AOL seeks to tap ex-William Morris chief’s Hollywood connections

AOL souped up its Hollywood ambitions Wednesday by asking the former head of the William Morris Agency to leave his board seat in order to become a strategic consultant for the online media company.

Jim Wiatt, who has been on AOL’s board for a year, will step down to spend most of his time using his clout in the media business to help the company develop star-branded online video content and court major advertisers. Wiatt left William Morris before it merged with another talent agency, Endeavor, last year.

“We’re seeing a very large migration of content and talent towards digital media,” AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said in an interview Wednesday. “What we’re hoping to do with Jim and with AOL is speed up that migration and have AOL step in the forefront of digital content and partnerships.”

After a year of cost-cutting following its split with Time Warner, AOL has been aggressively trying to reinvent itself as a primary online video and news destination. Its recent efforts include a Jonas Brothers-centric Web video portal called Cambio.com and an online distribution partnership with “ The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

“You look at companies like Google that are so powerful in delivering content and see this is really in its infancy,” Wiatt said in the same interview. “So many people are coming toward AOL already wanting to do things, it’s really trying to make decisions on who are the best and brightest in making video and other kinds of content.”

Armstrong said that Wiatt had been a close advisor to him and other AOL executives over the last year and that Wiatt’s position on the board didn’t enable the company to adequately take advantage of his value as a deal broker.

“Most board members are doing six or eight meetings a year,” Armstrong said. “Jim was doing six or eight meetings a week.”

Armstrong added that AOL is watching recent Internet TV efforts by Google and Apple with a careful eye on how his company can become a player in the broadband TV space.

“It’s not hard to imagine a place in the next five or 10 years where plasma TVs — driven by an on-demand format — are the primary way people consume media,” Armstrong said. “If you look at how quickly people are moving to those kinds of services, content needs to follow.”

“By announcing Jim’s helping AOL, [we’re showing] that’s a space we’d really like to tackle,” Armstrong said.

david.sarno@latimes.com