Managing in Troubled Times Case Study

Case Title:

Yahoo!: Challenges in its Online Entertainment Ventures

Abstract:
With growth in the global entertainment and media industry, many Internet companies are making efforts to increase their presence in diversified online businesses like digital entertainment. Yahoo!, one of the leading web portals providing a variety of services like online chat, online music and online sports, also ventured into the online media business by forming the Yahoo! Media Group in January 2005. To offer its users different television programs on the Internet, Yahoo! Media Group partnered with Hollywood and other media companies like Mark Burnett Productions to launch reality shows like The Runner and Wow House. However, these programs had to be shelved due to declining viewership. Besides, Yahoo! faces tough competition from AOL, MSN and Google in online media business.

Pedagogical Objectives:

• To understand the importance of new technologies in converging traditional media like the radio and television with emerging medium like the Internet
• To analyse Yahoo!'s gradual expansion into the online media business amidst competition from Google, MSN and Time Warner/AOL
• To discuss the initiatives of Lloyd Braun to enable Yahoo! Grab a bigger market share in the global online media business
• To focus on the inherent challenges an Internet company has to face when it tries to foray into online media business and competes against well established television companies.

Keywords : On-line entertainment industry; Yahoo!'s business model; Yahoo!'s products and services; Media companies in the US; Brand advertising of Internet companies; Yahoo!'s diversified growth; Google; Microsoft; Managing in Troubled Times Case Study; Time Warner; America Online; The US film industry; Turnaround strategies of Yahoo!