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

To: BishopsChild who wrote (4526)	3/8/1999 10:25:00 AM
From: dtvfreak	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4748

THE NEW YORK POST -- @NY -- SILICON CITY, FROM THE VALLEY TO THE ALLEY March 5, 1999 IT'S FINALLY SHOWTIME FOR HYPERTV When Silicon Alley start-up EarthWeb and local digital TV pioneer ACTV concocted a technology called HyperTV in 1996, it seemed like a solution in search of a problem. The idea was to push a stream of Web pages and other content to consumers in synch with a television broadcast, either on TV or over the computers of television viewers who had computers and televisions turned on simultaneously. In the spring of 1996 the idea seemed half-baked. Convergence was just another buzzword. EarthWeb assigned its portion of the patent to ACTV (http://www.actv.com) and moved on. But now, the effectiveness linking television and Internet content has proven dramatically effective for advertisers. Consider this: After online recruiter Monster.com's Super Bowl ad aired, the service logged 2.2 million job searches in 24 hours, compared to a more typical 500,000 searches in the same 24 hour period two weeks before. So, HyperTV is back. This week ACTV announced that it was recreating its ACTV Net division as HyperTV Networks and will begin working with its partners and investors like the Liberty Media Corporation, Fox Sports and TCI Music to develop sports and entertainment programming that mixes traditional broadcast with streamed Web pages and chat. Begun in California in 1983, the 33-person company creates interactive television programming and systems. The company has investments from players in the space like General Instruments Inc., and Liberty Media, a programming unit of TCI which last September acquired a 10 percent stake in ACTV for $5 million. ACTV's main focus has been on building what it calls 'Individualized Television'--a customizable, interactive TV platform. In fact, for ACTV, HyperTV has continued to be a focus over the past two years as well. "Our basic business since 19989 has been the content busines for digital television," said Chairman and CEO Bill Samuels. "In our cast its just another enhancement to our individualized products." But with convergence on the horizon it's become a very alluring enhancement. Over the past two years the company has developed a product called eSchool Online. The eSchool team built custom instructional programs for school that use the HyperTV technology to combine Web, traditional video, and chat in a single TV-based academic application. Development of the eSchool platform and programming for each school cost "a lot of money," said Samuels, though he declined to say exactly how much. Still, eSchool did generate revenue, around $1.5 million last year, he said, since schools typically host the service themselves for a fee or pay the company a set-up fee as well as a one-time licensing fee and jointly create content with the schools paying for ACTV's development team. Samuels said that in many ways eSchool has served as a kind of test platform for the consumer service ACTV is now launching. "I think it's fairly safe to say that we'll develop real revenues," Samuels said. But almost as importantly the next year's worth of HyperTV development will help the company identify the most fertile markets for convergent services. For Samuels, sports is the likely first generation winner. Last September the company did a pilot program streaming URLs with stats in tandem with live game video from a Mets-Astros doubleheader to the television in the All-Star Cafe in Times Square. "The research project for us is over," said Samuels. "Is it worth emphasizing and making it a cornerstone of your business? Yes."