AllThingsD » Barry Diller

Vimeo Gets a New Boss: AOL, Yahoo Vet Kerry Trainor

Peter Kafka — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:21:13 +0000

Earlier this year, video site Vimeo showed off a new look. Now it has a new CEO: Kerry Trainor, who just left his job overseeing AOL’s entertainment and video properties.

Trainor replaces Dae Mellencamp, who has been running the site since 2009. Vimeo says she’ll stay on as president.

This is an interesting time for Vimeo, which started as a side project for the College Humor crew way back in 2004, and migrated to IAC when Barry Diller bought the comedy site. Since then, Vimeo has occupied a weird space in IAC’s portfolio. It’s a small player in a booming industry — not big enough to attract much of Diller’s time or resources, but perpetually promising enough not to kill off.

To its credit, Vimeo has never tried to compete directly with YouTube. It has a tiny fraction of Google’s audience — it claims 70 million uniques, compared to YouTube’s 800 million-plus — and has only grudgingly pursued advertising.

Instead it has tried to stake out a niche as a high-end video site for a sliver of people who care about video quality, and offers a premium version for users who want more features, etc. But that’s not a huge business, either, and I’d be shocked if the company was making money.

So what now? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Vimeo explore a more aggressive approach to ads, given Trainor’s background — he was a well-regarded ad guy at Yahoo, and FlipGloss, the start-up he co-founded, was an attempt to create “magazine-style” advertising for Web sites.

Last month, PandoDaily reported that IAC was trying to “sell” Vimeo; when I asked Diller about that, he said Vimeo is not for sale, and that the story had exaggerated his interest in creating a separate corporate struture for Vimeo, like Condé Nast has done with Reddit.

Regardless, if Diller wants to be in a position to do anything with Vimeo, the company will eventually need to start generating some real revenue. Landing Trainor is a sign he’s getting more serious about that.

Broadcast Stations Sue Aereo Over Web TV Plans

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:30:00 +0000

The owners of four New York-area TV stations have sued Aereo, the start-up that plans to give users Web access to live broadcast TV. Aereo, which has raised $25 million from backers including Barry Diller’s IAC and venture investors like First Round Capital, has been expecting copyright challenges from the TV industry. It argues that its technology is legal because individual users will be getting streamed TV from their own individual antennas. One of the plaintiffs, Fox Television Stations, is owned by News Corp., which also owns this Web site.

Why Would You Pay $12 a Month for Free TV? Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia Explains.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:49:47 +0000

If you want to watch TV that comes from one of the broadcast channels, you’ve got options: You can get it for free, using an old-fashioned over-the-air antenna. Or you can pay for it as part of your cable TV package.

And now, if you live in New York City, you can pay Aereo to send it to your laptop or phone for $12 a month.

Aereo debuted today with a press conference, where reporters had lots of questions about the mechanics of the service (which are really interesting, and involve an array of thousands of dime-sized antennas, per the images below) and its legality (also interesting, and also dependent on the idea of each antenna “belonging” to an individual subscriber).

But the core question is why someone would use the service: Assuming it works as advertised, would you use it to supplement your existing TV service, or use it to replace some of the TV you’re already paying for?

The former, for now. And maybe, down the road, you could do the latter.

Today, Aereo makes the most sense as an add-on for TV super-consumers — the ones who have digital cable and HBO and Netflix and Apple TV and want to watch even more stuff on more screens.

Since it’s only delivering broadcast TV, Aereo won’t let you get lots of shows you like. But it will let you get a lot of shows you do like, and it will let you access them in new ways.

For instance: For various odd reasons, the broadcasters haven’t been able to figure out how to serve those people live TV on the go, to their iPads and iPhones, and Aereo will do that.

But Aereo’s ambition is much bigger. IAC CEO Barry Diller, who led a $20 million funding round, says Aereo will eventually be a “wedge” that will force the TV industry to give up the bundle: The idea is that eventually you’ll start by paying Aereo $12 a month for a bunch of TV, and add a series of channels and programs that you like on top of that. In theory, you’ll still end up paying much less than you do now.

CEO Chet Kanojia is slightly more diplomatic: “It’s going to start the process of putting the thought in people’s mind that says ‘I have other options.’”

Alternate scenario: If Aereo isn’t shut down by a legal challenge, it will act as a loud starting gun in the ear of cable TV providers and broadcast networks, prompting them to get their act together.

There’s no reason that, say, a Comcast cable subscriber shouldn’t be able to watch NBC or any other channel they get on their TV, live, on the go, on their iPad. And if Aereo finally convinces the cable and TV guys to make that happen, that will be good for consumers. But maybe not so good for Aereo.

But if you bet against the cable and TV guys getting their act together, you might get very good odds.

Kanojia sat down with me after his press conference to explain what he’s up to. He’s soft-spoken and the IAC lobby was loud, so you may have to turn this up a bit.

[ See post to watch video ]

Barry Diller Gets Into the "Cord-Cutting" Business

Peter Kafka — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:51:11 +0000

When last we heard from Bamboom, it was an interesting and also sort of confusing service that promised to let you watch TV — but only some TV — on your iPad or any other Web-connected device.

Now Bamboom is called Aereo, and it is backed by Barry Diller and/or his IAC Web holding company. But the concept appears to be the same: The service will let users stream broadcast TV stations to their Internet-connected devices, wherever they are.

We’ll know more Tuesday, when the service hosts a press event at Diller’s IAC headquarters in Manhattan. Press materials promoting the event describe Diller as a “minority investor” in Aereo, but don’t say whether he’s backing the company personally, or if he has put IAC’s money into the service. I asked IAC for clarification, but they referred me back to Aereo.

Financing aside, a more fundamental question about Aereo would be: Who is the market for this thing?

Aereo uses a Rube Goldberg-like system involving huge arrays of teeny-tiny broadcast TV antennas to give each user their own personal live TV stream. That’s a system created to take advantage of the legal umbrella that Cablevision’s remote DVR has earned — and one that Google and Amazon used to create their music locker services without approval from the big labels last year, too.

That’s clever, but it won’t do anything to help someone who wants to watch Monday Night Football on their iPad. Because Monday Night Football airs on Disney’s ESPN cable channel.

I assume that Aereo CEO Chaitanya Kanojia will explain tomorrow that a large percentage of TV viewing is confined to the broadcast networks like ABC, Fox, CBS and NBC, and I’m sure he’s right. But that explanation won’t satisfy someone who thought they could use the service to watch CNN or Bravo or Lifetime or whatever, and then finds out it won’t work.

So, yes, you could describe Aereo as “cord-cutting” technology — which is the way the service’s PR folks are describing it in their invitations — because it will help you watch TV without a cable subscription.

But it won’t help you watch shows you used to watch on cable, which I think is what most people expect from a service with that description. A better description would be: “A service that’s interesting but limited by itself, but if coupled with other things — say, an ‘over the top’ Web video subscription service — could get more interesting.”

More later. For now, here’s the old Bamboom explainer video, which isn’t as slick as the new Aereo video, and which touts an integration with Netflix that the new video doesn’t mention. But it is embeddable:

OkCupid Sets Up San Francisco Labs to Try to Reinvent Online Dating (Video)

Liz Gannes — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:30:21 +0000

The hipster dating service OkCupid has ventured from New York to San Francisco to create a freshly staffed outpost of start-up folks, in order to brainstorm the site’s next act. They call it OkCupid Labs.

Imposing signage at OkCupid Labs

After OkCupid was bought by IAC’s Match.com for $50 million in February, co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan says he was inspired to try to make corporate entrepreneurship work within the IAC fold.

Figuring out how to make more money for Barry Diller (as Yagan put it himself!) doesn’t sound nearly as sexy or fun as Yagan’s previous projects: Dating, the smart study guides SparkNotes, or the P2P app eDonkey.

But maybe that’s because the blank slate has yet to be filled in. OkCupid Labs last week opened an office in San Francisco’s SOMA district, and allowed me to visit a late afternoon beer-and-brainstorming stand-up session. Then I chatted with Yagan, and taped a video about what he’s trying to do:

[ See post to watch video ]

The idea is to launch lots of projects, giving Labs employees “a safety net with an equity upside,” as Yagan put it. He said he aims to give his team the flexibility to do what it wants, and millions of dollars to try to make it happen.

Yagan, who said he “lives” in Chicago, and commutes to OkCupid in New York and Match in Dallas, is now adding San Francisco to the list. He reports to IAC CEO Greg Blatt.

Yagan said he’s hired a dozen idea people, most of whom have never worked in online dating (though one guy was at OkCupid competitor Zoosk).

The intent is to help them brainstorm their way into the next big thing, whether it be through a new dating business, or (perhaps more likely) a way to bring people together that’s not explicitly dating.

Yagan said he thinks there’s plenty more opportunity in dating, but perhaps not in targeting that same existing audience of online daters that all the services are fighting over. That’s where the new hires come in. “I’ve been doing this for eight years; I’m out of ideas,” Yagan said, half joking.

Welcome to the Boardroom: Chelsea Clinton Joins Diller

Lauren A. E. Schuker and Joann S. Lublin — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 05:30:36 +0000

She’s 31. She’s still a graduate student. And she’s held many different jobs in different industries over the last five years.

But those factors didn’t prevent Chelsea Clinton from landing a plum assignment: joining the board of Barry Diller’s Internet media holding company.

In her new role, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the youngest member of IAC’s board by seven years.

Fellow directors include Michael Eisner, former chief of Walt Disney Co., and Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman of Warner Music Group.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Barry Diller Panders to SXSW–and It Works

Liz Gannes — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:06:58 +0000

One of these speakers is not like the others, one of these speakers just doesn’t belong…but the fourth-day hangover crowd at SXSW Interactive came out in force to see longtime media executive Barry Diller speak at the Austin Convention Center this morning.

Diller expressed a love for SXSW’s Web technology entrepreneurs, earning applause for his comments on net neutrality, chuckles for his stories of Segway tour hijinks, and belly laughs for a story about his wife, Diane von Furstenberg, playing Angry Birds while talking on the phone with him.

“What I like so much about this place is that so many people here are essentially following their curiosity,” Diller said.

As for another technology bubble, “we’re puffing it up pretty nicely,” he said. But, “the fact that money chases it isn’t really that interesting. What is interesting is how much sheer invention is going on.”

Diller said he’s not worried about a technology bubble, but the prices are too high for him personally. As he put it, “All the money that’s going to be lost is going to be lost by people who can lose money. So who cares?”

The IAC chairman restated a deeply held belief in net neutrality. “We need an unambiguous rule–law–that nobody will step between the publisher and the customer. Full stop,” Diller said. Charging a company like Netflix for bandwidth, he added, “would be like asking the toaster to pay for the electricity.”

Diller also made fun of News Corp’s The Daily–don’t release a product “unless you can actually use it”–said he thinks the age of Internet TV is just three years away, and urged content creators to think about longer-form Internet video and micropayments.

Image from a fake Twitter account for Barry Diller, who doesn’t seem to have his own.

Barry Diller and John Malone Complete Their Divorce

Peter Kafka — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:40:42 +0000

Barry Diller and John Malone, who have been tied together for 17 years, are officially split up, for good: Malone’s Liberty Media is abandoning its majority stake in Diller’s IAC holding company and taking $220 million along with IAC’s Evite.com and Gift.com units, as parting gifts. Meanwhile Diller himself is making a smaller break with IAC by stepping down as CEO, but will remain as chairman. More details from Shira Ovide.

Ask Adds to Consensus: Social Is the Way to Compete With Google

Liz Gannes — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:00:24 +0000

IAC’s Ask.com is giving up the ghost on algorithmic search and Web crawling. Rather than continuing to wilt while competing directly with Google, Ask said today it will devote its resources to Q&A search. That will strike 130 engineering jobs in New Jersey and China, according to Bloomberg.

Ask will now concentrate its efforts on a recently launched Q&A search tool with the team at its Oakland, Calif., office.

Ask has long been the fourth-place player in search, despite some innovative spurts like its origin as a natural-language search engine using the fictional butler Jeeves, and its early efforts to visually parse search results and media into snippets–now features of all major search engines.

IAC CEO Barry Diller, who has recently publicly disparaged Ask, told Bloomberg today, “We’ve realized in the last few years you can’t compete head on with Google.”

Ask launched a new Q&A approach in July, following a recent trend but also playing back to its roots. Sixty percent of questions on the service are now answered, up from 30 percent, Ask.com president Doug Leeds told SearchEngineLand today.

So, is Q&A and social search the way to compete with Google? It could be. Despite buying Aardvark and launching some minimal social search features, Google hasn’t done much in the area. There’s a lot of value in getting your network of friends to give recommendations, as many people do on Facebook and Twitter, and building communities to add knowledge to the Web rather than just crawl it, like on the small but promising Quora. These more recent innovations follow the surprising strength, in a Googlefied world, of products like Yahoo Answers and Korea’s Naver.

IAC hopping out of algorithmic search and crawling doesn’t change much in the market, but it does reaffirm Microsoft’s Bing as the other major player investing in search after Google. Elsewhere, I don’t even want to try to parse the Yahoo-Microsoft partnership. Facebook processes a ton of search queries already, despite a very basic offering, and also is working with Microsoft on search. And Twitter has seen serious growth in search–it says it gets a billion queries a day–but the company seems to count just about every time someone pings its service as a search.

College Humor Gets a New Grown-Up: Time Inc. Digital Dude Paul Greenberg

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:44:40 +0000

Here’s the new adult supervisor at College Humor, Barry Diller’s much-smarter-than-you’d-think humor site: Paul Greenberg, who most recently had been running digital operations at Time Inc.’s Lifestyle group.

But only very recently: Greenberg started at Time Warner’s (TWX) publishing unit at the end of February, and resigned yesterday to become CEO at College Humor Media. Prior to Time Inc., he put in time at TV Guide.com, MediaNet and MTV.

Greenberg’s new job is a newly created position, which puts him in charge of the main College Humor site as well as satellites like SportsPickle and Dorkly (that was fun to type!).

College Humor co-founder Josh Abramson will stay in his current position as president; co-founder Ricky Van Veen remains occupied with TV projects at IAC’s Notional. But he had time to send me a note about the new hire:

I couldn’t be more thrilled. We knew instantly upon meeting him that Paul was the right person for the job. Plus, to me the choice was pretty obvious — who wouldn’t want to trade up from a goofy little startup like Time Inc to a more established and venerable institution like CollegeHumor?

I’ve asked Time Inc. if they have a replacement lined up for Greenberg; I’ll update if I hear back.

Daily Beast's Tina Brown Brags About "Interesting Discussions" With Newsweek

Peter Kafka — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:13:26 +0000

How are things at the Daily Beast, the news + commentary site Tina Brown is running for Barry Diller?

Awesome! So says Tina Brown, in an “interview” her site is running with her today, to mark the Beast’s two-year anniversary: five million uniques, “ahead of projections” on advertising, etc. “A romping, vibrant, 2-year-old animal bursting with rude health.” (No mention of Howard Kurtz, though.)

In fact, it’s doing so great, Brown says, that Diller may end up pawning the thing off to Newsweek and new owner Sidney Harman.

Well, she doesn’t say that exactly. But she does acknowledge, out loud, for the first time, that the two sides are chatting:

We hear something is going on with Newsweek.

How clever of you to notice! Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.

Cheeky!

Here’s a more fleshed-out version of that discussion, via the NYT:

Mr. Harman and Ms. Brown met as recently as last week and are keen on working together. But whether The Daily Beast, which is financed by the billionaire investor Barry Diller, and Mr. Harman can reach a deal that is agreeable to all parties is still unknown, this person said, speaking anonymously to reveal privileged information.

Ms. Brown has gone as far as submitting a memorandum to Mr. Harman outlining how she would run Newsweek, but Mr. Harman was also interviewing other people for the job, this person added.

A few things:

It’s astonishing, and also true, that Harman bought Newsweek from the Washington Post (WPO) without knowing who he would hire to run the operation.
This also means that no one is really running things there now.
Brown would be a pretty good choice, all things considered.
And picking up the Beast wouldn’t be a terrible idea for Harman, assuming Diller can do it at the right price: Newsweek’s Web operations are okay, but not nearly as good as they look on paper. That’s because the site is largely dependent on MSNBC.com for its traffic, and that’s not a healthy affair. Say what you will about Brown’s start-up, but it hasn’t had the crutch of a big distribution partner.

First Ben Silverman Online Program–"Ready, Set, Dance!"–Debuts on Yahoo

Kara Swisher — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 02:31:46 +0000

Yahoo and Electus, the multiplatform content studio headed by former NBC entertainment head Ben Silverman, debuted its first original, branded entertainment programming tonight with “Ready, Set, Dance!”

The site, which is now live on Yahoo Music and sponsored by State Farm, merges the candid-camera phenomenon with reality television and “aims to tap into the pop culture interest in television dance shows and dance videos on the Web….”

The Yahoo (YHOO) site is relatively spare right now, with only one episode, titled “Magic Sparkle Chunk and Frisky Ris.”

Reads the description of the show: “Will’s ‘Magic Sparkle Chunk’ style is invading the tranquility of Madison Square Park, while Marisa and her moves will do their best to win over the Times Square crowds.”

“Magic Sparkle Chunk” is as described, and it is both riveting and humiliating. Which is pretty much the point.

Even though no one knows about it, there are already 29 comments, such as: “He’s got chutzpah–besides, if it’s all about fun, he’s got it. She was a bit too serious and honestly…just not as entertaining as the chunky shiney thingie wingie.”

Yahoo’s partnership with Electus was unveiled in January at the Consumer Electronics Show by Yahoo execs Joanne Bradford and Jimmy Pitaro, both of whom you can see in a BoomTown video interview below.

Ironically, U.S. sales head Bradford left Yahoo earlier this year for Demand Media, and Pitaro, as I reported today, is expected to leave the company soon from his post as VP of Media.

Silverman left the broadcast-television network under a cloud last year, but immediately announced he had struck a deal with Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) to form a studio–called Electus–to make multiplatform content that is backed by big brand advertisers.

The move is similar to a new kind of production company started several years ago by former ABC and Yahoo exec Lloyd Braun and his partner, Gail Berman.

Braun has created online programming for Microsoft (MSFT), including an innovative celebrity site called Wonderwall, as well as producing television shows for networks.

Silverman’s take was to focus on an episodic style, although much of what has been done online so far in this genre by many others has been only moderately successful.

But execs at Yahoo believed that advertisers have been looking for opportunities to put their brands near quality content online.

With the deal, which has been touted by CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo is putting big hopes in Silverman, who had been a successful producer of television programming in his early career.

But his tenure at NBC was marked by a lot of negative publicity about him personally and, more importantly, by a sharp downturn in ratings.

Here is the first of 12 episodes:

And here is Bradford and Pitaro talking about the Electus deal:

[ See post to watch video ]

Finally, here is the official press release:

Yahoo! and Electus Launch ‘Ready, Set, Dance!’–a New Original, Branded Entertainment Program Sponsored by State Farm®

· First program launch from the Electus-Yahoo! partnership

· The initiative, created by Notional in partnership with Electus, introduces a new creative format and taps into America’s interest in dance; Available on Yahoo! Music

SUNNYVALE, Calif., September 29, 2010–Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Electus, an operating business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), today unveiled the first integrated content initiative of the brands’ previously announced content partnership, bringing a new format of original, branded entertainment programming to the web with “Ready, Set, Dance!” Merging the candid camera phenomenon with reality television for digital distribution, the program, which was created by Notional in partnership with Electus, aims to tap into the pop culture interest in television dance shows and dance videos on the Web and will make its premiere debut on Yahoo! Music today. “Ready, Set, Dance!” extends the State Farm® “Why Agent?” brand campaign and creatively engages its young-adult audience. Electus will have overall distribution rights on “Ready, Set, Dance” for all platforms including television, motion picture and digital.

“Ready, Set, Dance!” (readysetdance.yahoo.com) is a 12-episode program that combines Yahoo!’s reach and consumer insights with Electus’s creative expertise to provide Yahoo! Music’s audience with a quick, smart, and high-energy dance competition series. Hosted by pop star Adrienne Bailon, “Ready, Set, Dance!” will live on Yahoo! Music and will be promoted across the Yahoo! network.

State Farm will be seamlessly integrated into the “Ready, Set, Dance!” experience, with a goal of reaching a young-adult audience through fun and interesting content that drives home State Farm’s brand message.

The show features two contestants who will be selected by a series of entertaining auditions. Once chosen, the contestants will be caught by surprise anytime or anyplace, and must immediately break into their dance routines for a chance at “Ready, Set, Dance!” fame and fortune. Each week, viewers can vote on their favorite dancer, and winners will receive $10,000 in each of the six dance contests.

“‘Ready, Set, Dance!’ showcases the best of online marketing and programming by providing relevant and entertaining branded programming at mass scale,” said Jimmy Pitaro, vice president of media at Yahoo!. “Our ongoing relationship with Electus will not only offer great original programming like this for Yahoo! users, but will also give advertisers like State Farm fresh opportunities to integrate their brand into the next generation of digital programming.”

“We are excited to collaborate with Yahoo! and State Farm on this new format,” said Drew Buckley, Chief Operating Officer of Electus. “Yahoo! is known for executing extremely successful branded programming that consumers and advertisers love, and ‘Ready, Set, Dance!’ will look to expand upon that initiative.”

“Yahoo! Music and Electus brought a great concept in “Ready…Set…Dance!!”, said Tim Van Hoof, Advertising Director at State Farm. Understanding the popularity of dance contests among our target audience, State Farm sees this as an innovative opportunity to connect with young adults in the online space in a fun, engaging way.”

Yahoo! has a long history of partnering with marketers to develop custom programs to help them reach their targeted audiences. Yahoo!’s successes in the original programming and branded entertainment space include: “Primetime in No Time,” the most watched original program online; “Tech Ticker,” the most watched finance show online; and “Who Knew?”, which recently became the most successful original program to launch on Yahoo!, with more than 40 million streams in the first four months. “Ready, Set, Dance!” follows State Farm’s first video series partnership with Yahoo! — “Spotlight to Nightlight” — which launched in 2009 and garnered more than 7.2 million video streams.

For Barry Diller and Ben Silverman, "Branded Content" Means Jason Bateman on a Stripper Pole

Peter Kafka — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:29:28 +0000

It’s tough to make money by shooting a video, putting it up on the Web and hoping advertisers will pay up. Which is why the preferred model for Web video these days is “branded content”–stuff that you make only after an advertiser has agreed to sponsor it and that features the advertiser’s product in the clip.

That’s what Barry Diller and Ben Silverman are doing with Electus, the video production company Silverman is running for Diller’s IAC (IACI). Silverman introduced Electus in January by announcing a tie-up with Yahoo (YHOO), but Electus’ stuff will run all over the Web, most notably on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube.

Here’s an example of what Electus is up to, via DumbDumb, a sort of mini-studio backed by Electus and run by actors Jason Bateman and Will Arnett. It’s one of two clips DumbDumb has made so far on behalf of Wrigley’s Orbit brand. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Oracle's Ellison: Pay King

Scott Thurm — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:30:21 +0000

Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of software maker Oracle Corp., topped the list of best-paid executives of public companies during the past decade, receiving $1.84 billion in compensation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of CEO pay.

Coming in No. 2 on the compensation list was Barry Diller, who received roughly $1.14 billion from IAC/InterActive and Expedia.com, the online travel site IAC spun off in 2005, where he remains chairman.

Following Mr. Diller were Occidental Petroleum Corp. CEO Ray Irani at $857 million, Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs with $749 million and, in fifth place, Capital One Financial Corp. CEO Richard Fairbank at $569 million.

The Journal analysis includes salaries, bonuses, perks and realized gains on both restricted stock and stock options; it excludes new grants of restricted stock and stock options. The analysis didn’t track whether executives sold shares they acquired after they exercised stock options or after previously restricted stock vested.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Same Beat, Different Boss: New York Post Media Reporter Peter Lauria Jumps to The Daily Beast

Peter Kafka — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:18:16 +0000

Here’s yet another journalist leaving a big-time perch covering the media business.

The twist is that while Peter Lauria is leaving his gig at the New York Post where he covered media moguls, he’s staying in the business. He’s moving across town to The Daily Beast, where he’ll become a senior correspondent with the same beat.

There are two big differences here. Instead of working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (NWS)–which also owns this Web site–Lauria will be working for Barry Diller, via his IAC (IACI) conglomerate. The more important change is that he’ll have the ability to publish more than once a day, which the Post has been loath to do on its Web site (which makes no sense).

Asked for comment about the move, Daily Beast Managing Editor Edward Felsenthal sent me a link to this item from the Post’s Page Six gossip section:

Harvey Weinstein doesn’t like everything written about him in The Post. Peter Lauria, who covers media for our business section, has gotten under the movie mogul’s delicate skin. When a reporter for another publication mentioned “Inglourious Basterds,” the hit replenishing the Weinstein Co. coffers, Harvey joked, “Peter Lauria. He’s the inspiration for ‘Inglourious Basterds’…we were thinking who were the bastards that we know, and he was the No. 1 bastard.”

High praise!

Diller: IAC to Cut Cash Via Buybacks; Ask.com Not for Sale

Eric Savitz — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:57:43 +0000

IAC/Interactive (IACI) Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said the company in the next 12 months expects to get its cash position down to a “rationale amount,” but not via acquisitions. Rather, that would mostly be from buying back shares. Diller says he considers the cash an asset, and says they will continue to do small tuck-in acquisitions, but he says the company “should not sustain this [cash position] ever-lastingly.”

Diller made the remarks at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference today in San Francisco.

Diller said IACI took a large cash position in the break up of the company into five public entities in anticipation of finding cheap companies to buy–but he says they didn’t find much to buy.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

IACI Q4 Beats; Stock Gains

Eric Savitz — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:05:08 +0000

IAC/Interactive (IACI), the Barry Diller-piloted Internet conglomerate, this morning posted Q4 results that beat Street expectations.

The company reported revenue of $367.2 million, ahead of the Street at $339.6 million; adjusted EPS of 20 cents a share was two cents better than the consensus at 18 cents. Revenue in the search segment, which accounts for about half of revenue, was up three percent.

Since October 27, IACI has repurchased 15.8 million shares for $311.3 million, an average price of $19.75.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger Gets Conditional Thumbs Up From DOJ (Plus D7 Video With TKTM CEO Azoff)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:46:31 +0000

While many thought it would not sail through regulatory scrutiny easily, and it has taken a year, the merger of two entertainment industry giants–Ticketmaster and Live Nation–can go forward as long as a certain set of conditions is met, the Department of Justice said.

And while DOJ’s antitrust head, Christine Varney, told reporters today that she warned the two companies that the federal government was prepared to litigate if necessary, it–well–did not.

“We concluded the transaction as originally proposed was anti-competitive,” said Varney, a statement that was pretty much negated by her decision not to block the merger, given that the conditions she set were not a stretch for the parties to meet.

Still, Varney noted: “The proposed settlement allows for strong competitors to Ticketmaster, allowing concert venues to have more and better choices for their ticketing needs, and provides for anti-retaliation provisions, which will keep the merged company in check.”

We shall see about that–many are expecting even higher ticket prices and “fees.”

The companies also reached an agreement with 17 State Attorneys General as part of the U.S. consent decree, as well as with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition.

Not surprisingly, shares of both West Hollywood-based Ticketmaster (TKTM) and Live Nation (LYV) of Beverly Hills, Calif., were up about 15 percent today, even though the deal still has to undergo public comment and be approved by a judge.

But after today, Ticketmaster investors will get Live Nation stock, valued at $15.49, and with its ticker retired, Ticketmaster shares will no longer trade.

Now the combined company will be able to do everything from selling tickets to booking artists to selling their T-shirts and more.

And all Live Nation and Ticketmaster have to do to operate like this is sell off a college sports ticketing unit to Comcast (CMCSA) and license ticketing software to Live Nation’s nearest competitor, the Anschutz Entertainment Group.

Also, for a decade, the merged company cannot play dirty, blackballing those who decide they don’t want to use its services.

With 75 big venues across the U.S. under the purview of Live Nation, that’s a lot of places the world’s largest concert promoter could apply pressure.

And because Ticketmaster is the dominant player in ticketing for sports and entertainment events, as well as the manager of a spate of major acts that play at those Live Nation venues, it’s clear you have a very powerful entity.

It will all be led, in part, by Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff, who can be seen below in an interview with BoomTown at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last May.

One of the most influential behind-the-scenes movers and shakers in the music industry for a long time now, Azoff talked about with me about the merger and digital forces buffeting the entertainment business.

Azoff will be the executive chairman of the merged company, which will be called Live Nation Entertainment, as well as CEO of Front Line artist management. Longtime Hollywood and Internet mogul Barry Diller is set to be chairman, and Michael Rapino will be CEO and president.

Here’s the video of the D7 interview, including the very funny intro that music legend Joe Walsh of the Eagles did for Azoff (and below it, a video of a terrific version of “Life’s Been Good,” sung by Walsh, which it certainly is today for Ticketmaster-Live Nation):

[ See post to watch video ]

And here’s the press release from Live Nation and Ticketmaster:

LOS ANGELES and WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Jan 25, 2010–Live Nation, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. today announced that they have reached agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition, clearing the way for the merger of the companies. Upon closing, the company will be renamed Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. to reflect the combination of Live Nation’s concert promotions expertise with Ticketmaster’s world-class ticketing solutions and artist relationships.

Under the terms of the proposed final judgment filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the companies have agreed to divest Ticketmaster’s self-ticketing subsidiary, Paciolan, to Comcast-Spectacor and to license the Ticketmaster Host technology to Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc., as well as to other terms that protect competitive conditions in ticketing and promotions. Seventeen State Attorneys General also participated in the matter and have joined in the U.S. consent decree. The parties’ consent agreement with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition is on substantially equivalent terms.

As previously announced, in connection with the merger, each issued and outstanding share of Ticketmaster common stock will be cancelled and converted into the right to receive a number of shares of Live Nation common stock such that Ticketmaster stockholders will receive approximately 50.01% of the voting power of the combined company. Subject to final confirmation, the companies expect each share of Ticketmaster common stock to be cancelled and converted into the right to receive 1.474 shares of Live Nation common stock in connection with the merger and for Live Nation to issue approximately 84,613,661 shares of Live Nation common stock to Ticketmaster stockholders in the aggregate.

The combined company will be led by Michael Rapino as CEO and President of Live Nation Entertainment and Irving Azoff as Executive Chairman of Live Nation Entertainment and CEO of Front Line. Barry Diller will serve as Chairman of the Board of Live Nation Entertainment. The Board will consist of 14 directors, seven from each company.

Yahoo Inks Content Deal With Former NBC Exec Ben Silverman

Kara Swisher — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:51:26 +0000

Yahoo has inked a premium content deal with former NBC entertainment head Ben Silverman, in which he will create content for the Internet portal.

Yahoo (YHOO) will sell the branded advertising for the online programming made by the controversial Hollywood exec.

Yahoo confirmed the deal, but did not elaborate on the financial details of the partnership.

Silverman left the broadcast television network under a cloud last year, but immediately announced he had struck a deal with Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) to form a studio–called Electus–to make multiplatform content that is backed by big brand advertisers.

If you think about it, Silverman is essentially copying a new kind of production company started several years ago by former ABC and Yahoo exec Lloyd Braun and his partner, Gail Berman.

Braun has created online programming for Microsoft (MSFT), including an innovative celebrity site called Wonderwall, as well as producing television shows for networks.

Silverman has talked more about doing online programming in episodic style, but much of what has been done online so far in this genre by many others has been only moderately successful.

Nonetheless, Joanne Bradford, SVP of North American revenue for Yahoo, told me in an interview that advertisers have been looking for opportunities to put their brands near quality content online.

“It is an area of great interest,” said Bradford. “And Yahoo, with its huge traffic, is a leader in selling premium ads on the Web.”

Yahoo is putting its hopes here in Silverman, who had been a successful producer of television programming in his early career.

But his tenure at NBC was marked by a lot of negative publicity about him personally and, more importantly, by a sharp downturn in ratings.

It will be interesting to see if the golden-child side of his talent is ascendant in the content he makes for Yahoo, which should begin to appear in several months.

MySpace and News Corp. Eye Flixster (But for What?)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:12:11 +0000

[UPDATED]

Now that the digital equivalent of a super-vac, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, has sucked up some decent music start-ups–Imeem and iLike–for a song, to bolster the social networking site’s efforts to expand into an entertainment portal, what’s next?

According to several sources, the News Corp. (NWS) unit has turned its omnivorous attentions to Flixster, the popular social networking site for movies.

Whether this is an acquisition or more of a larger partnership deal with News Corp. digital entertainment sites is unclear. Several sources said a purchase was a possibility, while others talked about a more complex deal that did not necessarily mean a purchase.

Sources said any such deal is not imminent, but that News Corp. itself has been conducting extensive due diligence on the San Francisco-based Flixster, part of a plan to combine it with Rotten Tomatoes, another News Corp.-owned site run by its IGN Entertainment division.

Rotten Tomatoes features mostly premium content, including professional reviews, trailer videos and news. It has community feature that is just in beta, so it would be a nice fit with Flixster.

A MySpace spokeswoman declined to comment at the moment.

In 2007, the start-up was close to being acquired by IAC/InteractiveCorp (IACI) for $100 million, several sources said. But the deal went south when CEO Barry Diller changed his mind at the last minute.

Founded in 2006 by CEO Joe Greenstein and CTO Saran Chari, Flixster has raised $7 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pinnacle Ventures, as well as garnering an angel investment from Silicon Valley entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

Flixster has attracted a huge audience–upward of 50 million–who trade all kinds of recommendations, ratings, news and even post user-generated movie reviews on its Web site and via widgets on social networking sites, mostly on Facebook.

While Amazon (AMZN) unit IMDb (Internet Movie Database) is still larger in terms of traffic, the more innovative Flixster has been growing much faster and is more social, which makes it attractive to MySpace, sources said.

More important is the mobile growth. Flixster is the No. 1 movie app on Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and leads on other smartphones too.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Diller: Maybe I’ll Hold on to Ask.com After All

John Paczkowski — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:30:56 +0000

“We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes. And, it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator.”

– IAC CEO Barry Diller, Oct. 28, 2009

Turns out Barry Diller isn’t all that interested in selling off IAC’s (IACI) Ask.com search engine, “speculative” though its future might be. Speaking at the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York on Wednesday, Diller said he’d rather partner with another search company than divest Ask outright.

Evidently that’s the message he’s been giving to any party that’s inquired about buying Ask. “The people who called us were on exploration missions, on a stand-alone buy as an asset,” he said. “That is different than having conversations with other people in the vineyard, in the area of search.”

Don't Tell a Soul! Media, Tech Moguls Take Manhattan for Semisecret Quadrangle Conference.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:37 +0000

Wouldn’t you like to bump elbows with media moguls and hear from the likes of Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and News Corp. (NWS) scion James Murdoch? Me too!

Alas, the Foursquare conference, hosted by the Quadrangle PE fund, is an invitation-only affair. And the event, which kicks off tomorrow, is closed to the press except for reporters onstage to interview the stars. And those conversations don’t get released to the public.

That’s a particular bummer this time. Because the Quadrangle guys–who have had a rough year–had the foresight to get a lineup that includes GE (GE) CEO Jeff Immelt, who appears to be in the final stages of selling NBC Universal to Comcast (CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts, who will also be onstage. Sure would be nice to hear what they say.

Another panel that piques my interest, if only because of the title: “Are Popularity and Profitability Correlated?” It features Twitter’s Stone, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. And would-be moguls are represented by a start-up pitch panel that includes Dennis Crowley of Foursquare, the superbuzzy mobile service whose name has nothing to do with Quadrangle’s conference.

So once again, here’s the complete list of those you won’t be hearing from this week as they gather at the Plaza in Manhattan. Unless, perhaps, one of my more ambitious colleagues sneaks in–I’m thinking of you, Bobby MacMillan–and gets us a first-hand account.

2009 SPEAKERS
EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA President, Board of Directors and CEO, Grupo Televisa
DENNIS CROWLEY Co-Founder, foursquare
BARRY DILLER Chairman and CEO, IAC; Chairman, Expedia, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.
BRIAN DUNN CEO, Best Buy
CHARLES FORMAN Founder, OMGPOP
REED HASTINGS Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix
REID HOFFMAN Executive Chairman and Founder, LinkedIn Corporation
CHAD HURLEY CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube
JEFF IMMELT Chairman and CEO, GE
PAUL JACOBS Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
OLLI-PEKKA KALLASVUO President and CEO, Nokia
JASON KILAR CEO, Hulu
LESLIE MOONVES President and CEO, CBS Corporation
ANNE MULCAHY Chairman, Xerox Corporation
JAMES MURDOCH Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe & Asia, News Corporation
BRIAN PHILLIPS CEO and Co-Founder, Thread
DAN PORTER CEO, OMGPOP
BRIAN ROBERTS Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation
PAUL SAGAN President and CEO, Akamai
ERIC SCHMIDT Chairman and CEO, Google
IVAN SEIDENBERG Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications
BIZ STONE Co-Founder, Twitter
HOWARD STRINGER Chairman, CEO and President, Sony Corporation
BEN VERWAAYEN CEO, Alcatel-Lucent
DAVID ZASLAV President and CEO, Discovery Communications

MODERATORS
MARC ANDREESSEN General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
KEN AULETTA Author and Writer, “Annals of Communications”, The New Yorker
MARIA BARTIROMO Anchor, Closing Bell; Host & Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC
JAMES CITRIN Co-Leader, Board & CEO Practice, North America, Spencer Stuart
DAVID FABER Anchor, Reporter, CNBC
MICHAEL HUBER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
BECKY QUICK Co-Anchor, Squawk Box, CNBC
GEOFFREY SANDS Director & Leader, Global Media, Entertainment & Information Practice, McKinsey & Co.
JOSHUA L. STEINER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Anchor, This Week; Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News

Ask.com? Give It to Microsoft; He'll Eat Anything.

John Paczkowski — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:38:05 +0000

“The big steps we’ve been out and after for the last several years in search [have] not been achieved and you’d have to say that the future is speculative. We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes and it’s unlikely that we would be the consolidator.”

– IAC CEO Barry Diller

If Barry Diller is looking for somewhere to unload IAC’s Ask.com search engine, he’d be wise to consider Microsoft–if he doesn’t have that in mind already. Analysts reflecting on Diller’s recent remarks about Ask’s “speculative future” say Microsoft is the most likely buyer if IAC (IACI) is truly serious about dumping the little search engine that couldn’t.

Ask, analysts note, has about four percent of the domestic search market, which would give Microsoft (MSFT) a nice little bump up from the 9.4 percent market share it currently claims. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt that a Microsoft acquisition would undoubtedly mean the end of Ask’s relationship with Google (GOOG).

“Right now, Microsoft wants share so they could pick up those points from Ask,” Colin Gillis, an analyst at Brigantine Advisors, told Reuters. “Plus it has a double impact since Google powers Ask’s paid search.”

Ask.com? Give It to Microsoft; He'll Eat Anything.

John Paczkowski — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:38:05 +0000

“The big steps we’ve been out and after for the last several years in search [have] not been achieved and you’d have to say that the future is speculative. We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes and it’s unlikely that we would be the consolidator.”

– IAC CEO Barry Diller

Yahoo CEO: R-e-s-p-e-c-t, Find Out What It Means to Me

John Paczkowski — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:00:41 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]