New Media

Yahoo! has been through a number of transformations over the last few years. The Internet portal has launched high-profile news blogs, original video series and everything in between. With a new CEO in charge, the company has an idea of what it wants to do next, and video is at the core of it.

Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo!’s executive VP, spoke at the NATPE conference in Miami, where he revealed some details about the company’s plans.

“For 17 years Yahoo! has sort of been known as a catch-all for everything, and I do think you really need to pick your fights,” Levinsohn said. “The notion of scarcity [in creating video] doesn’t exist anymore, but what there is scarcity of is premium video. I like watching the cat chasing the laser pointer like everyone else, but it is impossible to monetize.”

Yahoo!’s strategy so far is to partner with people and brands with household name recognition, and to let them go wild with the shows they create. For example, Yahoo! recently inked a deal with ABC News, and Levinsohn said that deal has been “going gangbusters” for Yahoo!

Another deal was with actor Tom Hanks to produce a new web series called “Electric City.”

“We are going to do many many more of those,” Levinsohn said.

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller argued that the future of digital media will center around video… and of course that his company was in prime position to take advantage of it.

“I think we are just entering into the real video age now,” Miller said at the NATPE conference in Miami Beach.

NATPE is a conference for television programming executives, with production companies and networks–both domestic and foreign–looking to make deals.

Miller said that research indicates that on the axis of money spent and time sent, print seems to be losing, the web seems to be winning, and television is in a happy place in-between. As a result, he says, print is the medium that needs to adapt most.

“It is pretty likely that is where the money is coming from, which is why we are doing things like what we are doing with the Wall Street Journal,” Miller said.

The Wall Street Journal Project is very highly regarded at News Corp., someone close to the matter says. During business hours, the WSJ has a CNBC-style lineup of business programs, streamed on WSJ.com. The key for the WSJ project is expanding its distribution beyond the newspaper’s website. Our source says that the company has CNBC in its sites, trying to create the next generation of business network, without many of the high costs associated with launching a new TV network.

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With the runaway success of eBooks and iPads, you’d think that launching a tablet version for a magazine would be a given. However, Entertainment Weekly executive editor Kristen Baldwin says that rushing into the field too early could be a mistake for publishers.

“We’ve been on the tablet with our Must List app for quite a while, but in terms of the actual magazine, we really wanted to wait until we got it right,” she explained in our Media Beat interview. “Because what we learned is you have to get it right the first time, and users have to really enjoy it and be satisfied with it, because otherwise they’re just not gonna come back.”

Baldwin also discussed the key to writing those punchy blurbs that EW is known for: “It’s kind of like writing haiku.”

You can also view this video on YouTube.

Part 1: Entertainment Weekly‘s Kristen Baldwin Talks ‘Entertainers of the Year’
Part 3: EW‘s Kristen Baldwin on the Ryan Gosling Factor

Emmis’ 98.7 KISS FM/WRKS has launched an Internet live stream just in time to keep its loyal listeners tuned in while on the move for the holidays.

“It’s been a highly anticipated addition to the powerful KISS Classic Soul and Today’s R&B brand, Jay Dixon, KISS program director, says. “New York’s greatest music can now be heard world wide.”

You can hear the station’s online stream 24 hours a day.

This afternoon Time magazine hosted its annual panel discussion debating exactly who deserves to be the 2011 “Person of the Year.”

The panelists were comprised of “NBC Nightly News” anchor and panel stalwart Brian Williams, his colleague “Saturday Night Live” fake news anchor Seth Meyers, actor Jesse Eisenberg, law professor Anita Hill, Americans for tax Reform president Grover Norquist and celebrity chef Mario Batali. Moderated by Time editor Richard Stengel, the panelists debated whether a dead person (Steve Jobs, Osama Bin Laden) or group (populist movements, the 99%) deserve to be considered.

Some of the surprises:  Hill had a stern “no comment” when asked about the Herman Cain allegations, though she did say sexual harassment is more likely to be taken seriously now than it was 20 or so years ago.

Mario Batali is a serious dude. As you will see below, he had harsh words for Wall Street bankers (comparing them to Hitler and Stalin!), as well as Occupy Wall Street protestors, saying “it is a kind of a part time job for those guys, they aren’t really playing the real thing. They are kind of quietly sitting around. It is a very 2011 rebellion, they aren’t breaking anything, no one is getting hurt, for that very reason no one is paying any attention.”

Some of the other highlights from the lunch:

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Way back in the olden days of 2009, Time Inc.’s venerable sporting magazine Sports Illustrated released a video demoing a hypothetical version of the magazine on a tablet computer:

The demo was impressive, especially considering the Apple iPad would not be unveiled for another half a year. Unfortunately, not everyone was impressed. After Apple unveiled the iPad, Steve Jobs came to Time Inc.’s New York offices and met with the editors of some of their biggest magazines. He was asked what he thought of SI’s demo.

“I think it is really, really stupid,” Jobs said. That stung Terry McDonnell, the editor of SI and the Time Inc. sports group.

“I was sad, and we were all kind of stunned,” McDonnell said. “It was not stupid, in fact it anticipated everything he was doing.”

Speaking at the Mashable Media Summit in New York on Friday, McDonnell explained how he and his team transformed an iconic print brand into a brand across all platforms. The tablet demo, which was not far off from what the company released for the iPad, is a textbook example of how even at old media companies, there are opportunities to think outside the box.

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MyRecipes.com, The Time Inc. Lifestyle Group’s top-performing digital food and recipe portal, has created My Grocery Deals. The new tool allows consumers to find sales on recipe ingredients based on their location.  

Powered by Grocery Server, the leading grocery deal comparison search engine, My Grocery Deals automatically searches weekly ad circulars for more than 200 grocers across the country and matches sales to ingredients.

“The My Grocery Deals tool brings a new level of personalization to the user experience by allowing consumers to find ingredients on sale at their local grocery store,” said Tina Imm, General Manager, Lifestyle Digital Group, Time Inc.  “We’re excited to couple this unique technology with the more than 50,000 recipes we offer on MyRecipes.com to help users save money while making delicious meals for their families.”

Launched in 2007, Time Inc.’s MyRecipes.com gives consumers the tools they need to cook with confidence and eat with joy.

If you ever needed proof that a non-Kardashian can rule Twitter, look no further than Toure. Seriously. Go ahead — look at his timeline.

Whether it’s a line-by-line breakdown of the song “Otis,” his take on the final season of Entourage, or the truth behind that Michael Vick article, the noted journalist and cultural critic has amassed over 36,000 followers by posting more than just links.

“I seem to look at it as if I’m on a panel, and there’s thousands of people there. And it’s a Q&A-type situation, so I make a statement that would relate to many people,” the author of Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness explained in our Media Beat interview. “I do want it to be conversational in that you can have an opinion back or an answer back to me; I can respond back to that. And there is an impulse to be ADD-ish on Twitter, to say one thing and to move on. And I wanna have a conversation. I wanna spend 10 or 15 minutes or 10 or 20 tweets talking about one thing and drilling down on one idea. Look, I hate small talk.”

So, what’s the one topic that got the Twittersphere in a tizzy? Tipping. Watch the full video to find out why.

You can also view this video on YouTube.

Part 2: Toure Tackles Watermelon, Fried Chicken and Post-Blackness in New Book

Part 3: Toure on Pitching, Getting Assignments, and That R. Kelly Interview

As WEMP begins its second full week as a 24-hour-a-day news station, listeners now have the option to hear 101.9 online.

WEMP began streaming on its website Friday.

But, before clicking the “Listen Live” for the news format geared to women loaded with lifestyle and entertainment features, visitors are encouraged to answer a few questions.

Merlin execs chose morning co-anchor (longtime, former WINS reporter) Alice Stockton-Rossini as the face for this experiment.

With a picture of Rossini on the page, she “asks” for input from new listeners. 

“I need your thoughts on the type of stories and information that would be most helpful to you all day,” Rossini writes.

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TIME Inc. veteran Jodi Kahn has been promoted to the newly created position of President of iVillage, the New York-based NBC Universal site devoted to women. In the new position, Kahn will continue to oversee iVillage UK, Astrology.com, GardenWeb, Lifegoesstrong.com, Petside.com and DinnerTool.com.

“Jodi has done an outstanding job relaunching iVillage and steering the network to dramatic year-over-year growth,” said Nicholas Lehman, President of Digital for NBCU Entertainment & Digital Networks.

Kahn joined iVillage in the fall of 2008 from Readers Digest Association (RDA), Inc. where she was President of Global Digital Media. Prior to that, Kahn spent 16 years at TIME Inc., where she ran Time for Kids and was a vice president at Time Interactive.