Yahoo’s Semel shows no interest in producing TV shows
Posted May 12, 2006 at 11:21 PM by Doug Berger
Section: Tech News, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video, Home Audio, Household
In his interview with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel shared a lot of his thoughts regarding the company’s future. He mentioned that Yahoo is an internet company and is not interested in producing TV shows. “Television does a very good job…“ He then went on to talk about how if Yahoo is going to do something revolutionary in video, “[It] better look like something new. This medium better take advantage of its assets, take advantage of what it does well. ... If what we do looks like television, then we’re making a huge mistake.“
If Yahoo is going to get into the market of distributing TV shows, it seems that Semel would feel more comfortable if other companies do all of the work for them (smart man!) and they simply license it. I could definately see NBC, ABC, and CBS signing on with Yahoo to have some of their channels distributed on the web. Maybe there will be some tie-in with their recent purchase of what is now dubbed Yahoo! Go for on-demand content.
In the interview, Semel also dropped some numbers. He mentioned that there are 1 billion people on the internet today… 500 million of them “touch Yahoo at least once a month”... and 250 million of them “have accounts with Yahoo.“
Read [New Yorker]