I started my last missive on Packaged Goods Media (PGM) v. Conversational Media (CM) with an overview of the tectonic changes in leadership at the digital units of major media companies. One day later, Yahoo announced its own radical reorganization – COO Dan Rosensweig is leaving, and media unit…
I started my
last missive on Packaged Goods Media (PGM) v. Conversational Media (CM) with an overview of the tectonic changes in leadership at the digital units of major media companies. One day later, Yahoo
announced its own radical reorganization – COO Dan Rosensweig is leaving, and media unit chief Llyod Braun, a master of PGM (Desperate Housewives, HBO), also saw the writing on the wall. Rosensweig left, in my estimation, because while he bought into the new Yahoo organization overall, he realized that his place within it was diminished by CFO Susan Decker’s anointment as Semel’s #2 (watch where he goes, I am sure it will be interesting.).
Braun left, on the other hand, because there wasn’t a place for him to begin with. Yahoo has always struggled with its true role as a media company – should it create its own media, or should it be a platform to aggregate the media of others? Braun’s departure indicates that Yahoo will not pursue the vision of itself as a creator of traditional Packaged Goods Media – Braun struggled to figure out how to make “hits” in a platform-driven world of YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr. So what kind of media might best be made in such an environment?
Yes, that was a straw man for this next meditation: the answer is Conversational Media.
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