Longtime media and Internet exec Bob Pittman has been named CEO of radio broadcast and outdoor advertising giant Clear Channel, the company announced today.

Pittman — who has been chairman of Clear Channel’s media and entertainment platforms after making an investment in the company less than a year ago — will join the board of directors of CC Media Holdings, Clear Channel Communications and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, as executive chairman.

Clear Channel’s holdings include a huge parcel of radio stations across the U.S., along with a number of digital properties and a big global outdoor advertising business.

Pittman — the former MTV wunderkind who started in radio at 15 years old as an announcer at a station in his native Mississippi — has not been in a top job like this one since he resigned from the then-AOL Time Warner as its COO in the midst of the botched merger mishegas almost a decade ago.

Since then, Pittman has been doing a range of things, including making canny investments in a variety of Internet start-ups such as Zynga and DailyCandy, and even in a high-end tequila company via the Pilot Group, a New York-based private investment firm.

He made his own investment in Clear Channel last year and has since upped his involvement, which resulted in the latest move to CEO.

“I swore I would never work like this again, but when something gets me this stimulated, I knew I wanted to get into it again,” said Pittman, in an interview with me yesterday. “I think this company has everything it needs to be a great media company in the new media landscape.”

That will include a range of new initiatives, including recent partnerships with Facebook and more.

“We want to move like an entrepreneur and have the assets of a big media company,” said Pittman. “I am an addict for this challenge.”

Here’s the official press release from Clear Channel:

BOB PITTMAN NAMED CEO OF CC MEDIA HOLDINGS

Appointment Underscores Clear Channel’s Evolution to a Fully Realized, Integrated Media, Digital and Entertainment Enterprise

Media Pioneer Will Oversee the Company’s Global Media Properties, including Broadcast, Digital and Mobile, Syndication, Media Representation and Outdoor

New York, NY — October 2, 2011 — CC Media Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: CCMO), a leading global media, digital and entertainment company, announced today that Bob Pittman will become its Chief Executive Officer. Pittman joined Clear Channel in November 2010 as an investor and the company’s Chairman of Media and Entertainment Platforms. Pittman will join the Board of Directors of CC Media Holdings, Inc. and Clear Channel Communications, Inc.; in addition, he will join the Board of Directors of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc., as its Executive Chairman. These appointments are effective immediately.

In his new role, Pittman will oversee the company’s businesses, which include:

Clear Channel Radio, which serves 150 cities through 850 owned radio stations and an additional 100 cities and 4,000 stations through its syndicated Premier Radio Networks products. Clear Channel Radio also includes:

* Clear Channel Digital, which develops and operates iHeartRadio, the free, industry-leading digitalradio product that combines access to all of Clear Channel’s live broadcast and digital-only radio stations as well as user-created Custom Stations. Clear Channel Digital also develops the companion digital products for each radio station brand, including strong social components;

* Media Services for the radio, media, digital, mobile and music industries, including Total Traffic Network, a groundbreaking programming and technology service delivering real-time traffic data to vehicles via in-car and portable navigation systems, broadcast media, wireless and Internet-based services; The Katz Media Group, the leading media representation firm in the US for radio and television stations; and RCS, which provides scheduling and broadcast software for radio, internet and television station in addition to research studies that aid the media and music businesses.

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, which is one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies with close to one million displays in over 40 countries across five continents. Clear Channel Outdoor includes:

* Americas Outdoor Advertising, which owns or operates nearly 190,000 displays across the United States, Canada and Latin America including operations in 49 of the 50 largest markets in the United States. The Americas businessconsist of various types of displays that include billboards; street furniture; transit displays; the Clear Channel Airports division, which is the premier innovator of contemporary display concepts and currently operates more than 260 airport programs across the globe; mall displays; wallscapes; and spectaculars including Spectacolor, a market leader in spectacular sign displays, with displays located in New York’s Times Square. The Company has been a leader in the development and operation of digital displays and networks across many of its U.S. markets.

* International Outdoor Advertising operates across Asia, Australia and Europe with displays across nearly 30 countries. The International business consists of street furniture and transit displays, billboards, mall displays, wallscapes and spectaculars. Clear Channel International’s street furniture division operates over 3,500 municipal advertising contracts worldwide.

Pittman will also remain a member of Pilot Group, LLC, a New York-based private investment firm.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors, I want to express how delighted I am that Bob has accepted this position,” said Mark Mays, Chairman of Clear Channel Media Holdings. “He has been an invaluable contributor to Clear Channel Radio since last November, and he is the perfect person to take Clear Channel to the next level. I look forward to his leadership of our company.”

“Bob Pittman brings a long history as a brilliant innovator and brand builder — from his days as a very successful radio programmer, creator of MTV and CEO of MTV Networks to his work helping to drive the phenomenal growth of AOL and his successful investments in other digital, media and technology companies. He has already generated a renewed sense of confidence and direction not only at Clear Channel, but across the entire radio and media landscape,” said Scott Sperling, Co-President of THL Partners.

“I’m thrilled we were able recruit Bob into the CEO role at Clear Channel. He is the perfect fit to lead this incredibly powerful media platform. He embraces creativity, and has given employees the motivation and freedom to innovate, take risks and succeed,” said John Connaughton, Managing Director of Bain Capital. “He thinks big, is not afraid of change and is intensely focused on driving new businesses, expanding our creative talent and maximizing the full value of Clear Channel’s extraordinary assets, ideas and people.”

Pittman’s appointment comes on the heels of several industry-leading achievements by Clear Channel Radio this past year. In March, the company acquired digital music company Thumbplay for its state-of-the-art technologies as well as its technology and product teams. Last week, Clear Channel hosted the iHeartRadio Music Festival, the largest live concert event in radio history, which marked the official launch of the New iHeartRadio, which combines more than 850 of the nation’s most popular live broadcast and digital-only radio stations from 150 cities with user-created Custom Stations. iHeartRadio was one of the few highlighted new products at Facebook’s f8 conference on September 22nd, where it was recognized for its technology and cutting-edge social integration.

Additionally, Clear Channel has demonstrated its unique national promotional capabilities through significant relationships with record labels and social media leaders, and forging relationships with partners like Microsoft, Facebook, Zynga, Toyota and HP that reach further and deeper than advertising.

“Over the past year, I’ve had the unique opportunity to look at the Clear Channel people and assets up close and have found myself increasingly drawn to the company, to the point where the chance to get even more deeply involved has just become irresistible,” said Pittman. “I know first-hand that we have great people and the assets that allow them to do great things. We are so much more than just transmitters and broadcast towers — we leverage our local brands, personalities, strategic relationships and programming expertise to create unique experiences that forge real connections with consumers across our multiple platforms.”

Pittman continued, “I look forward to continuing to work closely with John Hogan and the Clear Channel Radio team to grow our company as we strengthen relationships with our consumers, advertisers, artists, labels and partners, nationally and locally — and I’m excited by the opportunity to work with Ron Cooper and William Eccleshare to help them make the most of our outdoor advertising potential by tapping into Clear Channel’s assets as a whole. I believe we have the technologies, the physical infrastructure, the content and, most importantly, the people to market to consumers better than any other media company in the world.”

Hearst will be using a platform built for big media publishers by Group Commerce, a New York-based company founded by former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt, Jonty Kelt and Andrew Glenn.

The offers, which will start rolling out later this summer, will primarily target the male-dominated audiences of the two magazine brands. Later, Hearst will expand it to other demographics through such well-known magazine properties as Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Esquire.

So far, Group Commerce has launched with other major media outlets, such as DailyCandy, Thrillist and the New York Times. It has raised $18.5 million in capital and grown to 75 employees since officially launching in March. In all, its network of publishers is already reaching 15 million subscribers who have signed up to receive deals.

Rob Houghlin, the publisher and chief revenue officer of Car and Driver and Road & Track, said they’ve been looking at doing something in the social commerce space over the past four or five years.

“It’s a brand new way to connect some of our advertisers with our most trusted asset — our users,” he said. “Advertisers are looking for new ways to talk to current and potential customers. They don’t want to move distressed products, but they want to offer special products to consumers who want it. It’s a platform of credibility first and value second.”

The deals will be promoted through the magazines and through other online experiences, such as newsletters, blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and mobile applications.

Some of the initial offerings include a custom product bundle from Gladiator Garage, which sells workbenches and storage units for garages, and an exclusive Corvette driving school package at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Nevada.

Kelt, who is the CEO of Group Commerce, said the company will be working with Hearst to get all of its magazines up and running with deals by the end of the year. He said the magazines serve perfect niches that can be catered to.

“The whole premise of our business is that relevance is really important,” he said. “The media companies have strong vertical titles and know who their reader is.”

Kelt said there are two distinct advantages to partnering with publishers: The cost of acquiring customers is much lower because they already have the readers and combining offers alongside content can be particularly powerful.

If you think about it, newspapers have always had content and advertising — from classifieds to display ads — that people have been interested in. That will likely be the company’s only hope if it wants to contend with the massive marketing machines already assembled by Groupon and LivingSocial.

“Great content is really powerful, but great content with great commerce is even more powerful,” Kelt said. “You’ll be more engaged and more valuable than if you just had content from that brand.”

Here’s a mock-up of how the deals will look on Road & Track. This is not a final version, obviously:

Think again.

New York-based Group Commerce, which is coming out of stealth today, has the funding and the pedigree to be a viable contender.

Founded by former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt, Jonty Kelt, and Andrew Glenn, has raised $8 million in capital.

Investors include: Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures, and Bob Pittman, the founder of MTV Networks and now chairman of media and entertainment platforms at Clear Channel.

What’s more, it is coming out of the gate running with four major publishers added to its platform: DailyCandy, Meredith Corporation, Thrillist and The New York Times.

In an exclusive interview with eMoney, Rosenblatt and Kelt explain that unlike Groupon or LivingSocial, Group Commerce is not building its own consumer brand, and won’t be targeting deals directly at consumers. Rather, it’s banking on building a platform that other media companies can leverage.

Rosenblatt, who was the former CEO of DoubleClick, is the company’s chairman, Kelt is CEO, and Glenn is the company’s CTO. All three were at DoubleClick when it was acquired by Google for $3.1 billion

Ironically, they are now building a business that Google desperately wants to get into, but failed after an unsuccessful $6 billion bid to acquire Groupon.

Rosenblatt said:

“Of course, this is going to be a very big market, and there will be many more players than just two. Each participant will have a different approach. Google clearly has one, but we believe collectively that publishers have the strongest advantage. They have the audience and the brand loyalty, but they are missing the mechanics and industry expertise.”

The daily deals space is getting exceedingly crowded.

The market is expected to soar to as much as $3.9 billion in the next four years, and there’s roughly 200 players in the space, according to estimates by BIA/Kelsey.

Rosenblatt compared the market to the early days of online advertising when AOL and Yahoo dominated.

“In the early days of the display market, a big share of the market was dominated by two players, but overtime advertising was redistributed to where the audience was. Groupon and LivingSocial have done a great job creating a market, and they will continue to be very large, but there will be a similar redistribution in favor of publishers,” he said.

Beyond Groupon and LivingSocial, which are considered the market leaders, there’s other companies attacking several niches, ranging from furniture to baby apparel, travel and families. There’s also companies that say they offer exactly what Group Commerce is describing–a white label solution for publishers–including Seattle-based Tippr and ReachLocal, which recently acquired DealOn.

“There’s a huge number of Groupon clones,” Rosenblatt said. “The insight here is that none of those clones have established publishers, they don’t have brands or trusted relationships, or customer lists….We don’t have a b2c business, but that is the case with most of the other white label providers. They also don’t have teams and our breadth of services.”

He says the three components that you must have in order to be successful in the space are: A loyal audience; great content and deals; and a technology platform.

“The publishers we’ve worked with for many years [at DoubleClick] are in the process of transitioning to a new digital economy,” Rosenblatt said. “They have an audience and the ability to match the audience to deals that are contextually relevant. Our role is to offer the third part.”

Group Commerce is not just offering a technology platform, but also is sourcing the deals for its media partners, and finding a large audience and wide range of demographics for the merchants across publications.

Daily deals typically offer discounts at restaurants or other services for as much as 50 to 70 percent off. The customer pays for the voucher up front and then redeems it later. Typically, the merchant only gets half of that cash, while the other half goes to Groupon or another provider. For the merchant it’s a new form of advertising, replacing traditional methods, like Yellow Pages or newspaper ads.

Group Commerce would not disclose its revenue splits, but said it is paid with a portion of gross revenue of each deal, and that it’s a shared risk model. “If the deals don’t work, we don’t get paid,” Kelt said.

Kelt added that they believe their model will work because it combines the publisher’s knowledge of the audience with the merchants. For instance, DailyCandy’s audience is young and female, and a reader may be interested in an offer for a ladies night out at an upscale restaurant.

Although a potential customer does not have necessarily have to be a publisher, Kelt notes. It can be anyone with an audience, including a celebrity with a large following on Twitter.

Today, Group Commerce has 35 employees in New York, Chicago, Florida, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s planning to grow to 100 employees by the end of the year with the majority being sales people.

The real news here is that DailyCandy hasn’t launched a deals offering up until now.

The 10-year-old company pioneered the consumery newsletter concept, built around highlighting a particular product or service each day, and it would have seemed natural at some point to turn that into Groupon’s crazily successful “deal of the day” offering, which offers a steep discount on said product or service.

But it’s here now. Or will be soon.

DailyCandy Deals launches in November in Philadelphia, where DailyCandy owner Comcast is based, and then will roll out to New York by Christmas, and then L.A. and beyond in 2011. It won’t actually be daily, either–the service will start out by highlighting offers two times a week to DailyCandy’s 3.4 million subscribers.

Eve Epstein, an eight-year veteran at the site who has run the edit side for the past three years, is moving from New York to Los Angeles. She’ll stay with DailyCandy, though, as creative director of Swirl, an online sample-sale site that wants to take on the likes of Gilt Groupe.

The move is one of several high-profile changes at DailyCandy within the last few years. The biggest, of course, was when Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group sold the company to Comcast (CMCSA) for $125 million in the summer of 2008.

CEO Pete Sheinbaum moved on last May, and his role was eventually filled by Hearst Digital’s Beth Ellard in August. In December, the company began paring back some of its local editions and laid off some staff in the process. And assuming the deal with GE (GE) and NBC Universal goes through, DailyCandy will end up as part of that combined company (unlike other Comcast digital assets, which will stay with the mother ship).

Here’s a release from DailyCandy that the company was kind enough to provide to me when I called up to confirm the hire. Take note, fellow publicists! This is excellent service!

DailyCandy, the free lifestyle daily e-mail newsletter and website, is hiring Janet Ozzard, editor of New York Magazine’s The Strategist, to be the company’s new Editor-in-Chief. Janet is replacing Eve Epstein, who left DailyCandy to become the Creative Director of Swirl.com, DailyCandy’s new sample sale site which launched in beta late last year.

“New York Magazine’s Strategist section is widely regarded as some of the best content in publishing today,” said Beth Ellard, GM for DailyCandy.  “Janet brings significant editorial experience, strong leadership skills, and a fresh, innovative perspective to DailyCandy, and she will be fantastic in her new role as Editor-in-Chief.”

Janet will be starting with the company in early March.

This should clear things up: The site and its email editions are going on “indefinite hiatus,” according to an email the company plans to distribute next week.

Ideal Bite is supposed to eventually resurface in some form via the “Go Green” section of Disney’s Family.com site, but that won’t do much for the company’s employees, who I’m told will be out of work as of Dec. 9.

A person familiar with the company says the only two exceptions are co-founders Heather Stephenson and Jennifer Boulden, who will remain employed until March. I’ve asked Disney for comment, but haven’t heard back yet.

Ideal Bite is one of the many newsletters backed by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group, which sold the company to Disney (DIS) for a reported $20 million in 2008. Pittman’s biggest success to date has been DailyCandy, which Pilot sold to Comcast (CMCSA) for $125 million a year and a half ago.

That unit, which is now slated to become part of the Comcast-NBC Universal joint venture, is now paring back some of its local editions, the result of what it said today was “a very challenging year.”

Here’s the draft text of the email Ideal Bite plans to send out next Monday:

Dear Biters:

For the past 5 years, Ideal Bite has helped make “light green” a way of life, leading to many meaningful changes. Together we’ve made the switch to organic food, CFL light bulbs, reusable water bottles, and paraben-free shampoos, and have inspired others to follow our lead.

Those small changes really have added up and have helped push green to the mainstream. As you’ve probably noticed, lately, our Ideal Bite guides, tips, and other content have become more family and home focused. And now, as part of the Walt Disney family of companies, it makes sense for us to join the Disney website Family.com, which focuses on women and moms, and is expanding the Go Green section of its site.

What does that mean for you? Starting next week, all Ideal Bite email editions and the website will go on indefinite hiatus as Family.com readies new ways to serve you Biters – through email, website, mobile, and video content. In the meantime, keep checking Family.com’s Go Green section for content and updates.

Thanks for Biting with us over these past years. We’ve had a blast sharing our tips with you all, and we look forward to downing a virtual glass of biodynamic wine with you in the future.

Until then, as always, Happy Biting.

The Ideal Bite Team

The pitch is straightforward: The newsletter will bring you one cool and/or useful online site, service, app, etc., per day. The alpha versions I’ve seen suggest that subscribers try out the likes of Gazelle, Zeni Optical, and Hazelmail.

If the concept sounds familiar, it should. There are several popular Web sites, like Gawker Media’s Lifehacker, that tread similar thematic ground.

And there are many variants in newsletter industry. Very Short List, the newsletter started by IAC (IACI) and now owned by the Observer Media Group, offers up a cool book, movie, video, etc., per day; DailyCandy, now owned by Comcast (CMCSA), tells its subscribers about cool sample sales and boutiques; Thrillist*, the DailyCandy for dudes, informs dudes about cool restaurants, bars, etc.

One other commonality: This newsletter business, like many others, is getting a boost from Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group. The investment fund, which has invested in newsletters, including Daily Candy and Thrillist, owns a piece of Recognition Media, the New York company that produces the annual Webby awards, among other silly/serious events.

*Your story is coming, Ben. Patience!

[Image credit: polmuadi]

Earlier this week, while in New York, BoomTown paid a visit to well-known media and Web exec Bob Pittman to hear about his newest venture.

And, as it turned out, it tasted pretty good.

That’s because the former MTV wunderkind, AOL top exec and currently, investor in a wide range of media and Web companies, is making tequila instead of Internet sites.

Thank God it’s Friday!

That might be the liquor talking, since accurate reporting is a requirement at All Things Digital–but this was one of the more enjoyable interviews I have had with Pittman over many, many years.

After leaving the job of COO at then-troubled AOL Time Warner (TWX) in 2002, Pittman has been investing via the Pilot Group in Web start-ups like Thrillist, iLike, Zynga, Next New Networks, as well as radio and television properties.

Pilot sold DailyCandy to Comcast (CMCSA) in 2008 for a reported $125 million.

Tequila-making is yet another unusual tack for Pittman, who is now busy trying to turn “Casa Dragones”–which is made from the blue agave plant in Mexico–into the next big thing in the high-end liquor business.

Aiming directly at the top-shelf brands like Gran Patrón, Pittman is trying for a “sipping” tequila, in contrast to most versions, which typically deliver a sharp kick.

Using a series of tasting parties and marketing efforts to make the $275-a-bottle tequila a must-have at key bars and clubs, it will be interesting to see if Pittman can turn spirits into profits.

Here’s Pittman talking about his tequila adventure in a video interview (and, below it, Joe Nichols singing one of my favorite country songs, “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off”):

Joe Nichols – Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091016/its-another-tequila-start-up-bob-pittmans-new-venture/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091012/disney-transitioning-ideal-bite-its-green-lifestyle-newsletter/ http://allthingsd.com/20091012/disney-transitioning-ideal-bite-its-green-lifestyle-newsletter/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:27:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11987 Ideal Bite, the green-flavored lifestyle newsletter Disney bought in June 2008, faces an uncertain fate: Its parent company is shuttling the unit from one corporate silo to another and says it’s not sure what will become of it once that happens.

For the record: Disney (DIS) says it always intended to move the company, which offers “bite-sized ideas for green living” via email and a Web site, from its corporate strategy group to its interactive division, which will happen later this year. At that point, “it will still continue in some form,” says spokesman Michelle Bergman.

That doesn’t sound good. Disney says it plans to conduct a review of the unit, so it’s not ready to answer some basic questions about the email newsletter company. Like: Are co-founders Heather Stephenson (who lives and works in San Francisco) and Jennifer Boulden (who until this summer lived and worked in Bozeman, Mont.; she’s now in Los Angeles, I’m told) staying on? Will Disney have to take a write-down on the property? Will there be layoffs? “It’s too early to say. I can’t tell you,” Bergman says.

Okay. But If I had to bet, I’d say at least some of the dozen-plus employees will be hitting the job market.

Disney paid a reported $20 million for the property a year and a half ago, and the plan was to create a big green-centered business around it, but that hasn’t panned out, sources said. The company, founded in 2005, is one of the many lifestyle newsletter businesses backed by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group.

Comcast (CMCSA) bought DailyCandy, the best known of Pittman’s stable, for $125 million a little more than a year ago. That was surely one of the last “pre-Lehman” Web 2.0 M&A deals, but grunts and murmurs out of Philadelphia and Pilot indicate the business has held up during the recession. And Thrillist, a “DailyCandy for dudes” effort that has yet to sell, seems to be booming.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091012/disney-transitioning-ideal-bite-its-green-lifestyle-newsletter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090506/dailycandy-ceo-pete-sheinbaum-steps-down/ http://allthingsd.com/20090506/dailycandy-ceo-pete-sheinbaum-steps-down/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 10:44:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6991 DailyCandy CEO Pete Sheinbaum is leaving the company, less than a year after Comcast bought the fashion and shopping newsletter from Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group Ventures for $125 million. His last day is Friday.

Sheinbaum, who started working for the company as a consultant in 2000 and took the top job in 2005, says he doesn’t have a new job lined up yet, though I’m told he has options. “I let them know after nine years it was time to look for the next thing,” he says via email.

I’m told that Comcast (CMCSA) is still pleased with the acquisition, which may have been the last Web 2.0 deal to close before last fall’s crash.

Here’s word from Comcast: “We wish Pete well, thank him for his work in growing Daily Candy. Catherine Levene, Chief Operating Officer and [founder] Dany Levy will continue to lead operations. For Comcast Interactive Media, IM, Daily Candy is overseen by Chuck Davis who is EVP at CIM and also runs Fandango. The transition under CIM has gone well and the company continues to grow–DC has added DailyCandy Video and DailyCandy Weddings.”

Here’s an interview with Sam Schwartz, the Comcast executive who engineered that deal and who says he’s still interested in other Web M&A:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090506/dailycandy-ceo-pete-sheinbaum-steps-down/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090129/want-bob-pittmans-money-start-a-newsletter-business/ http://allthingsd.com/20090129/want-bob-pittmans-money-start-a-newsletter-business/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:01:44 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=3671 Are you an aspiring media entrepreneur trying to figure out how to  raise money during brutal times? Here’s one method: Start an email newsletter business, then give Bob Pittman a call.

Pittman’s Pilot Group Ventures has already taken flyers on two of these things–DailyCandy, a shopping/events guide for cosmopolitan ladies, and Thrillist, a DailyCandy for the ladmag set. Now he’s done it again: He’s invested money in VitalJuice, a DailyCandy for fitness fans. Terms weren’t disclosed, but I’m told that Pilot invested $1 million in the company.

The New York-based company started up in the spring of 2007 and now has 50,000 subscribers; that number should increase as the company launches versions of the newsletter targeting Los Angeles and New York. Co-founder Amanda Freeman told me that she and partner Lisa Blau liked the DailyCandy model and thought it would work well for fitness and wellness tips.

“We felt that email was the perfect kind of delivery for this kind of content,” she says. “If you had a disease, you’d look up something on the Web. But healthy living isn’t something you seek out.”

I don’t know how much convincing Pittman required, but if anyone is a believer in the model, he is: He invested something like $3 million in DailyCandy in 2003 and sold it last summer to Comcast (CMCSA) for $125 million. It’s the biggest win to date for Pittman, who is well into a third career as a private media investor following earlier stints at Viacom’s (VIA) MTV and as one the major players during the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner (TWX) saga.

Some of Pilot’s other high-profile deals include stakes in Huffington Post and Project Playlist.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090129/want-bob-pittmans-money-start-a-newsletter-business/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080806/the-125-million-sweet-dailycandy-revenge-of-bob-pitchman/ http://allthingsd.com/20080806/the-125-million-sweet-dailycandy-revenge-of-bob-pitchman/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:55:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2514

Oh, there had to be much, much gnashing of teeth in the corporate offices of the Time Warner Center in New York yesterday with news of the sale of DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million.

Why?

Maybe because that tasty payment is going right into the hands of Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group Ventures, which bought the fashion and shopping newsletter business for $3 million in 2003.

Longtime media exec Pittman was the former star AOLer, whose nickname was Bob “Pitchman” for his smooth-as-silk selling and even more marked spinning skills.

But the Web 1.0 supernova fell quickly to earth, after the online service merged with Time Warner (TWX) in early 2001, in what is now considered one of the more significant world-class corporate disasters.

After being tossed out of AOL Time Warner in mid-2002, Pittman (pictured here), along with AOL head Steve Case, was blamed for the stock decline and other woes at the media giant by the Time Warner side, whose deep bitterness toward him has never really faded away.

Now, with Time Warner trying to make a deal to sell the AOL unit for up to $10 billion to Yahoo or Microsoft–despite it being valued at $20 billion only a few years ago–Pittman’s small but impressive score has got to grate.

“I have been associated with the start-up, turnaround or acceleration of many companies and major brands, and rarely have I seen the kind of creativity, commitment and passion I’ve seen day in and day out at DailyCandy,” said Pittman in a letter to DailyCandy staff yesterday about the sale. “And the results speak for themselves: Since we made our investment in 2003, subscriptions have grown from just over 200,000 to over 2.5 million.”

In the letter, Pittman said the company’s EBITDA was over $10 million this year on revenues of $25 million.

This is certainly different from the situation almost exactly six years ago when Pittman was driven out of the then-named AOL Time Warner on the proverbial rail.

If you want a taste of those once-grim times for Pittman, here is an excerpt from my book, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future,” which was published in 2003.

The section comes from Chapter Six, “Way, Way After the Goldrush,” as the deal imploded:

THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE NO BUSINESS

Despite the troubles, Pittman, Case and [former AOL Time Warner CEO Dick] Parsons grinned out from the June 2002 cover of AOL Time Warner’s internal magazine, called Keywords, under the headline “Lift Off!” Actually, “Grounded!” would have been a more accurate headline, given the problems that would mount over the summer.

That was especially true at AOL, where Pittman found that just about everything–from morale to ad sales to subscriber numbers–was trending downward at an accelerating pace.

He had grown weary of infighting at the company, exhausted from the traveling and worn down by the prospect that turning around AOL would take more work than he had ever imagined.

For three months, he’d been trying to revive AOL while still working as COO of the combined company. Pittman was stretched about as thin as he could go, and AOL was still sputtering.

“He had been getting a pounding and he did not see a way to turn it around,” said AOL marketing whiz Jan Brandt, whom Pittman had brought back into the top echelons of the company upon his return. “And there was no end in sight.”

Indeed, for Pittman, there was no end in sight for the time it might take to fix AOL, especially because of how badly he and his team had alienated the entire Time Warner management.

The New York Post even began running a regular “Pittman Meter,” an obnoxious graphic that offered assessments ranging from whether he was “toast” to “safe” on any given day.

Mostly, Pittman was burnt to a crisp.

With increasingly skepticism that he could fix the problems at AOL, Pittman went to Parsons before the July 4th holiday weekend and told him he wanted out.

“I can’t do this anymore,” said Pittman to Parsons, who urged him to think things through over the weekend.

But the weekend put him over the edge, when the New York Times–whose reporter, David Kirkpatrick, had become a favored outlet for disgruntled Time Warner executives to vent—ran a scathing piece detailing Pittman’s failure to turn things around at AOL and suggesting there was a target on his back.

“Executives and shareholders are united in more or less open revolt,” wrote Kirkpatrick. While the story referred to discomfort with the departed Levin too, it singled out Pittman explicitly.

“Most of all, Time Warner executives have turned their ire specifically at one man–Mr. Pittman, a former America Online executive who became chief operating officer after the merger,” it read. “He angered many Time Warner executives with what they called his brusque manner … he developed a reputation for brashness, ruthlessness and success at America Online, and he applied the same tactics at Time Warner on his return.”

As if channeling the Time Warner side’s anger, Kirkpatrick summed up their message: “Now many executives from the former Time Warner wish the merger would go away, and, barring that, they wish that Mr. Pittman would.”

In the article, Parsons was quoted offering a rather tepid defense of Pittman: “People get angry and that anger has to be attached to something or someone,” he was quoted as saying. “Some of it has been attached to Bob and I am not sure if it is entirely fair.”

Well, not entirely, Parsons’s quote seemed to indicate to me–but maybe it’s a little fair! This deft response definitely did not look good for Pittman.

And with Parsons firmly ensconced in the CEO position and no place higher up on the ladder for Pittman to go, what sense did it make for him to keep fighting what was, for the foreseeable future, a losing battle in which he would probably end up getting tossed out anyway?

With the executive ranks blaming him and the board losing faith that he could turn AOL around, Pittman had no chance of regaining any credibility as COO.

“Pittman left on own steam, but he knew what was coming,” said one board member, who actually admired Pittman.

Pittman wanted to announce he was leaving, but Parsons asked him to delay the news until the board could approve a new management structure in mid-July.

His plan was to promote Time Inc.’s Don Logan and HBO’s Jeff Bewkes to the top of the AOL Time Warner structure, effectively splitting Pittman’s duties into two positions, both of which would report directly to Parsons.

Logan would head the Media and Communications Group, the subscription and ad businesses that would include Time Inc., Time Warner Cable, the Interactive Video Unit, Time Warner Books and AOL.

And Bewkes would run the Entertainment and Networks Group, made up of HBO, New Line Cinema, The WB, Turner Networks, Warner Bros. and Warner Music.

Getting the pair interested in the arrangement would be difficult, given the recalcitrance both had felt toward the merger in the first place.

But it was critical for Parsons to pull this off, since Logan and Bewkes were considered the best and most successful operators in the company, though they were vastly different in personality and style.

Logan, who had been the CEO of Time Inc. since 1994, was one of the most admired managers in the company, especially within his division, where he was openly revered for turning around the fortunes of the magazine publishing house.

An Alabama native, he was the son of a housewife and a welder for the state highway department. Logan went to Auburn University as a math major, and worked his way through school as a computer programmer for NASA in Huntsville. He continued his studies–specializing in abstract math–at Clemson University, and went on to pursue a doctorate part-time the University of Houston.

While in Texas, he worked for Shell Oil, creating research tools in the search for oil, but he found big-company life too slow.

Answering an ad for a Birmingham, Ala., publishing company called Progressive Farmer, later renamed Southern Progress, Logan worked first in data processing and fulfillment and later in direct marketing.

Time Inc. bought Southern Progress in 1985, and Logan was running it by 1986.

Admiring Logan’s reputation for consistent results, [former Time Warner CEO Jerry] Levin brought him to New York in 1992 as Time Inc.’s president and COO. Logan got the CEO spot two years later.

Logan fulfilled Levin’s expectations by goosing the magazine division’s results dramatically, turning in 41 consecutive quarters of earnings growth and tripling its cash flow.

Logan managed all this while affecting a folksy Southern image as a good old boy who just loved to go fishing. (He had even appeared on the cover of Field & Stream in a feature about jungle fish.)

Pretty much everyone I asked about Logan felt the need to mention his fishing, as if it were mysterious and complex part of his nature–imagine that, a fishing math major!

In the company newsletter, Logan was quoted as noting that business was a lot like fishing, in that they both require “persistence and patience.”

The burly Logan might have had true “down home” bona fides, but he was as smooth as any city slicker in leading the potentially divisive troops at Time Inc.

His greatest strength appeared to be in leaving people alone, yet demanding performance as a price for that independence.

“He was a straight talker in a culture of bullshit and platitudes,” said former Pathfinder executive Linda McCutcheon. “And he believed you grew incrementally to greatness.”

The very qualities that were so admired at Time Warner were derided by AOL’s top brass, who considered Logan a typical Time Warner corporate timeserver and not much of a risk taker.

“He thought growing at five percent a year was a great accomplishment,” said the voluble [AOL ad exec] Myer Berlow. “He was not exactly the kind of person who welcomed us.”

The AOLers expected more rapport with Jeff Bewkes, the glib and good-looking head of HBO.

Much as everyone mentioned Logan’s interest in fishing, the word Time Warner people invariably used to describe Bewkes was “handsome.”

And he is indeed a handsome man, slim and tall with a curious mix of Hollywood glamour and vague preppiness that suited the more conservative elements of the company.

“Golden boy” had long been a defining image for Bewkes, who was a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Business School (again, that heady mix of traditional East Coast and trendy California).

The impact he made was a strong one–an executive comfortable with both Hollywood talent and deal makers alike.

Bewkes came to HBO many years previously, and worked in the finance and marketing departments. He was considered a winner even in his earliest days.

“We all used to assume he would eventually be the boss,” said a former AOL executive Mark Walsh, who worked with Bewkes at HBO. “He had this air of the inevitable about him that was very appealing.”

His star rose quickly and he eventually became the chairman and CEO of HBO, building a close-knit team around him that was responsible for burnishing the somewhat dull image of the pay-cable channel to an edgy sheen with such huge hits as “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City.”

This conspicuous success quickly attracted AOLers, who identified with Bewkes’s more outgoing style and considered his passionate, entrepreneurial nature akin to their own.

They could not have been more wrong about his regard for AOL, though–Bewkes was one of the first executives to complain internally and loudly about the idiocy of the merger deal.

He wasn’t shy about challenging Steve Case’s dreamy ideas of convergence in company meetings, and he could pull it off because his HBO success gave him such credibility.

Bewkes’s ability to move with comfort through all parts of the company made everyone assume that he was headed for bigger things.

That included AOL, which Bewkes was asked to fix in early 2002. It was a position he’d quite smartly turned down, obviously aware that grabbing onto that sticky situation would hurt him.

Pittman really had no choice in being the one to take on AOL–although I joked to him when he went back to Dulles that he’d just been handed a tar baby that he’d have a hard time pulling away from without damage.

That was finally clear when the company announced his departure–which had been widely leaked in newspapers–on July 18.

As usual, his public statement had an odd mixture of spin and truth to it.

“I’ve decided that after a new CEO is in place at AOL, I won’t return to AOL Time Warner as chief operating officer,” he said. “Having worked so hard to build the AOL service and brand, and after then going through the merger and the last 18 months, it’s time to take a break.”

Managers and staff at other company divisions greeted the news of Pittman’s departure and the ascension of Logan and Bewkes with joy.

“The Taliban have been routed,” joked irrepressible Time Inc. Editorial Director John Huey, in what was a common sentiment.

Finally, Time Warner had taken back the company from the horrible invaders. The gloating ran rampant.

Media pundit and New York columnist Michael Wolff, who had worked with Time Warner on its various failed Internet efforts, took a dim view of the glee in his “This Media Life” column.

Wolff correctly asked: What had Time Warner really won by purging Pittman–who walked away with a fortune–and where would that leave the company?

“Of course, taking it out on the guy who outsmarted you does not, in turn, make you smart,” he wrote in his slap-down style. “[Pittman] doesn’t hang around a disaster area. This is show business. If the show flops, you close it. Onward and upward.”

AOL’s early CEO Jim Kimsey, who had long been enjoying his retirement, was even more direct, dialing Pittman up on the phone.

“Is this the unemployed Mr. Pittman? Because this is the unemployed Mr. Kimsey,” he greeted Pittman. “Congratulations–you moved Osama Bin Laden off the front page!”

But while Time Warnerites rejoiced in their hope that the merger turmoil was finally over, the company’s troubles wouldn’t leave the front pages for a long time to come.

We’ll see if that has changed at all, after Time Warner announces its second quarter earnings later today.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080806/the-125-million-sweet-dailycandy-revenge-of-bob-pitchman/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080331/shine-on-shine-on-yahoo-soon-before-the-buy/ http://allthingsd.com/20080331/shine-on-shine-on-yahoo-soon-before-the-buy/#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:39:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080331/shine-on-shine-on-yahoo-soon-before-the-buy/

As BoomTown argued yesterday in a piece on the landscape of Yahoo if Microsoft completes its purchase of the Internet portal, Yahoo (YHOO) certainly knows how to make online content.

As we wrote: “For all its history, right down to today, even with all these dumb widgets competing for users’ attention, Yahoo continues to natively understand how to to entertain, inform and serve up their own and others content to consumers.”

Case in point, an attractive new site it launched today called Shine, which is aimed at women from their mid-20s to their mid-50s.

As you can see from the image below, it is a very well-done site, incorporating a lot of the good stuff in the same genre from around the Web.

Does it look a bit like the sassy properties of Sugar Inc.? Is it light and frothy like Glam Media? Does it feel a bit like DailyCandy, in its focus on the shopping as a sport? And, is it as helpful as iVillage (and does it even “borrow” a wiggly “i”)?

Yes indeedy to all!

Imitation is a form of flattery, I suppose, although Yahoo’s site feels fresher than any out there and it has an aspirational and hip feel that women will like, I think.

I’d call it an Eat-Pray-Love mood, with a lot of Oprah mixed in.

More importantly, it is clearly a good market for Yahoo’s advertisers, who all aim to reach this high-spending but underserved demographic online.

Yahoo is trying to reinvigorate its lackluster efforts here, as well as making plans to further drill down into related topics like parenting, sex, food and wellness that are present on the Shine site now.

While it looks a lot like a blog plus, Shine obviously has social written all over it and a wide range of communications tools will be easy to layer over the service.

It also is smart in its partnering with lots of media companies like Hearst and in pointing across the Web to give users a more comprehensive offering.

But can Yahoo compete in a very crowded field with such a late entrant? Probably. It recently put up a celebrity site called OMG, which has grabbed significant traffic quickly.

And while we honestly could care less if men look bad in skinny jeans (um, yes!), there is probably something on the very-full page of interest to everyone.

The Shine site has Brandon Holley as its editor-in-chief, but the effort in the arena is being helmed by Amy Iorio, who is the VP/GM of Yahoo’s Lifestyles unit. It all rolls up under Yahoo Media SVP Scott Moore.

While Yahoo PR will probably blah-blah too much about “starting points,” which is the latest buzz word from top brass, related to Shine, it should just hush up and realize Yahoo’s many owned-and-operated media conglomerations just need decent support and promotion to stay as strong as they are and to keep them as one of the bright spots at the company.

Here’s a screen shot of the site (click on the image once to make it appear on another page and then again to make it larger):

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