WebProNews

Santa Monica office looking over its shoulder

The remaining vestiges of ex-CEO Terry Semel's Hollywoodization of Yahoo continue to be swept out of the portal, as senior VP Vince Broady leaves Yahoo's entertainment division.

Once Semel and his partner in Hollywood visions, Lloyd Braun, exited Yahoo, it appeared the bloodletting of entertainment initiatives would continue.

The Bits Blog at the New York Times said Broady's departure, one that had been on tap for a while, finally took place. Efforts for Broady to find other opportunities within the company did not bear fruit.

As Miguel Helft noted, it's not like Broady got a lot done with his pet entertainment project during that time:

One of Mr. Broady’s pet projects was called Brand Universe and involved creating individual Web sites for entertainment brands like Harry Potter and Star Wars....Only a few got built, and in December, Mr. Weiner said Brand Universe no longer fit with the network division’s mission to turn Yahoo into a “starting point” for the most consumers on the Web.

Yahoo maintains a presence in Santa Monica, close to Hollywood and its studio executives. Staffers there probably have no desire to give up sunny, trendy Southern California for the blue shirt and khaki uniformed Silicon Valley.

But if Yahoo keeps retrenching its entertainment offering, will it make sense for them to keep a Santa Monica presence? Yahoo can build sites and sell advertising from Sunnyvale with or without the more glamorous real estate to the south.

With the Hollywood writer strike still in process, to the point where the studios have started tearing up deals, is there a good reason to be physically close when nothing is getting done on the studio lots anyway?