Yahoo Shuts Down Its Video Portal

Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, spent much of the last two years telling Wall Street that video was a cornerstone of her turnaround strategy. Now, Yahoo is vastly playing down its commitment to video. The Internet company confirmed that its four-year-old video portal, called Yahoo Screen, was shut down. That follows the $42 million write-off on original video content that Yahoo took in October.

The popularity of Yahoo Screen paled in comparison with YouTube, but the portal still had a substantial audience: about 15 million unique visitors in the United States in November, according to comScore, a research firm. It was also a one-stop destination where visitors could find all of the company’s video content -- its licensed reruns of “Saturday Night Live,” original series like “Community,” a daily live-streamed concert from Live Nation, the National Football League game it streamed in October and clips from the company’s themed topic areas, which it calls digital magazines. Now all that video has been scattered throughout the rest of Yahoo -- and good luck finding it.