Liberty and in effect T are invested in ACTV not MS. MS can try to buy access all they want it doesn't change that fact.
MS wouldn't have bought 5 Billion dollars worth of T unless they thought they were going to get access to T's cable assets. T bought TCI, has an interest in ATHM... This is the same reason we were excited about IATV... LMG bought a big chunk of IATV and T owns a chunk of LMG and thus we'd have access to T's cable assets and LMG's programming.
MSFT will get the access they paid for... MSFT will roll something out 2Q '00 (if they are right about their rollout date, which they may not be).
All your postings in the past had been about Fox Sports. You were missing or ignoring everything else including Hypertv, advertising, e commerce.
Not ignoring, just IMO everyone here jumped on the HyperTV bandwagon when I think the traditional interactive is where the early money is going to be. Interactive advertising will be huge. But who did T pick for their interactive account... IATV should get their fair share, but the longer we wait to roll out the larger the chance that someone else will come up with something that passes us by.
Sorry, but I got burnt once on a company (ANCR) that had the best technology and a partnership (SQNT) that would insure success. The partner backed out, the stock ran from $20 to $2 and languished in the $2-$4 range for a long time before they finally got their act in gear. Stock was dead money for a long time. And compare ANCR's stock price (30-ish) to their competitor (who had lesser technology) BRCD ($112 or so). Why should people invest in IATV (better technology?) rather than WGAT (2x the market cap, generating revenues, satisfied customers?) I know that HyperTV is "better" than WGAT's channel-linking, but WGAT is out there now... people are using WGAT on average of 30 hours a month... are they going to drop using WGAT to switch to using IATV? Apples and oranges maybe, but there are still only so many entertainment hours in the day. You can do e-commerce with WGAT - link to a site where you buy something... with IATV the e-commerce will be integrated better, but again WGAT is out there now. Many of the things you can do with HyperTV can be done with WGAT, just not as seamlessly. Maybe the customer base doesn't require the extra benefits of IATV in order to be happy?
However what WGAT can't offer is the multiple camera angles. This is unique to IATV, relatively inexpensive to provide, and sports fans are going to drool all over it once they see it.
(Sorry if this is disjointed, got called away from the machine for a few minutes).
Anyway, in Summary, I think that the Fox Sports deal is what differentiates IATV from its competitors the most and I think it will be the biggest near-term success. I also think that MSFT is a serious threat to IATV's success, and that the partnership with LMG does not carry as much weight with AT&T as we would like. I think that this could be a case of the better technology losing to the better marketing. I'm not sure, that's why I'm out.
-Mike |
