When Terry Met Jerry, Yahoo!

" WHEN Yahoo Inc. announced nearly five years ago that Terry S. Semel, then a former leader of the Warner Brothers motion picture studio, would become its chairman and chief executive, the reaction both outside and within Yahoo was not exactly one of wild encouragement.

Despite a hugely successful career running companies that make movies, television shows and music, Mr. Semel was immediately labeled an "old media" guy. Worse, he was a Hollywood guy, and had barely touched a computer during the nearly two decades he oversaw Warner Brothers with Robert A. Daly.

Even though he had been making private Internet investments since resigning from the studio two years earlier, when people associated "Semel" and "Yahoo," they were more likely to think of an Australian comic named Yahoo Serious who starred in the 1988 Warner Brothers flop "Young Einstein." Mr. Semel's former boss at Time Warner, Gerald M. Levin, who had just completed his merger with America Online, laughed incredulously when he heard the news of Mr. Semel's new gig in April 2001, according to an executive who was with Mr. Levin at the time ... "

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/business/yourmoney/29yahoo.html?ex=1296190800&en=e6c8a61fc545c9a4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss