Traditionalists and techies at Web portals clash over the core focus of online mediaThere is an inherent tension between the tech and traditional companies when it comes to media. With some oversimplification, it can be summed up in one question: Is content the center of the online world, or are algorithms for search and targeted advertising? The old guard of media forever struggle with the degree to which they're comfortable engaging with the newer players online. (To pick just one example: Viacom (VIA) sued YouTube (GOOG) over copyrights last year, while many other programming giants partnered with it.) But a variant of this tension also erupts inside some big online portals—Yahoo! (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and, most recently, Microsoft (MSFT)—which are media operations themselves, since they produce content and sell ads around it.
Microsoft's efforts to move into media date back to the mid-'90s, when it launched its ill-fated city guide network, Sidewalk. It hired executives familiar with Madison Avenue, like Joanne Bradford, who arrived from BusinessWeek in 2001 as its chief media revenue officer.
But grafting traditional media DNA onto the new guys doesn't always work. At Microsoft, in the past year at least five high-level media executives have left or are leaving. Among them: Bradford, who in mid-March went to next-generation TV ad startup Spot Runner; her boss, Senior Vice-President Steve Berkowitz, who's leaving in August; and, previously, key Bradford lieutenant Eric Hadley. (Bradford and Berkowitz's announcements came after Microsoft bid to buy Yahoo, itself no stranger to turnover.)
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