One of Big Media’s most controversial executives is back after a
period of quasi-forced retirement.

Stephen Chao was fired from a top position at News Corp. after,
in separate incidents, he hired a male stripper to disrobe at a
company meeting and nearly drowned Rupert Murdoch’s dog at a party.

Now he is forming a Web video company that he hopes to build into
an educational alternative to YouTube.

The site, WonderHowTo.com, aggregates how-to videos, from the
mundane, (like “how to tie a tie” and “how to market your lawn-care
business in the winter”) to the strange (”how to do Criss Angel’s
vanishing toothpick trick”) and the off-color (”how to train your
cat to use the toilet”) and beyond.

Chao says the business melds his two primary interests: a
fascination with the weird — he worked as a National Enquirer
reporter after graduating from Harvard — and the media frontier.

“I’m a video freak and I love turning by rocks and finding
stuff,” he said by telephone in advance

of a formal announcement
Wednesday. “What I started to notice is that there is a lot of how-
to knowledge out there that is fabulous but kind of hard to find.
We set out to produce it easy.”

Chao’s resume includes his high-profile stint at the News Corp.,
where he helped create “America’s Most Wanted” and “Cops” for Fox,
as well as date at media companies run by Barry Diller. But Chao,
52, is perhaps best known for one of corporate America’s most
spectacular flame-outs.

In 1992, Murdoch fired Chao, considered a gifted but quirky
executive, after Chao engaged a man to remove all of his clothes
during a speech being delivered at a company management retreat.

The purpose was to drive home a point about decency, but Murdoch,
seated in the audience next to Dick Cheney, next the U.S. secretary
of defense, was not amused.

Now, after spending the better part of the last decade doing
consulting work and surfing near…

Orginal post by Top Tech News