncompete from AOL); former Joost CEO Mike Volpi (nope, he just landed as a VC at Index Ventures), Microsoft (MSFT) consumer and online man in Britain Ashley Highfield (hmm, would he move so quickly after jumping from Project Kangaroo and the BBC?) and Gavin Patterson, head of the BT Retail unit.

But Yahoo could also opt for a more traditional media exec, said some sources.

In a memo to Yahoo staff after her reorganization in February, Bartz said that “international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too reliant on its U.S. business over the years.”

Still, that key job remains unfilled, in an arena Yahoo has dropped the ball in recently, even as more nimble competitors like Google (GOOG) and Facebook thrive.

In the Yahoo (YHOO) management chart posted below, Bartz has filled the CFO role with Tim Morse and the customer advocacy slot with Jeff Russakow.

Without an international head, the three regional heads worldwide–Rose Tsou (Asia), Rich Riley (Europe) and Keith Nilsson (Emerging Markets)–have continued to report to Bartz. The U.S. region–Yahoo’s most significant market–is headed by Hilary Schneider.

Here is the Yahoo top management org chart, released back in February (click on it to make it larger):

On BoomTown’s recent grand tour of Europe, I paid a visit a week ago to London to moderate some sessions at Media Guardian’s Changing Media Summit 2009.

As in the U.S., a lot of the same questions were asked there about when and how the new media business would cross the Rubicon to transform into a strongly profitable and sustainable enterprise.

Via advertising? Subscriptions? Product placement?

“We’ve got to get to a place where we’re going to become an industrialized-sized business,” said one panelist at a session on monetizing such media, in what was a common question.

Well, considering how small the revenues in new media still are compared to traditional media, along with the recent negative impact of the econalypse, even a profitable popcorn stand would be an admirable achievement right about now.

Still, the room was packed at the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel overlooking the Thames River and Big Ben, as people searched for answers.

One of the panels I moderated had the much-too-vaunted title of “The Future of Media: Capturing the Essence of Reinvention in the New Age.”

The panelists talked about what the media company of tomorrow looks like, as well as discussing the Next Big Thing.

The group included Ashley Highfield, managing director and VP, consumer and online for Microsoft (MSFT); Larry Kramer, former president of CBS (CBS) Digital and senior adviser to Polaris Ventures; Peter Smith, president of GE (GE) NBC Universal’s international unit; and Mike Volpi, CEO of video start-up Joost.

Here’s a video of interviews I did talking about all this and more while at the Guardian Media Group’s new digital-heavy offices in London.

It includes Volpi and Kramer, as well as Guardian-owned paidContent.org head Rafat Ali and the BBC’s tech news correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones:

Although we did not raid the offices of Silicon Alley Insider and “steal” Peter Kafka, as the fanciful SAI kingpin Henry Blodget alleges–had it been a raid, BoomTown would have properly hog-tied Blodget so he could not make such spurious allegations!–it is true that SAI’s current managing editor (pictured here) will be coming to work for us at AllThingD.com soon.

Indeed, Walt Mossberg and I, as well as the rest of the ATD team, are thrilled that Peter is coming onboard at the end of October. He will write a daily still-unnamed new media blog from New York City.

Walt and I have long wanted to bring in someone located on the East Coast and away from the echo chamber that Silicon Valley can be, because we both feel the ongoing digital revolution is taking place over a number of key industries all over this country and the world.

Peter was our first choice and has been on my must-read list since I began this blog. He is sharp, witty, confident and has the kind of reporting and writing chops that we think are key to giving readers high-quality, standards-based content they can trust.

With extensive connections across the media, advertising, entertainment and tech sectors, Peter will be doing original reporting, getting scoops, doing interviews, making videos and providing much needed and clear-headed analysis that he is so well known for.

Peter has worked at SAI since mid-2007. The first hire at the start-up tech business analysis site, he has focused on enterprise and beat reporting, as well as breaking news.

Previously, he spent 10 years as a reporter and editor at Forbes and Forbes.com covering media and technology. There he launched two tech columns, coordinated the video staff and represented Forbes on industry panels and in TV appearances for CNN, BBC and CNBC.

Peter was also a staff reporter with City Business in Minneapolis and a staff writer for the Minnesota Real Estate Journal in Bloomington from 1993 to 1997. Earlier, he was a stringer with the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel in Madison, Wis.

He holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Wisconsin and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

More importantly, Peter is a newly-minted father, which should give him more practice in prolonged sleep deprivation needed for his blogging.

He will begin at ATD on Oct. 27.

Along with Walt and me, Peter joins senior news editor John Paczkowski, author of the rocking Digital Daily column, who formerly wrote the award-winning blog, “Good Morning Silicon Valley” at the San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Boehret, who writes the most excellent weekly Mossberg Solution column.

We hope you are as thrilled as we are that Peter is coming soon to the ATD site.

(And if you want a little taste of Peter’s work, here’s a post he did yesterday on an appearance by Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes at the Goldman Sachs media conference and another on Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. [News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and of this Web site].)

It seems the media industry across the pond is taking its cue from Hulu, the fledgling U.S. online video effort from NBC Universal and News Corp., at offering consumers TV content online in better and more flexible ways.

Three of the main British TV networks–the BBC, ITV and Channel 4–are planning a joint on-demand service, so consumers can see professional video programming of all kinds in one place.

It’s another step in the right direction by media giants for consumers–well, in Britain, at least.

Such a move is akin to all four U.S. majors (CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox) joining together in a helpful service. But don’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon.

I gave good props to Hulu, which debuted recently, noting it was the first time traditional media companies had created a product that was more aimed at consumers than protecting their own vested interests.

But the Hulu service also is frustrating, like having a television set that only gets a small number of stations and then having to use another TV and then another if you want other channels.

Television’s success had a lot to do with it being a one-stop destination, while online video on the Web is still dispersed in ways that makes it hard for any one thing to take off.

Perhaps it cannot be that way on the Web for U.S. users, despite many efforts to do so, but such a confused approach hinders the distribution of professional online video content. (The user-generated vomiting-cats-on-skateboards fare does fine on its own in getting found.)

So, it will be interesting to see what happens with the U.K.’s effort.

Set to be launched in 2008, Britain’s version will add free downloads and purchase (something Hulu does not do now), as well as streaming, rental and eventual distribution to other platforms.

The BBC, for example, has tried this on its own with its much maligned iPlayer service. Said one British techie I asked about it on a recent trip: “It’s grotty.”

The iPlayer will continue, as will ITV’s current online service. Channel 4’s 4oD will cease to exist.

Channel 4 CEO Andy Duncan said that’s because the new effort would “give viewers ultimate control over what they watch and when they watch it.”

Of course, that’s bloody brilliant.