When Terry Met Jerry, Yahoo!
WHEN Yahoo Inc. announced nearly five years ago that Terry S. Semel, then a former leader of the Warner Brothers motion picture studio, would become its chairman and chief executive, the reaction both outside and within Yahoo was not exactly one of wild encouragement.
Context & Ripple Effects
This Times piece is a nearly-five-years-later reckoning with a hire that was greeted, per the report, without 'wild encouragement' either outside or inside Yahoo when Terry S. Semel — until then a leader of Warner Brothers' motion picture studio — took the chairman and CEO roles. The skeptical reception is the peg: the article asks whether a studio executive could actually run a search-and-media portal.
What gives the question fresh weight as of early 2006 is Yahoo's own behavior under Semel: weeks earlier the company had shaped up an Internet reality-series pilot, moving original video programming onto the web rather than licensing it to broadcasters. That is exactly the kind of content-first bet the Hollywood outsider was doubted for being able to make.
First-order effects
- Semel's position inside Yahoo shifts from doubted outsider to vindicated strategist, with his studio background now framing the company's push into original online programming like the January 2006 reality-series pilot.
- Advertisers and media partners increasingly deal with Yahoo as a content producer and buyer, not just a destination for search and aggregated news.
Second-order effects
- Hollywood becomes a talent and format supply line for web portals: executives and show formats built for television, exemplified by Semel's Warner Brothers pedigree, are recruited to fill internet schedules.
- Studios and TV producers gain a rival class of buyer — portals commissioning made-for-web series — which begins competing for formats and audiences against the broadcast channels those studios traditionally sell into.
Third-order effects
- If portal-produced programming scales, the line between broadcaster and website erodes, and control over both audience and content concentrates in the platform that owns the distribution — a structural shift in who funds and premieres mainstream entertainment.
- The pattern of appointing media-industry leadership at technology companies hardens into precedent, making executive migration between studios and internet firms a normal career path rather than an experiment.
The trend: Internet portals are absorbing studio-style leadership and original programming, turning distribution platforms into content producers.