It's like a splashy celebrity drama: according to PaidContent, AOL subsidiary TMZ.com will no longer use AOL to sell its ads and instead will be taking those operations in-house. Television ads will be handled through Telepictures, the Time Warner division that teamed up with AOL to launch TMZ in the first place.
The reasoning, according to PaidContent, is that the Hollywood news and gossip site--which was the first to break the news of Michael Jackson's death--has simply gotten too big for AOL's Platform-A technology. TMZ has been one of AOL's foremost success stories of late, and has served as an indicator of how the once-mighty tech company could reinvent itself as a successful digital publishing power under the auspices of new CEO Tim Armstrong.
This could be a messy breakup on the ad sales front. AOL is in the midst of being spun off formally from Time Warner, with which it became joined at the hip in a massive 2000 merger. Platform-A has gone through one management change after another, and though it has significant reach across the Web, still struggles for legitimate industry cred when it comes to both Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue.
Losing a major player like TMZ will be another blow to Platform-A's image. The bigger question will be whether, as PaidContent suggests, TMZ itself may spin off from AOL--something that seems ludicrous, given AOL's plans to be a digital-age Conde Nast or Time Inc.
But things might actually be simpler: as a PaidContent commenter noted, TMZ might be hunting for advertisers willing to work with content a little bit racier than the family-friendly AOL norm. You know, like hard-hitting investigative reports about just how see-through Megan Fox's outfit was at some L.A. nightclub the other night.
Social site Buzznet, whose CEO makes it clear that he's hoping to compete with the likes of MySpace and MTV on the pop culture front, has nabbed a new executive from TMZ.com. Alan Citron, former general manager of the AOL-owned entertainment site, will become head of "special projects" at the company.
In the world of celebrity news, saying you've hired a TMZ alum is kind of like saying you've hired a Googler. But it's not a completely serendipitous catch: before TMZ, Citron was senior vice president of marketing at Movielink, which also counted current Buzznet CEO Tyler Goldman among its ranks.
Buzznet's strategy has been mixing a social network with editorial content rolled up from users as well as preexisting blogs that the site has acquired, like Stereogum and Idolator. An investment from Universal Music Group has given the site access to the record label's catalog, too.
Citron, who got his start as an editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times, has also been among the executive ranks of USA Network Interactive, Ticketmaster, and MusicNet.
Before leaving for the office Tuesday morning, I left a note for my housemates on top of our television. "Won't be home till late. I'm DVRing TMZ TV and the new Perez Hilton show. Please do not delete the recordings. This is for work, not a joke."
I'm not one for celebrity gossip. I try to stay on top of what's being talked about, but I don't keep up with Britney's latest epidermal exposures or whether Jessica Alba is single, and the only time I watch the E network is when it's playing on the TV in front of the only unoccupied treadmill at the gym.
But the syndicated TMZ TV, which premiered on Monday, and the VH1 series What Perez Sez, which introduced its first event tie-in on Tuesday night with footage surrounding the weekend's MTV Video Music Awards, piqued my interest as a digital-media junkie.
Read the rest of the CNET News.com story here.
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