Wired has an interesting article about Why Yahoo! will be the center of the million-channel universe. It points out that while the "old" Yahoo continues in Silicon Valley:
In Santa Monica, 350 miles south, the Yahoo! Media Group has slapped down $100 million for a 10-year lease on the 230,000-square-foot Yahoo! Center, formerly MGM's home. The office park covers an entire city block, squatting amid the offices of HBO, MTV, Lion's Gate, and Universal. The company won't comment on its mission in LA, but in an internal email making rounds on the Web, Yahoo! COO Dan Rosensweig says, "The growing consumer demand for compelling content on the Internet and the proliferation of broadband is an exciting opportunity. We need to enhance our presence in the entertainment capital of the world."
Unlike Google, Yahoo has long accepted that it's a media company, so it shouldn't have been surprising that instead of hiring an Internet guy, it took on as chief executive "Terry Semel, who spent 24 years as an executive at Warner Bros". He
has recruited a crew of network personnel in Santa Monica to crack open the contractual vaults containing 50 years of rights-encumbered TV and film archives. And Yahoo! has already become the Internet home of broadcast fare like Fat Actress and The Apprentice. "They're clearly thinking of themselves as the fifth network," says Jeremy Allaire, founder of Brightcove, a Net video distribution startup.
