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Microcap & Penny Stocks : IATV - ACTV Interactive Television -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: art slott who wrote (2914)	9/21/1998 5:55:00 AM
From: Steve Hausser	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4748

To All, Remember to keep your focus on the joint venture with Liberty Media. This article is from today's edition of Multi Channel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Liberty Media Invests $5 Million in ACTV By R. THOMAS UMSTEAD Englewood, Colo. -- Liberty Media Group will invest $5 million in ACTV Inc. as part of a deal reached by the two companies, providing a major financial and promotional boost for the fledgling interactive service. Liberty will take a 10 percent stake in the company, with options to invest an additional $5 million, the parties said. The deal will help ACTV to continue its plan to roll out its interactive digital-cable services to regional-sports networks. The service -- which allows viewers to choose between as many as 60 different options while watching a live game -- has already worked with Liberty's Fox Sports Southwest and Fox Sports West services to roll out the technology in Tele-Communications Inc. systems in Dallas and Los Angeles, respectively. But the use of ACTV may not stop at the regional-sports-network level: The two companies have formed a joint venture that will explore other applications of the technology. Liberty vice president David Jensen said that when TCI tested ACTV's technology in Ventura County, Calif., the "four-plex" approach was used with children's shows, news and game shows. "Clearly, there are other areas of programming that can be enhanced with the ACTV proprietary technology. We're interested in exploring all of those," he said, adding, "It's a great business [with] just sports." Jensen said ACTV also has some potentially important patents, including ones covering the interface between streaming video on the Internet and on TV. "That work is very creative, and it has a lot of developmental potential," he said. David Reese, president of ACTV Entertainment, said the Liberty deal not only provides financial support for the network, but also lends credibility and clout to the concept. "This is the best place for ACTV to be right now," Reese said. "Working together, we will provide cable operators with a valuable service and incremental revenue source, while offering advertisers one of the most powerful addressable-media vehicles for an increasingly fragmented environment." In addition to Fox Sports Southwest and Fox Sports West, ACTV has already reached agreements with Fox Sports Bay Area, Fox Sports Rocky Mountain, Fox Sports Northwest and Sunshine Network to use their live sports programming for its interactive applications. ACTV's suggested retail price is $9.95 per month. "The investment allows us to continue our deployment into other regional networks," said Dave Alworth, executive vice president of ACTV Entertainment.