ot ot re: RNWK I don't care what anyone says about RNWK not being in play, I'm not listening. The market for streaming media is going to be big REALLY BIG. see article below.
Broadcast.com's Founders Turn Sports Fanaticism Into Fortunes
Dallas, April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner were hellbent on getting radio broadcasts of Indiana University basketball games in the heart of Texas, and started Broadcast.com Inc. in a spare bedroom in 1995 to track their alma mater's play.
Their passion for sports pulled in a lot more with Yahoo! Inc.'s offer of $6.08 billion in stock for their company, which broadcasts audio and video entertainment and corporate events. Chairman and President Cuban stands to reap about $1.28 billion for his 9.25 million shares and CEO Wagner will get about $683.1 million for his 4.92 million shares.
Wagner and Cuban have gone from putting radio broadcasts of college basketball games online to providing live feeds from more than 350 radio stations nationwide. The duo also have turned to serving corporate customers, who put conference calls and other events online to reach a wide audience cheaply.
''Both of them are visionaries. They have the cordiality of true gentlemen, with the business aggressiveness of type A personalities with rabies,'' said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Raymond James & Associates.
Wagner, 37, and Cuban, listed as 39 in a July regulatory filing, both took business classes at Indiana, with Wagner majoring in accounting and Cuban earning a business degree.
Cuban went on to start a systems-integration company in 1983 called Microsolutions Inc. that he sold to online service CompuServe Corp. in 1990.
Wagner, meanwhile, earned a law degree and was a partner with Hopkins & Sutter from 1992 to 1994.
The pair launched a company called AudioNet Inc. in 1995 with backing from Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc. After changing its name to Broadcast.com, they took it public July 17 at a split- adjusted $9 a share. Shares, which since have soared as high as 144 3/4, rose 11 13/16 today to 130.
From Sports to Sex
The Dallas-based company gained a broad audience last year when it aired U.S. President Bill Clinton's deposition that involved his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. It also reaped new visitors as Web host of a lingerie fashion show featuring models and attire from Intimate Brands Inc.'s Victoria's Secret.
Broadcast.com also offers other entertainment, such as live feeds of more than 350 radio stations and dozens of television stations. It has exclusive Internet broadcast rights for many of the stations, with the aim of making money by selling ads that appear when users view or listen to the material online.
Most observers agree that online multimedia entertainment and news will only really take off once high-speed Internet access becomes widely available, which could take a few years.
Business Customers
Likewise, Broadcast.com's real success so far has come less from entertaining Web surfers than from serving corporate customers broadcasting events such as product introductions and conference calls to far-flung audiences. Broadcast.com derived 62 percent of its $22.4 million in revenue from business services in 1998, compared with 58 percent of $9.15 million in 1997.
Broadcast.com's client list includes the likes of computer makers Silicon Graphics Inc. and Dell Computer Corp. and Harvard University.
''When Hillary Clinton or Yasser Arafat come to the Kennedy School, there are a lot of people who are interested in what they have to say, but can't make it to Cambridge,'' Harvard spokeswoman Miranda Daniloff said.
Corporate customers also benefit because their audience listens in mainly from work, with high-speed Internet connections that make the audio and video downloads faster.
While analysts say that Broadcast.com has the early lead in providing entertainment and corporate events on the Internet, they also are monitoring the competition.
RealNetworks Inc., for example, which makes the dominant software program for accessing audio and video online, has begun to aggregate multimedia entertainment and news on its RealGuide web page. Other competitors include InterVU Inc., which helps companies transmit video and audio from their websites.
Growing Pie
The shares of RealNetworks and InterVU soared today on optimism that they could be purchased next, amid continuing consolidation among Internet-related companies.
Many smaller companies, such as San Francisco-based WebCast Solutions, also are targeting the corporate market.
''The whole market is just now starting up,'' WebCast Chief Executive Cory Smith said. ''Even though Broadcast.com has captured a section of the pie, the pie is growing so fast that no one can capture the whole thing.''
That says it all for me.
Greg
Yahoo is hoping to expand the pie by offering its users and small business clients the opportunity to post their own video and audio clips. Buying Broadcast.com will help it attract new users and maintain the loyalty of existing customers.
''The Internet is entering a new evolutionary stage where multimedia content will be routine,'' said Leigh.
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