Liberty accelerates interactive with ACTV
Livewire, HyperTV to offer 'Net services to industryites
Liberty Livewire, through Hyper TV, will offer application hosting, Web authoring services, data management and e-commerce capabilities to clients in the film, TV and musicvideo industries.
“Interactive elements have always been an afterthought,” said Bruce Crowley, president of HyperTV. “It made sense to team with a company that has a broad reach in the entertainment industry.”
AT&T subsid Liberty has acquired three post-production houses in the past six months: Todd-AO, Four Media Co. and Soundelux.
On Friday, Liberty Livewire will build additional facilities to create interactive content in Los Angeles and New York.
Jump-starting the tech
“While providing for the eventual deployment of advanced digital cable set-tops is an important consideration, it is also apparent that a technology is needed to jump-start the process,” said Liberty Media vice president David Beddow. “ACTV’s HyperTV platform has the potential to create a major marketplace for interactive television services right now, prior to the ‘one box one screen’ platform’s broad availability.”
On a day when both the Dow and Nasdaq suffered record one-day point losses, the stock price of both companies fell despite news of the agreement. Shares of Liberty Media fell Friday by 6% to close at $48.63. Shares of ACTV closed at $18.50, an 11% drop.
Separately, at an investor’s meeting in New York Friday, execs with Liberty Media Group said the company is in talks to merge Japan’s Jupiter Telecommunications with rival cable TV operator Titus Communications, a company that as of last week is 60% owned by Microsoft.
Liberty owns 40% of Jupiter, Sumitomo the rest of the shares in the company.
