While reality TV guru, Mark Burnett forges ahead with AOL and Gold Rush, Yahoo is reportedly backing from reviving The Runner.

The company is not canceling its initial forays into programming — “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone,” a series of war reports, and “Richard Bangs Adventures,” travelogues about unusual locales. But other initiatives, like a revival of “The Runner,” an elaborate reality concept Mr. Braun originally developed for ABC, have been shelved.

The article also cites that Braun, former chairman of ABC Entertainment, was the subject of much speculation for bailing from Yahoo allegedly over differences with CEO Terry Semel. If that happens, Mr. Braun wouldn’t be the first lately to jump from the Yahoo ship which lost a group of people who formed their own startup and Yahoo has sicced the lawyers and accused of stealing trading secrets. They recently won an injunction against the startup.

I’m not quite sure what to make of what’s happening at Yahoo so far in 2006. The first quarter has been rocky, with only a few bright spots like the recently released AJAX UI library and promising recent experiments like ZoneTag that uploads location tagged pictures to Flickr automatically. Unfortunately this benefits only Nokia phone users.

And then there is the Yahoo stock which has failed to bounce back after pushing the $40 mark and is now flirting with going sub $30. This situation was exacerabated by the whole we don’t want to be #1, we do want to be #1 debacle. Possibly the worst concessions that could ever be made by the CEO and CFO. Proof that investors love winners. I haven’t sold my YaHOO stock, but I’m not buying any more until I figure out what their company is actually doing, wants to do, and believe in their mission of being able to move forward.

Shelving a remake of The Runner isn’t that significant but in a time when Yahoo continues to try and compete on so many different fronts, it makes them look weaker than their competitors who are expanding in similar areas. If they had never entered this market to begin with then they would be free from this criticism.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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