James Pitaro, Yahoo! Sports general manager, will be theonline company’s public face of its sports content operations after a dramaticshake-up of its executive roster and organizational structure.
Pitaro, who joined Yahoo! Sports two months ago after fiveyears as head of business affairs for the company’s music operations, assumesresponsibilities largely held by formerboss David Katz, head of Yahoo! Sports & Entertainment and Studios. Katzresigned earlier this month, with industry buzz focusing on an apparentconflict of ideology with senior company management.
Also gone in a corporate restructuring announced last week areseveral other top Yahoo! executives, including Lloyd Braun, head of Yahoo!Media Group, as the company struggles in its fight against archrival Google aswell as other portal and content operations, such as AOL.
Katz, recipient thisyear of a SportsBusiness Journal Forty Under 40 award, tried to expand Yahoo!’sbrand to become a destination for original content in his 17-month stint there.He hired former Los Angeles Times deputy sports editor Dave Morgan, but thefervent push for original content was not universally embraced by senior Yahoo!management or by investors, who felt the effort clouded the company’s mission.
Yahoo! stock has fallen more than 30 percent this year toabout $27 a share based on trading as of late last week.
Amid the restructuring, Yahoo! is also garnering significantindustry attention for a “Peanut Butter manifesto,” a company memo recentlywritten by senior vice president Brad Garlinghouse in which he calls for masslayoffs and an end to “our strategy [being] described as spreading peanutbutter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the onlineworld. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we doand thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We allshould.”
Pitaro, whose professional background is in entertainment law,and Katz were not available for comment, but a Yahoo! spokesman last weekconfirmed Pitaro’s expanded role and responsibilities.
