Yah! a cluttered homepage is a traffic repeller.I havent seen Yahoo home page for a long time. Except for an old yahoo school group ,and now Ycombinator news, i dont really use any other Yahoo service.
[In reality Yahoo is sheep disguised as Wolf.AOL is wolf disguised as Wolf]
Two-column layout. Make text larger for important items, like latest news. Same with the videos. If they're "hot" they need to grab some attention. The directory stuff should be linked to and only 3-5 AOL services should have direct links. And perhaps have those generated randomly so lesser known services can grab some attention too.