BoomTown is headed to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival today, an annual journey I make to moderate panels about the tech industry. The festival officially opened yesterday in Park City, Utah. While still largely a confab of independent filmmakers, Hollywood deal types and various celebrities rifling though swag orgies, a lot of geeks are there too.
There it was again–like the gnarly ghost of Christmas past–in the Los Angeles Times this week. But this time Lloyd Braun wasn’t going to take it anymore. The object of his ire was dropped right in the middle of a blog post about how Yahoo was “reversing its Hollywoodification” at its Santa Monica media unit offices. The piece also included old allegations from a devastating story in November of 2005 about Braun, which made him look like a digital version of Ari Gold from “Entourage.” Unfortunately, as BoomTown has found out, the bulk of those juicy anecdotes about him don’t actually check out. And therein lies a complex tale that still reverberates at Yahoo today.
With Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock reportedly assuring investors and others that the company will have a CEO in place by the end of the year, it seems prudent for BoomTown to initiate an official Yahoo CEO Countdown.
After all, this column had a 100-Day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest to mark the time that Jerry Yang said he needed to give Yahoo a top-to-bottom look-see when he took over last summer as CEO.
So here’s today’s update: No Peter Chernin and a lot of thorny issues for other candidates.
Obviously, the dream CEO for Yahoo is News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin.
And, no surprise, he is the No. 1 choice of most inside and outside Yahoo in the wake of the news late yesterday that its current CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang is stepping down.
Well, Yahoo would certainly be a challenge for Chernin, in terms of a corporate cleanup challenge, especially compared to figuring out how to make bank on plush toys from “The Simpsons.”
But there are many other contenders for the job, despite the slog it could be. Here’s BoomTown’s list…
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.
After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.
This is part two of three parts.
We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.
Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.
After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.
This is part one of three parts.
A billion dollar investment in digital technologies, struck between a handful of Hollywood studios and a consortium of big theater chains, got little notice earlier this week.
Under terms of the deal, the entertainment companies agreed to help defray the costs of rolling out more advanced digital technologies in 20,000 theaters, which will eventually lead to being able to see more movies in technologies like 3-D.
When he debuted his company’s new DVD copier at DEMOfall recently, called RealDVD, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser did a video interview with BoomTown about it.
And now that RealNetworks and Hollywood are cross-suing each other over RealDVD–in the latest clash over the still-contentious copyright issue that separates the tech and entertainment industries–it’s time for a replay!
One of our favorite D: All Things Digital speakers, and now a regular attendee, has been Hollywood director, producer, writer and big-cowboy-hat-about-town, Barry Sonnenfeld (pictured here at D6).
So, BoomTown extends belated but Texas-sized congratulations to Sonnenfeld for winning an Emmy earlier this week for directing the pilot of “Pushing Daisies” on ABC.
At DEMOfall yesterday, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser chitty-chatted with BoomTown about a lot of things, such as the Presidential race (he is a big Obama supporter), his twins and more.
But in this video interview, Glaser talked about RealDVD, the company’s new “legal” DVD copier, which was launched here in San Diego yesterday.
At an introductory rate of $30, buyers can use the software to rip all the parts of a DVD, including cover art.
To avoid violating digital rights management schemes, RealDVD adds its own DRM layer, preventing ripped DVDs from being copied and shared and imposing further barriers to piracy. But there are still possibilities for illegal ripping, of course.
Last Friday, what BoomTown would call the Web’s first bona fide hit ended, as the lonelygirl15 online series finale took place with 12 video segments uploaded over 12 hours.
Now, apparently, it is time to meet EQAL, a “social entertainment company” that is still essentially the two guys–Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett–who dreamed up LG15 and also the KateModern Web series.
Except, rather than operating out of their homes on a wing and a prayer, they are now armed with $5 million in funding.
Yesterday, BoomTown was hanging in Hollywood at ContentNext’s EconCeleb’s conference, where I did an onstage Q&A with legendary editor Bonnie Fuller about the massive impact of the Internet on celebrity journalism.
With its instant ability to deliver news, video and more, sites like TMZ, PerezHilton, The Superficial and Yahoo’s omg! have become massive drivers of traffic on the Internet and–despite the saturation–the arena is still growing fast, especially among women users.
At its EconCeleb conference in Hollywood today, ContentNext released its list of the most influential and innovative of online celebrities today.
It is an interesting and varied list, that includes every one from powerhouse Oprah (pictured here, of course!) to the bisexual sprite, Tila Tequila.
Sorry for the delay, but we’ll finally start posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May in their entirety.
Kicking off the proceedings will be what most of the attendees at the conference told us they considered their favorite interview, which Walt Mossberg and I did with News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.
Here’s Part 3 of 6 of the Murdoch interview.
As Yahoo continues to be in limbo, pressure is sure to mount heavily on its CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang, and it is not a stretch to imagine he will not remain in the top job at the troubled company for the long term.
So who would be good to replace him?
I have six candidates I like, so here’s my short list (and remember, the last time I made one for the job of the No. 2 leader for Facebook, its current COO Sheryl Sandberg was high on my list).
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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