Huffington Post Co-Founder Ken Lerer Wants You to Watch His Next Company

What do you do once you sell your digital media business for $315 million? Start another digital media business! Ken Lerer, Brian Bedol, Patrick Keane and Jim Pallotta bet on video with Bedrock Properties.

Bleacher Report's Brian Grey Talks About New Content Biz, as Patrick Keane Joins Board

Earlier this week, BoomTown went downtown to the San Francisco HQ of Bleacher Report, one of the many interesting efforts trying to change the way content is made and distributed. Bleacher Report, no surprise, is focused on sports, and competes with sites such as Yardbarker and SB Nation. All take different approaches, with Bleacher Report delivering a grassroots platform for both professional and hobbyist writers who want give their take on any topic about college and professional sports, from the latest draft to explaining what’s the deal with “Fear the Beard.”

Yahoo Restructures U.S. Ad Sales Force–With No New Head (But Apparently a Lot of Princes Charming)

Yahoo announced today that it was restructuring its advertising sales force, after being without a head of its key U.S. unit since mid-March. Big news: No new top ad sales exec. Instead, several North American sales execs with larger portfolios will report directly to Hilary Schneider, who is in charge of the Americas for Yahoo. “I have kissed a lot of frogs over the years, but it turned out the Prince Charmings we always needed were back at the ranch,” said Schneider.

Help Wanted: So When Is Yahoo Going to Hire a New Head of Ad Sales?

It’s been almost four months since Joanne Bradford stepped down as head of U.S. revenue and market development for Yahoo, and the company has yet to hire a new exec to fill the key job. That’s got a lot of people inside Yahoo a little jumpy, according to numerous sources who have contacted me recently, because of the importance of firm leadership in the premium online ad business in which the Internet giant needs to keep excelling.

Peachy Keane? Will Yahoo Hold Onto Associated Content CEO?

Earlier this week, Yahoo acquired social content start-up Associated Content for $90 million. While founder Luke Beatty was prominently presented by Yahoo as the face of the deal, CEO Patrick Keane was oddly missing from most of the PR around the media-focused acquisition. The reason, according to several sources at Yahoo: Yahoo’s top execs have not yet persuaded Keane to stay after the purchase is complete. It’s not for lack of trying.

AOL Automates Its Story Factory. Does That Kill an Associated Content Deal?

AOL is cutting its payroll by one-third. Now comes its plan to make the remaining employees more productive: New technology that assigns and even edits stories automatically. That sounds an awful lot like Associated Content, a start-up that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong invested in–and considered buying–earlier this year.
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Voices

Start-up Hires CBS, Google Veteran

Patrick Keane, a digital-media veteran, was named the chief executive of Associated Content Inc., a start-up that syndicates user-submitted articles and video on the Web. Mr. Keane, 38, was most recently chief marketing officer of CBS Corp.’s CBS Interactive, a role he had been transitioning out of since earlier this year. Prior to that, he was a sales-strategy executive at Google Inc. who spearheaded the company’s planning with large advertisers and agencies.

CBS Interactive Exec Patrick Keane Out, Replaced by CNET Counterpart

We haven’t heard of much bloodletting since CBS bought CNET for $1.8 billion this summer. But obviously there have to be some cuts as the companies merge the network’s CBS Interactive unit with the Web publisher. Here’s one: Patrick Keane, the former Google exec hired as executive vice president and chief marketing officer in February 2007, is out. In his place is Mickey Wilson, who was SVP of marketing at CNET.