ABC headquarters on 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

In the multimedia screening room, Dr. Mark, played by Anthony Edwards, was once again woken up at half past six in the morning, looked at his watch, and sat up tiredly from the cramped storage room, and the 87-minute pilot episode of "The Story of the Emergency Room" officially ended.

The lights came on, and the screening room was filled with chatter.

Eric just smiled when he heard some people at ABC say things like 'too much medical jargon', 'unpopular subject matter', 'scattered structure', 'not strong enough plot conflict', he didn't doubt the professionalism of these managers who have worked in the TV industry for many years, however, this professionalism can only ensure that the TV shows remain above an average level, but if the ratings of each TV series match the predictions of these people, there will be no dark horses in the ratings.

Tom Murphy, who was sitting next to Eric, whispered a few words to Buffett on the other side, of course, he could also hear the discussion of the people around him, and said to Eric with a smile: "Eric, don't care about them, I think this is a very good TV series, and, relatively speaking, movies with unpopular themes can be more eye-catching, and maybe there will be unexpected ratings." ”

Eric, of course, didn't care, nodded, and asked Buffett with a smile what he thought of the TV series.

"It's really too trivial," Buffett said, "but I don't think there's anything scattered in the plot, and after a little analysis, you can see that the character plots of Dr. Mark, Dr. Doug, and the intern doctor named John Carter are all well organized, and I am now looking forward to the next development of the plot." ”

Katzenberg, Robert Egger and others sitting nearby all chatted about their opinions, and "The Story of the Emergency Room" was led by Eric himself. At least until Eric suffers his first defeat. No one would question Eric's vision. The broadcast of this TV series has also become a foregone conclusion, and this test screening is more like a relaxation after the merger of Firefly and ABC.

It's May 7th, the North American film summer season is just around the corner, and the main personnel adjustments after the merger with ABC have also ended, and the next thing is to streamline some departments where the functions of the original Firefly and ABC overlap, Katzenberg still needs to continue to focus on this area for a few months, but Eric no longer needs to keep an eye on this side, although there are many things in Los Angeles waiting for Eric to deal with. But he had to make time to make a trip to Boston to talk to the three company managers in charge of the browser, the Yahoo portal and the online mailbox.

After a brief cocktail party at the ABC headquarters restaurant at noon, Warren Buffett and a group of other people who had spent some time in New York for the acquisition began to gradually leave and return to the city where they had worked and lived.

Although a suitable successor has not yet been found, Eric has been following Alan Fiessman for more than five years as deputy general manager of ABC's primetime programming. After the merger of the two companies, Eric did not make a large-scale personnel transfer in ABC, which has made many people breathe a sigh of relief, so Eric parachuted a henchman to the core department of ABC, but it did not cause anyone to oppose it.

Bidding farewell to Katzenberg and the others, who still had work to do in the afternoon, Eric pushed open the narrow glass door and walked out of the ABC headquarters building to stand on the slightly narrow road of 66th Street. He patiently did not look back at the ABC headquarters, the red brick building that gave him the urge to put on a mosaic, and patiently waited for the driver to drive the car over.

ABC was originally built in the 80's at Rockefeller Center to own a very imposing headquarters building. However, after Buffett and Tom Murphy, two very frugal old men, bought ABC, in order to save money, they sold ABC's property in Rockefeller Center to the Japanese at a high price, that is, the Rockefeller Center acquisition that caused the anti-Japanese wave of Americans in the 80s, and then Tom Murphy chose the Upper West Side, which was not a busy crowded area at this time, to build a new headquarters building.

The driver quickly pulled the car over, and a little more than ten minutes later, Eric got out of the car outside a café near Bryant Park in Midtown. It was working time, there weren't many people in the café, and without the help of a waiter, Eric saw Tina Brown sitting by the window on the left-hand side.

Elizabeth left Eric the contact information of the former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief last month, but it wasn't until recently that he made an appointment with Tina Brown.

Tina Brown was in her early forties, wearing a very simple white shirt and a neat short haircut, and she was more of a housewife than Anna Wintour nor Emily's obvious strong woman, but no one who knew Tina Brown would question the 25-year-old woman who was the editor-in-chief of the century-old British magazine "Gossip".

Tina Brown also noticed Eric's presence, beckoned to the waiter who was walking towards Eric, and stood up to greet him.

"Hello, Mr. Williams, it's a pleasure to meet you," Tina Brown graciously held out his hand to Eric as she approached him.

Eric shook his hand and said, "I'm glad to meet you, Ms. Brown, but I seem to be late." ”、

Tina Brown led Eric to his position and smiled, "Of course not, I've been sitting here every afternoon lately, so I'm here early." ”

Eric sat down across from Tina Brown and noticed an IBM laptop in front of Tina Brown, with a phone line plugged in, a computer tutorial and a black notebook next to it, and couldn't help but look at it a few more times.

Tina Brown noticed Eric's confusion, turned the pages of her notebook to Eric, and said with a smile, "The owner of the café is my friend, so I can use the Internet here." I've been researching Yahoo for the last few days, and I happen to have a lot of questions that I want to get answers from you, Mr. Williams. ”

Eric did not hide his intention to invite the other party to a meeting when he made an appointment with him, and heard Tina Brown's explanation. "Of course it's fine. Just ask me any questions you have. Also, call me Eric, don't you mind if I call you Tina?"

"Of course not," Tina Brown nodded, and was about to say something, but Eric gestured to the notebook with the Yahoo homepage on it, "This isn't Yahoo's newest homepage right now, can you let me use it?"

Tina Brown pushed the notebook over. Eric casually asked the waiter for a cup of coffee, then turned to his laptop and expertly typed in a web address, and a new homepage appeared on his browser that was completely different from the layout of the Yahoo homepage just now.

The original Yahoo homepage was the simplest T-shaped layout, and the entire page was divided into three sections according to the T-shaped dividing line. The new homepage is a typical 'same' layout, which is basically adopted by the classic portals that followed, and can be said to be a successful model that has been proven by 'time'. This is also the plan that Eric has been discussing with the Yahoo team in the past few days, but the new homepage is still in internal testing.

Compared to the portal homepage that takes a long time to reach the bottom of the homepage in memory, the page at this time is designed to be the size of a monitor screen due to network speed limitations. At the top of the page is still Yahoo's web icon and search bar, and on the left is a series of column links. The login screen, email, Yahoo forums and upcoming instant messengers have been moved to the right. In the middle of the 'same' glyph is the recommended news content.

Above the original news content, Eric originally planned to add a website recommendation section to follow the URL navigation. However, these 'super traffic entrances' will definitely be able to charge according to the advertising effect in the future, according to Yahoo's expected traffic, these 'advertising space' will bring Yahoo a lot of revenue every year in the next few years, but now, it is undoubtedly wishful thinking to want to charge advertising fees to some websites, since it can't receive money, Eric would rather cancel this section temporarily, after all, if you launch the navigation section now, it can only be free, as we all know, the Internet wants to change from the free model to the charging model, it can be described as more difficult.

Eric opened the beta interface, turned the laptop screen to a position where both people could see it, and pointed to the links to the 'news', 'finance', 'entertainment' and other columns on the left, as well as the key news recommendations in the middle, and said to Tina Brown: "If you are willing to be the editor-in-chief of Yahoo, these content sections will be your future work objects." The key news recommendations in the middle are the same as the highlights of each issue on the cover of the magazine, and each sub-section is very similar to the various sub-section pages of the magazine," Eric said, casually opening the entertainment section and introducing it briefly.

Tina Brown patiently listened to Eric's story before she looked up at him and said with a smile, "Eric, why do you think I'm up to the job?"

Eric shook his head and said, "I can't confirm this, Tina, this is a new and never-before-seen industry, so I can only look for someone from the traditional media industry who can take on this position, someone just recommended you to me, and after some understanding, I think you are indeed a good candidate." However, Yahoo doesn't have much time to get used to the job, you only get a one-year contract, and within a year, if your job isn't satisfying, you'll have to leave. ”

Tina Brown frowned slightly when she heard these harsh conditions, as a strong woman who has been in the magazine industry for nearly two decades, even the top management of Condé Nast, the parent company of "Vanity Fair", would not speak to her in such an unkind tone. However, thinking of Eric's identity, Tina Brown swallowed back the words that he wanted to refute, the status of this young man in the media industry at this time is definitely far more than any executive of Condé Nast, not to mention that he also has such amazing wealth, in Western society, wealth represents real power.

After a while, Tina Brown said: "Eric, it is rumored that you have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in browser software, Yahoo and online email services, I just want to know how you plan to recoup these investments, although you are rich, but for any industry, pure investment without profit is absolutely impossible to last." ”

"Yahoo's user base is already huge, and the company is developing a unique advertising system, which is still under wraps, and you need to sign a contract with Yahoo to find out about it. ”

Yahoo and Email Services have been testing simple banner and email ads on a small scale, and Tina Brown has discovered these while researching Yahoo's website these days, but she doesn't think these seemingly inconspicuous advertising actions can cover the site's huge expenses. However, since Eric was reluctant to reveal the inside story in advance, Tina Brown could only ask other questions: "What about the content, Eric, Yahoo takes the way of reprinting content from other websites, and there is not much original content, but I think that the content on the Internet is still very scarce, and if it continues, Yahoo will soon fall into a development bottleneck." ”

"Of course I took that into account," Eric said with a faint confident smile. Although this is also in Yahoo's next development plan, but I can tell you in advance that from the second half of the year, Yahoo will set up a special angel investment fund to support the further development of those potential websites, the initial investment scale is about 100 million US dollars, and the money will be spent within a year, according to the average investment scale of 1 million US dollars per website, Yahoo will support about 100 new websites, and in the future, as long as needed, I don't mind burning 100 million US dollars a year to do this。 In addition to these, you also need to set up NetEase's own content editing department, as long as your idea is fully viable, I don't mind investing enough money. ”

Burn $100 million a year to support website development!

The moment Tina Brown heard this statistic, Tina Brown's first reaction was that the legendary young man must be crazy. Although there are now hundreds of thousands of large and small websites on the Internet, but the real profit, with no one in ten thousand to describe it is not an exaggeration, most of the websites are either some company profile sites, or some people are interested in creating small websites, the number of formal business websites is still very rare. Eric's spending so much money was no different from spending gold on Tina Brown.

Eric noticed Tina Brown's fleeting expression and said with a smile: "When Columbus proposed the Great Voyage, many people thought he was crazy, but he still chose to travel far away, and because of this, we can now sit on the continent where he landed and discuss the crazy plans of another suspected madman, isn't it?" (To be continued.) )