Yahoo sends entire nation after one poor schmuck for new reality show
Yahoo skips the trouble of advertising and plugs its entire network in its next reality series. Yahoo's Lloyd Braun rescued rejected weekly series "Runner" from ABC and turned it into an ad-hoc stream of video clips posted online at all hours. The series, an elaborate audience-participation chase game, puts the "we're not a media company" company on the edge of media tipping over into massively multiplayer gaming. Yahoo also gets to plug Yahoo Instant Messenger, Yahoo Maps, and Yahoo Shopping, which will be used to track the eponymous runner's movements.
The show is an audience-run hunt for Yahoo's operative, who for the love of God should avoid Sidekick-dotted San Francisco if he plans to escape flash-mob capture. Then again, setting a man loose in the Midwest and paying people to capture him? If we were Yahoo, we'd buy kidnapped-by-rednecks insurance.
