Interactive, In-Depth News Coverage the Focus of New ABC News-Yahoo Venture
Touting “original, premium programming,” a reach of 100 million people in the U.S. and an “innovative” opportunity for advertisers, executives from Yahoo and ABC News entered a strategic alliance. They said Monday it brings together Yahoo’s technology and reach and the journalism of ABC News, with the goal of becoming the “premier digital media company in the world.” The future of news and information “is completely up for grabs,” said Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News.
Elements of the alliance include original Web series from ABC News anchors and correspondents titled “Newsmakers,” “Around the World with Christiane Amanpour” and “This Could Be Big.” There will be more access to ABC news material across the Yahoo News network, the companies said. They've had a relationship, with ABC providing about a quarter of Yahoo’s video streams, “but we wanted to do something transformative,” Sherwood said. ABC News correspondents will be more involved on the Internet and will engage with viewers, he said. Katie Couric has been on the forefront of interaction with viewers at ABC and that will increase with the Yahoo community, he said. “We have all kinds of plans of doing brand new things and things we can’t even imagine right now on big tent-pole events” such as Sept. 11 and the Royal Wedding, he said.
ABC News content will be more prominently integrated into the Yahoo website, they said, where the two companies will have access to a base “the size of a Super Bowl audience.” Editorial teams from both organizations will collaborate on branded content that will appear on both news sites and Yahoo editorial staff or content will appear on air, they said. Yahoo said it has an international reach of 700 million.
To underscore the commitment of ABC News TV talent to the online collaboration, a full roster of ABC News journalists was on hand at the event. They included Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Couric, Amanpour and Robin Roberts, who will host as part of the alliance a series of “video conversations” with politicians, global leaders and celebrities, according to the companies. Couric told journalists “sometimes TV time is not your friend.” Pointing to the who’s who of ABC journalists seated in the first two rows, she said, “Who here doesn’t want more real estate?” She said the new platform offers an opportunity to do expanded coverage, “dig a little deeper,” and to explore issues with “the luxury of time.” She said the online access allows viewers to “cut up” the news when they don’t have time watch a half hour of news in one chunk of time. Amanpour said her series will focus on international stories of each day that don’t “get as much play on TV” but that many online viewers are interested in. “It’s a perfect platform to be able to expand on issues that really matter,” she said.
Sherwood and Ross Levinsohn, executive vice president of Americas at Yahoo, stressed “premium” content during the course of the event, but the venture will be ad-supported using the existing business model, Levinsohn said. “When you look at 100-plus million users every month, that’s a scale that doesn’t exist with any other platform.” The venture will go beyond the TV news model, he said. “The whole purpose is to create original content that’s tailor-made for where people are getting their online news and information.” He wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a user-paid model down the road. “We're going to start free,” Levinsohn said, “but I can’t predict the future.” At the outset, the goal is to distribute the content as far and wide as possible and to get a large number of people to interact on the site. For now, he said, “we're trying to enhance the experience and create unique opportunities for advertisers."
The alliance extends across all platforms and “is as much a mobile deal as an online deal,” Levinsohn said. Yahoo is starting a new publishing platform called “Livestand” for tablets and smartphones, allowing content providers to publish once and distribute it “on every platform,” he said. Regarding the alliance’s expansion into content available through other connected devices such as game consoles and set-top boxes, Sherwood said “it’s all up for grabs. Anything’s possible.” Joe Ruffolo, senior vice president, ABC News Digital, said the companies are “open to exploring different opportunities.” ABC News will still have its own destination, he said, “but we're definitely open to new things coming out.”