Yahoo offering celebrity "Access"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Yahoo is launching a celebrity-oriented Web portal in a partnership with TV gossip show "Access Hollywood."

The site, to be known as omg! -- Internet shorthand for "oh my God" -- is expected to be announced Monday. It is being eyed as a competitor to Time Warner's fast-growing TMZ.com, which dishes dirt nearly 24/7.

The omg site represents the first significant content collaboration with Hollywood to come out of Yahoo in quite some time. After Yahoo appointed former ABC programming chief Lloyd Braun as head of Yahoo Media Group in 2004, the company was supposed to get aggressive in the entertainment space. But after several false starts, Braun was tossed out in December, and Yahoo has made only modest additions to its programming mix since.

"Access" also is expected to beef up its own Web site, www.AccessHollywood.com, in the fall, adding a social networking component among other changes.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter