Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The pair will apparently say he is departing for “personal reasons.” Sources said that Thompson will be claiming to be leaving due to a serious illness that he recently discovered he had.

But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is the key reason for the abrupt end to his tenure as a CEO.

Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn, who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales.

In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources.

The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company.

But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently.

And it’ll also be a stunning victory for Loeb (pictured here), since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw.

The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections.

Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board.

Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January.

Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week. In those gatherings, according to numerous sources, he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe.

That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back last week with an internal memo, noting that Thompson’s claim was “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume that Thompson had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it.

That memo, impugning Thompson’s credibility, was one of many that piled on to create an impossible situation for the Yahoo board, related to his leadership ability going forward.

Thompson had also previously issued a Yahoo statement, in which he apologized for the “distraction” caused by the problematic resume, but not for the mistake itself.

And, initially, Yahoo — under his direction — had called the borked resume an “inadvertent error.”

Such fumbling to fix the situation was among the many other issues that the board has been considering relating the ability of Thompson to remain in his job. Also of importance was the sinking morale of Yahoo employees, who had largely rejected Thompson’s excuses in the ResuMess scandal.

Internal message boards at Yahoo lit up all last week, with staffers largely rejecting his explanations. In addition, a number of top execs and engineers approached the board calling for Thompson’s firing.

While that’s not precisely what happened here, it’s close enough to describe Thompson’s departure as inevitable.

All this change comes in the wake of a massive restructuring he was in the midst of at Yahoo, after 2,000 employee layoffs.

Thompson was pushing forward a vision of adding a much more significant data and commerce element to Yahoo’s largely ad-based business.

That is likely to be less stressed under media-focused Levinsohn, who will be essentially trying out to be the permanent CEO.

Well known in the media and advertising communities, he has worked at a number of big online efforts over many years.

According to his bio at Yahoo, where he arrived in 2010:

He previously served as the President of News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media, where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations, strategy and acquisitions that helped transformed the company into a leader in digital media. He also held senior management positions with AltaVista, an early pioneer and leader in search, CBS Sportsline where he oversaw all content and development for the top rated sports site, and HBO where he launched and oversaw a unit developing new programming and revenue streams. Levinsohn also was the co-founder and managing director of Fuse Capital, an investment and strategic equity management firm focused on investing in and building digital media and communications companies.

Levinsohn sits on the board of Freedom Communications and the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from The American University.

So far in my checking, Levinsohn’s resume is accurate.

More to come, obviously.

I have emails and texts and calls into everyone for comment, but apparently they are all out at a Mother’s Day brunch (except me).

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Capstone analyst Rory Maher thinks so. He’s been polling ad buyers and thinks they may collectively be spending 40 percent more on YouTube than they did a year ago.

He also thinks YouTube’s strategy of grouping its new channels into “genres” — like “women,” “pop culture,” etc. — and selling those as megapackages is attractive to advertisers, and that they’ve at least placed tentative commitments on all 18 packages YouTube is selling.

But those dollars aren’t going to come from TV, Maher thinks. Instead, advertisers will take money they would have spent on other Web ads and move them over to YouTube. That’s still a win for Google, but it’s not the win it really wants.

Last week’s event didn’t win everyone over. Several folks I’ve talked to — including people who are making stuff for YouTube’s channels — say they’re underwhelmed with the actual content they saw onstage at the Beacon Theater.

“It looked like Web video,” one Web video maker told me. That is, it didn’t look like the stuff the TV guys show off at their advertiser events.

Some of the stuff may get close to TV.

YouTube is brimming with pride over WIGS, a series of soapy dramas featuring actresses you’ve heard of, like Jennifer Beals and Julia Stiles (News Corp., which owns this site, had a hand in putting the series together). The teaser trailer they’ve put out looks like a reasonable facsimile of Lifetime, at least to my eyes. And Machinima is planning a series based on Halo, the hit Xbox game, and the few seconds of that they showed looked pretty slick.

It’s more likely that most of the Web video YouTube produces with its channels this year really will end up looking like Web video. But if that doesn’t bother the people who watch it — and there are some 800 million people watching this stuff every month — then it shouldn’t be a problem for the ad guys, either.

Net income jumped to $937 million, or 38 cents a share, for the fiscal third quarter, compared with net income of $639 million, or 24 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 2 percent to $8.4 billion.

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According to sources close to the situation, Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue has approached Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and co-founder Jack Dorsey about moving off the board of Twitter.

It is not clear when McCue — who became a director of the San Francisco social communications company in late 2010 — will step down, but it could come soon.

The reason, sources said, is McCue’s growing feeling that the companies are on a product collision course, with a possible troubled or perhaps more attractive result.

In other words, Flipboard will either face increasing rivalry from Twitter or will end up as a possible acquisition target for it or other companies.

“How users consume and use Twitter is a key part of its future, and that is what Flipboard does well already,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “There is going to be an inevitable crossroads for the two companies.”

Indeed, Twitter has bought several companies that help users read and discover, such as Summify.

The goal has been to better make sense of the massive amount of data that the service produces daily; to that end, Twitter has pushed to improve its user interface design on a number of devices.

And Twitter is a big part of Flipboard’s app, which is very dependent on the tweet feed and accounts for 70 percent of its links, sources said.

Flipboard is also more of a “mobile first” company, which is where Twitter is also headed even more aggressively.

Already popular on the Apple iPad, Flipboard launched its iPhone app late last year and it is prepping a version for Google Android soon.

That’s why, in addition to being a rival, it is also an obvious acquisition target for Twitter, as well as others such as Yahoo and Microsoft.

In fact, Google already tried to buy it last year, before Flipboard did a massive $50 million fundraising round that valued it at $200 million.

Its investors include Insight Venture Partners, Comcast’s venture arm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angels, such as Dorsey, Facebook co-founder and Asana dude Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

Co-founded by longtime entrepreneur McCue (Netscape, Tellme) and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll, Flipboard launched to much attention in mid 2010.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from media RSS feeds and sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate personalized format.

Google has mounted a competitor, called Currents, as has Yahoo with its Livestand offering, neither of which have gotten much traction. In fact, sources said, Yahoo is likely to shut Livestand down completely.

There have also been a spate of other similar readers, such as Pulse and Zite.

Spokespersons for both Flipboard and Twitter politely declined comment.

Eventually they settle, and you, the pay-TV customer, ends up paying more.

And that’s what’s happening in the latest dustup between Dish Networks, the satellite TV service, and AMC Networks, the programmers now best known as the guys who bring you “Mad Men,” “The Walking Dead” and “Breaking Bad.”

The slight twist here: For argument’s sake, at least, Dish is saying that because AMC is selling digital versions of those shows to other outlets, its hit shows are worth less to Dish subscribers. “It’s actually devalued,” says Dish chairman Charlie Ergen.

The fact that networks are selling or giving away their stuff online has been a minor but growing issue in carriage fights for a while now. But this is the biggest stink that a cable/pay TV provider has made about it, at least in public.*

Dish first brought this up via a press statement last week, but Ergen went on about it at length today during the Dish earnings call.

It’s worth reading. I’ve cleaned up his comments just a bit for clarity (note that AMC Networks includes multiple channels, including AMC, IFC and Sundance):

We have very, very specific viewer measurement. Much more granular than somebody like Nielsen might have. So we’re able to watch our customer base and — we realize we skew a bit more rural — between [AMC Networks] programming, they have very, very low viewership, outside of a few obviously popular [shows] on AMC.

But those particular channels are also available to our customers on a variety of other sources, like iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and so on.

One of the things that programmers have done is that they’ve devalued their programming content by making it available in many multiple outlets. So, when someone asks for price increases …

We just look at it. Our customers are not really saying “We want to pay more money,” they’re saying, “We want more flexibility in our programming, and we don’t want to pay more.”

And when you look at that from a timing perspective, that’s just a contract that we can change. And we believe that the product is actually devalued. Not that there’s not some good programs, but that they’ve been devalued, because you can get it in multiple ways. And customers are asking for more flexibility, or have more flexibility to get the programming. So it’s not quite the same as something that was exclusive.

So we look at it and say, “This is a good opportunity to make a good business judgment call.” And obviously there’s a price where an [AMC Networks] product makes sense. We just don’t think that’s where we are today.

First things first: Obviously it makes the most sense to dump all of this into the “posturing” bucket, and treat it accordingly. The easy money here is to bet that, yet again, Dish and AMC will strike a deal, which Ergen, at the end of his remarks, explicitly says is on the table.

That said, a couple of points:

• Most of the big TV programmers seem to agree with Ergen’s point when it comes to free repeats of recent shows. Which is why they have been taking stuff that they’ve been giving away via outlets like Hulu, and either pulling them off the Web entirely, or requiring that customers “authenticate” — prove that they’re paying for cable or satellite TV —  in order to see them without delay. Note that Dish was the first pay-TV service to participate in the Fox authentication plan last summer. (Fox is owned by News Corp., as is this Web site.)
• TV programmers don’t seem to think that iTunes’ and Amazon’s a la carte sales of shows that aired the night before are devaluing their product. Because they’re still selling them, and by all accounts there doesn’t seem to be a ton of volume for those episodes. If there was, advertisers would squawk long before pay-TV providers would.
• The really touchy subject here is what happens to prior-season episodes of AMC hits like “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” on Netflix. Netflix has been arguing that these episodes are big draws for its customers, and that this is good for networks like AMC, because people discover the old shows on Netflix and then watch the new ones as they air. There is some evidence for this, too.
• But there is also evidence that Netflix repeats hurt some cable programming — like kids’ shows — too. And that leads to speculation that Viacom and Disney will pull back their shows from the service or raise prices when their contracts expire — even though Netflix is already paying big dollars for them. Netflix will have its hands on “Mad Men” and other AMC shows for at least a couple of years more. But it will be interesting to see what Dish’s complaint means for the renegotiations.

*There is also a wrinkle involving a lawsuit between Dish and a former AMC subsidiary, but that’s par for the course, too. All of these guys sue all of these guys, all the time. No recession, ever, for TV attorneys.

The brief statement came a day after a U.K. parliamentary committee probing illegal voice-mail interceptions by the company’s now-closed News of the World tabloid released a final report that concluded Mr. Murdoch is “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”

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The report says Mr. Murdoch and his son, News Corp. Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch, presided over a culture of “willful blindness” at News Corp. It also singles out James Murdoch for displaying a “lack of curiosity,” even “willful ignorance,” when handling fallout from the phone-hacking scandal as the manager overseeing News Corp.’s British newspaper unit, News International, from late 2007 to 2012.

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Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

During a second day of questioning under oath by a judge-led public inquiry examining British media practices, Mr. Murdoch repeatedly sought to draw a sharp contrast between News of the World — which he called an “aberration” — and the company’s other newspapers. Moments of contrition over News of the World’s problems alternated with others in which he lashed out at rivals, critics and others who “love attacking me.”

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The inquiry is preparing recommendations for the U.K. government on press regulations in the wake of the long-running scandal over illicit reporting tactics at News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper unit.

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The media mogul repeatedly said he hadn’t asked prime ministers, and would-be prime ministers, for favors, and said that his commercial interests didn’t influence where his newspapers stood on issues or political parties.

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The News Corp. deputy chief operating officer’s testimony comes a day before his father, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, is scheduled to appear at the inquiry, which is preparing recommendations for the U.K. government on how to regulate the press.

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The gist of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and five major book publishers: The publishers, assisted by Apple, conspired to fight back against Amazon’s pricing power in the growing e-book market.

The Wall Street Journal, which has been on the story for some time, has plenty of background here. And there’s some great, baroque detail in the DOJ’s complaint, which you can read over here. (New York venues of choice for alleged antitrust meetings: The “Chef’s Wine Cellar” at Picholene, and Alto, a now-defunct Italian restaurant.)

But there’s also this odd, scintillating, throwaway line in the middle of the complaint, where the DOJ casually mentions that before Apple thought about fighting with Amazon, it thought about a different strategy: Ruling the world in concert.

From the complaint:

In addition to considering competitive entry at that time, though, Apple also contemplated illegally dividing the digital content world with Amazon, allowing each to “own the category” of its choice — audio/video to Apple and e-books to Amazon.

Really? So how would that work? And why didn’t Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos end up conspiring to work together? The DOJ doesn’t explain any of this — it simply moves on to the rest of its argument.

And here’s where we need to point out that it’s not uncommon for lawsuit complaints to contain big helpings of theatrics, with accusations and context that won’t end up having any bearing in court, if it gets that far.

Indeed, several of the publishers that the DOJ is suing this morning are expected to settle with the government this afternoon — can’t get more theatrical than that. (Actually, they’ve already settled, says Bloomberg.)

Still, that’s an especially juicy bit of red meat to dangle in front of the public, so if the DOJ has more to say about the alleged would-be conspiracy, we’d love to hear about it. Apple declined to comment, but I’ll update if that changes.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Everett Collection)

While swanning about Los Angeles last week, I paid a visit to a number of interesting techies, including Mike Jones and Peter Pham, who recently founded Science.

While there are a lot of incubators and accelerators out there fiddling with start-ups, the pair of well-known entrepreneurs are calling this venture a “technology studio.”

By that, they mean that Science will do a lot more, from coming up with in-house ideas to investing some of their $10 million in backing to advising on how Silicon Valley should look at investments in Southern California to even taking on restructuring of larger entities.

Science investors include Rustic Canyon, White Star Capital, the Social+Capital Partnership and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, and it also has relationships with private equity firms for the bigger stuff.

The focus of Science, as the pair discusses below in a video interview, will be in three arenas: The intersection of content and commerce, social and mobile, and location.

As longtime entrepreneurs and Internet execs, Jones and Pham know those arenas, both the pluses and the minuses.

Jones tried his best (and, like others, failed) with the Myspace revival and also founded and sold Specific Media, Userplane and Tsavo Media.

Pham was recently helming the high-profile and controversial Color photo-sharing start-up in Silicon Valley and did stints at both BillShrink and Photobucket (a former News Corp. property, as was Myspace. News Corp. owns this Web site.).

Here’s my chat with them about their sun-dappled dreams of SoCal tech hegemony via their Santa Monica, Calif., HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120404/l-a-stories-mike-jones-and-peter-pham-talk-about-the-science-of-tech-studios/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120403/news-corp-still-backing-james-murdoch/ http://allthingsd.com/20120403/news-corp-still-backing-james-murdoch/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:36:39 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=192533 News Corp. is making a show of publicly backing James Murdoch, its deputy chief operating officer, after he stepped down as chairman of BSkyB.

Here’s the full statement the company (which also owns this Web site) just released:

“We are grateful for James Murdoch’s successful leadership of BSkyB. He has played a major role in propelling the company into the market-leading position it enjoys today — and in the process has been instrumental in creating substantial value for News Corporation shareholders. We look forward to BSkyB’s continued growth under the leadership of Nicholas Ferguson and Jeremy Darroch and to James’ continued substantial contributions at News Corporation.”

Murdoch is one of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch’s sons and was, until recently, considered the likely candidate to run the company one day. But since the long-simmering phone-hacking scandal erupted last summer his reputation has been battered, and he has given up a series of leadership posts in the Murdoch empire. Last summer, he refused a $6 million bonus, citing the controversy, but kept the rest of his $11.3 million News Corp. pay package.

And here’s the BSkyB statement announcing Murdoch’s departure:

The Board of British Sky Broadcasting Group plc (‘BSkyB’ or ‘the Company’) today announced that James Murdoch has stepped down as Chairman and will continue to serve in his capacity as a Non-Executive Director of the Company.

Mr Murdoch is succeeded as Chairman of BSkyB by Nicholas Ferguson, who was appointed as a Director of the Company in June 2004 and previously served as Deputy Chairman and Senior Independent Non-Executive Director. Tom Mockridge, who joined the Board in February 2009, has been appointed as Deputy Chairman. Andrew Higginson, who has been a Director of BSkyB since September 2004, succeeds Nicholas Ferguson as Senior Independent Non-Executive Director.

In a letter to the Board setting out the reasons for his resignation, Mr Murdoch said: “I have been privileged to serve first as Chief Executive and then as Chairman of this outstanding company and I am proud of what we have achieved over this period.”

Mr Murdoch continued: “As attention continues to be paid to past events at News International, I am determined that the interests of BSkyB should not be undermined by matters outside the scope of this Company.” He added: “I am aware that my role as Chairman could become a lightning rod for BSkyB and I believe that my resignation will help to ensure that there is no false conflation with events at a separate organisation.”

Mr Ferguson commented: “On behalf of the entire Board, I would like to thank James Murdoch for the outstanding contribution he has made both as CEO and Chairman of BSkyB. With his vision, drive and strategic insight, the Company has performed exceptionally and continues to transform itself to take advantage of a broader growth opportunity in home entertainment and communications.

“The Board’s support for James and belief in his integrity remain strong. We understand his decision to step aside at this time and we both welcome and look forward to his continued contribution as a non-executive director. The entire Board and management remain fully focused on maintaining BSkyB’s strong progress, delivering an outstanding service for customers and creating value for all shareholders.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120403/news-corp-still-backing-james-murdoch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120403/james-murdoch-stepping-down-as-bskyb-chairman/ http://allthingsd.com/20120403/james-murdoch-stepping-down-as-bskyb-chairman/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:28:25 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=192512 More fallout from PhoneGate: News Corp. executive James Murdoch is stepping down as chair of British Sky Broadcasting, the U.K. satellite TV company, according to a report from BSkyB’s news service. Both Murdoch and News Corp., which owns 39 percent of BSkyB, continue to be embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal that erupted last summer. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120403/james-murdoch-stepping-down-as-bskyb-chairman/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120328/news-corp-considers-cable-sports-network/ http://allthingsd.com/20120328/news-corp-considers-cable-sports-network/#comments Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:15:34 +0000 Russell Adams http://allthingsd.com/?p=190972 News Corp. is contemplating the launch of a national cable sports network in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the matter.

The New York-based media company has been discussing the idea on and off for several months, though it hasn’t made a decision. If it does go ahead, such a venture would not launch any time this year, the person said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120328/news-corp-considers-cable-sports-network/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120322/yahoo-hopes-to-fight-back-at-activist-shareholder-third-point-with-more-new-board-members-of-its-own/ http://allthingsd.com/20120322/yahoo-hopes-to-fight-back-at-activist-shareholder-third-point-with-more-new-board-members-of-its-own/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:34:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=189323

Yahoo leadership, betting it can stave off a challenge from activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, has been stepping up efforts to name three additional new board members to replace directors that are leaving.

Yahoo has already named two of the five open slots — former Rovi CEO Fred Amoroso and LiveOps Chairman (and former CEO) Maynard Webb, who was once COO of eBay.

But now, the company is pushing harder to get the last three on board in light of Third Point’s ever-increasing proxy pressure.

Several sources said that Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson has told people inside and outside the Silicon Valley Internet giant that the threat from Third Point, which owns almost six percent of the company, is not as worrisome as some think it could be.

Thus, Yahoo’s headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles has been contacting a number of high-profile media players about joining the board, including former News Corp. execs Peter Chernin and Tony Vinciquerra, as well as former MTV head Judy McGrath.

Both Chernin and Vinciquerra, sources said, have turned down the prospect of joining the Yahoo board in the midst of a possible proxy battle, along with other massive changes taking place.

Yahoo has not yet been successful at landing the remaining directors.

Meanwhile, Loeb, via saucy letters and filings, has been aggressively making a case that Yahoo should add his alternate slate of directors, including former NBC head Jeff Zucker, to the board. He recently submitted preliminary proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That’s because his cursory discussions with Thompson have apparently led nowhere, causing him to also publicly call for Yahoo to pay more attention to Third Point’s board selections.

If Yahoo names more directors to replace outgoing ones, it will be a slap in the face to Loeb, followed by inevitable ground battle war for investor votes.

Yes, that too.

Here’s a video from the WSJ.com’s “Digits” online tech show I did on the topic:

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