05:24 PM ET 09/21/98
Internet shines as Clinton testimony airs
By Andrea Orr
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - President Clinton may have
looked bad. But the Internet looked good in beaming his image.
As news organizations counted the viewers who swarmed their
Web sites to watch Clinton's videotaped Aug. 17 grand jury
testimony in the White House sex scandal, initial indications
showed that Monday's ratings were off the charts.
Ten days after the text of the Starr report was made public
and the Internet became the main avenue of dissemination, online
services and software makers were back showing they could do
more than just spread the printed word to millions of desktops
around the world -- they could also deliver moving pictures.
Anyone who had Internet access on a home or office computer
could watch the video at his desk.
As soon as the broadcast was finished, many Web sites posted
copies for users to call up at their leisure, along with indexes
that could let them go straight to selected segments of the
testimony, fast forward, rewind, or play again.
Suddenly, the thought of waiting for the evening news seemed
rather outmoded.
``I don't want to call it television but it was definitely
very watchable,'' said Mark Cuban, President of Broadcast.com,
an online service that provides videotapes of major news and
entertainment events.
Although the technology that delivers video over the
Internet has been around for some time, the Clinton-Lewinsky
affair proved to be a topic of such broad interest that it
helped showcase the powers of online media.
All the publicity could only be good for Broadcast.com, a
well-known company around Silicon Valley and in other
Internet-savvy circles, but still not a household name.
On Monday, shares of Broadcast.com were up nearly 10 percent
on a down day for the stock market.
``People made their first step to the Net to get news,''
said Cuban. ``This (the Internet) is something that people used
to ask whether it was a fad like CB radios. Now it is their
first source for news, unfettered and unedited.''
This taste for news that is prompt and convenient to access
was reflected in the online conversations occurring shortly
before the video was shown.
``I can't wait to see Clinton lose his temper on video,''
wrote one visitor to an Internet chat site.
While many online companies like Broadcast.com rely on a
so-called streaming technology that delivers a grainy, somewhat
choppy picture admittedly inferior to television, high-speed
Internet service providers like At Home Corp. boasted of
delivering quality images.
``It is a very, very good example of the power of a
broadband access for the Internet,'' said Richard Gingras, vice
president of programming of At Home, which also took the
opportunity of Clinton's public humiliation to drum up publicity
for its services. Unlike most online providers, At Home uses
broadband cable lines to deliver a speedier Internet service
better equipped to display complex graphics.
Even online merchants benefited from the affair. Internet
book and music retailer Amazon.com Inc. took advance orders for
''The Grand Jury Testimony of William Jefferson Clinton,'' and
Monday said it was its hottest-selling title.
In third place, behind the forthcoming Stephen King novel,
was the Starr report.
^REUTERS@
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