The New York Times: Lloyd Braun, the former chairman of ABC’s entertainment group who now oversees Yahoo’s expanded media group in Santa Monica, has hired Kevin Sites, a veteran television correspondent, to produce a multimedia Web site that will report on wars around the world.
The Web site, called “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone” (hotzone.yahoo.com) will focus entirely on Mr. Sites’s travels as a war correspondent and will use nearly every kind of format the Internet allows. His reports will begin Sept. 26.
Yahoo is building a large beachhead in Santa Monica to establish relations with Hollywood, both to buy content from others and to produce its own. One of its motivations is to tap into the rapidly growing demand for video advertising on the Internet.
“If we execute this the right way, it is a great first step to show people how we can present content in a different kind of way than television,” Mr. Braun said. “One that embraces the qualities of the Internet.” Those qualities, he said, including giving users the ability to control what they see and how they see it, and also to interact and respond.
