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Technology Stocks : IATV-ACTV Digital Convergence Software-HyperTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mike.com who wrote (5396)	7/6/1999 8:34:00 PM
From: Skip Jack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13157

Fox.com back with bells News Corp. embraces new media ranging from broadband Internet to datacasting By Richard Tedesco From broadband Internet field testing to developing a data-broadcasting service, News Corp. is getting serious about the new media business. There's even a new entertainment site under consideration, according to sources. It's all part of a relaunching effort pegged to Fox.com, coming this fall from News America Digital Publishing, News Corp.'s digital media unit. Sources say Fox.com will be recast, with communities built around popular Fox shows. Nonetheless, News Corp. doesn't want it cast as a new entertainment portal. "People are spending a lot of money on that stuff," says James Murdoch, NADP president, citing the cost of striking deals and operating portal businesses. "I don't think they are as simple as some people think they are. Ultimately, digital connectivity transforms the way our overall business works. It's a fundamental shift for media in general." For its part, NADP anticipates striking deals to set up a data broadcast service in the next several months, according to Murdoch, who sees strong potential for a pact with European satellite cousin BSkyB, among others. "The concept of 'always on,' just like cable, is going to be tremendous." One NADP prototype shows graphics and music dissolving into a full-screen display of the day's top news stories. Scrolling through headlines brings up a video image of each story in a central window on-screen. Menus of related content come up on-screen when a story is selected. Another prototype featuring Fox Sports as a broadband service shows a full-screen head-and-shoulders shot of San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson--a front page not suitable for low-speed Net access. Enriched video would distinguish the broadband offering, with more than 40 news and sports stories available for streaming from Fox's cable news and sports and Fox broadcast affiliates. "We view broadband as a different platform. Broadband is not the Web," says Jordan Kurzweil, NADP vice president of product development. Broadband could also enable a different business model. While most content will remain freely accessible, NADP expects to build tiers of personalized content over broadband pipes for what Kurzweil called "minimal" subscription fees. The theory is sports fans would pay for services such as fantasy-league stats updated and downloaded to the fantasy player daily. But the key tactic, according to Kurzweil, is developing places to embed interactive advertising in its broadband content. News Corp.'s internal prototype for interactive TV shows viewers a pop-up menu of options during a live baseball game for accessing stats and other information in a window on the TV screen. Options include alternate camera angles: the Catcher-Cam view popularized on Fox Sports and ESPN baseball, and views above and behind home plate. Meanwhile, News Corp. has a deal in place with Road Runner and sees the broadband pipeline dramatically boosting content-development opportunities. "From a development point of view," says Murdoch, "there's plenty of bandwidth to develop for. It's a matter of duking it out with your content." Half of News Corp.'s online development emphasis currently is on sports and news, says Kurzweil, who adds that Fox News' new FoxWatch feature will provide PC users an "immersive" news experience of breaking news through video, text, photos and graphics. Links to raw footage from news services in locales such as Kosovo will lend online depth to developing stories. "We're literally taking you to the scene," he notes. At Fox Sports, the aim is to take fans to virtual ballgames with a GameTracker, which lets PC users follow real-time animations of up to four Major League Baseball games in progress. GameTracker archives the action, enabling animated replays of any inning or at-bat. These are the kinds of "sticky" applications that will keep Net surfers coming back, and perhaps paying, according to Kurzweil. Fox Sports already claims 60 million page views monthly--indicating a loyal audience for its sports product. "The content is there; it's just a matter of distributing it," says Bruce Leichtman, digital media analyst for Boston-based Yankee Group. "It's a question of coming up with a value proposition." Advertising support is broadening, according to Matt Jacobson, NADP executive vice president, who counts Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and E*Trade among the recent additions to the list.