Excite@Home, Viacom to Launch New Music and Entertainment Site

Excite@Home Corp., which provides high-speed Web access over cable-TV lines, and Viacom Inc.’s MTVi Group Inc. said they will develop a new music and entertainment site on Excite’s Internet search directory.

The new site, Music.excite.com, will debut this summer. It will include content geared to broadband, or Internet access through cable lines or other means that let a user get content, including video, at much faster speeds than over traditional phone lines.

MTVi and Redwood City, Calif.-based Excite@Home said they will feature broadband content on some of Viacom’s cable-TV music networks, such as MTV and VH1, to drive viewers of the cable channels to the Internet site and vice versa. Excite also Wednesday reported a pro forma net loss for the first-quarter of $4.6 million, or a penny a share, excluding one-time items, down from $6 million, or 2 cents, a year earlier, as expenses tripled. Analysts were expecting it to break even on a per-share basis. Revenue climbed to $138.1 million from $25.1 million, short of the $145.2 million analysts had forecast.

Excite also said it expects operating losses in 2000 of 25 to 30 cents a share for the full year as a result of international investments and higher costs.