• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

AOL Hopes Live 8 Will Show Off Its Broadband Skills

Posted on: Friday, 1 July 2005, 00:00 CDT

Jul. 1--Like a faded rock star donning a fresher look for a comeback, America Online is making itself over. And to help get that message out, it will broadcast tomorrow's Live 8 concert online via high-speed, or broadband, Internet video streams.

But wait, broadband? Isn't AOL in the slow, dial-up Internet-access business?

Yes, but with dial-up subscribers' fleeing its service like summer disaster-movie mobs, the Dulles, Va.-based company wants to reinvent itself as a broadband entertainment hub. Live 8, it says, is the perfect showcase.

AOL has already begun making its news and entertainment offerings available via its aol.com Web portal to anyone with a Web browser, not just AOL subscribers.

Among the lures are the site's music section, which grants free access to concerts including Live 8.

AOL executive Bill Wilson equates the company's effort to MTV's telecast of the Live Aid concert 20 years ago, when MTV was still in its infancy. "There was a lot of new audience that came on as that event was telecast," Wilson said.

Wilson, a senior vice president and general manager of AOL programming, said AOL wanted Live 8 to similarly attract people to AOL as their music portal of choice.

But can AOL's technology handle the anticipated worldwide demand for Live 8 video online? The company predicts that hundreds of thousands of users will log on to view the concert live and that tens of millions more will be drawn to the site in ensuing weeks to see archived versions of individual performances.

AOL said it had streamed nearly 1,000 live events and so has experience with at least the process, if not the scale, required for Live 8. "There's been a lot of extra capacity added -- hardware, software and people," said Jordan Kurzweil, vice president of AOL productions.

On the ground in Philadelphia, AOL will have about 25 people shooting video of the concert, interviewing artists and concertgoers, and operating technical equipment. A satellite truck will beam the video feeds to an AOL editing facility in California, which will also collect feeds from the other Live 8 sites.

The finished product will be sent to AOL headquarters in Virginia and streamed online from there. MTV, VH-1 and mtvU -- MTV's college network -- as well as XM Satellite Radio and the Premiere Radio Networks also will broadcast the concert.

But, Kurzweil said, online will provide the most choice and flexibility for viewers. "It will be different in that it's commercial-free and uncut," he said. "And you'll be able to switch to other countries in the show."

The success of the online broadcast -- and the reputation of the new AOL -- could come down to how much server capacity AOL has added to handle the crush.

For instance, lingerie-maker Victoria's Secret was caught with its panties down when 1.5 million Internet users tuned in to its online fashion show in 1999. Not enough connections were available, so a majority of viewers suffered poor picture and sound quality, if they got anything at all.

Peter Cook, a computer and information systems instructor at Temple University, said AOL should be able to avoid this by having "mirror" sites to serve up the concert in different countries.

He said that other bottlenecks could materialize, however, that are out of AOL's hands. For cable modem users, for instance, "collectively, if your whole neighborhood is on the network and on Live 8, you could see there's a slowdown."

As an Internet service provider, AOL hit its peak in 2002, when it boasted 26.7 million U.S. subscribers. But the king of dial-up Internet access never fully capitalized on its 2001 merger with entertainment and cable giant Time Warner Inc. by expanding broadly into broadband.

In March, AOL had 21.7 million U.S. subscribers.

The new AOL plans to be an advertising-supported portal that offers, among other things, massive archives of free video clips, many of them from Time Warner.

Analysts say a swelling market for online advertising bodes well for AOL, but it has much inertia to overcome before it reaches the success of competitors including MSN and Yahoo.

In the first quarter, AOL's advertising revenue grew 45 percent to $311 million, though not enough to offset an overall revenue decline of 3 percent because of customer defections. Revenue from subscriptions fell to $1.78 billion, from $1.92 billion in the same quarter last year.

-----

To see more of The Philadelphia Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

TWX,

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

More News in this Category