AOL Plans More Live Concerts Online

Fresh from its success with the Live 8 concerts, America Online on Tuesday unveiled a company created with several media partners to broadcast live music and comedy performances over the Internet and satellite radio.

Also Tuesday, CBS News launched what it called a “broadband 24-hour news network.” The overhauled CBSNews.com will feature original reporting and a trove of video clips in an effort to get consumers to ditch cable news and head online.

The moves are part of the emergence of the Internet as a robust multimedia platform, capable of delivering clear video feeds of live events as well as video archives.

Major media companies, which retreated from ambitious online ventures after the Nasdaq crash of 2001, are again scrambling to turn the Internet into a medium that competes with radio and television.

For example, CBS parent Viacom Inc. recently launched broadband versions of its MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon channels. The media giants are vying with Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and Internet companies such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. for consumer attention and ad dollars.

Last year, advertisers spent $9.6 billion online. That figure is expected to grow 30% this year.

“We are definitely in a new phase of investing and exploiting the Internet and trying out new things again,” said David Card, senior analyst at Jupiter Research.

One of those experiments, the AOL-backed Network Live launched Tuesday, may shake up the concert business.

AOL Chief Executive Jonathan Miller and Live 8 executive producer Kevin Wall last year began discussing how rarely they saw live concerts on television and decided that it presented a business opportunity. So they started the company, which Wall will run as CEO, with undisclosed investments from AOL, XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and concert promoter AEG.

Network Live will seek sponsors for the live online broadcasts, and AOL plans to run commercials and banner ads when consumers watch clips later. XM licensed broadcast rights for satellite radio and will provide the concerts free to its subscribers.

Plans for the company received a boost last week when AOL was widely praised for its handling of the Live 8 concerts. More than 5 million people visited AOL Music on July 2 to watch.

The company’s goal is to create a 24-hour network of live programming that airs simultaneously on the Internet, satellite radio and other emerging media, Wall said. But he said programming would begin in the fall with a five-evening-a-week schedule.

AEG, an Anschutz Corp. unit that is the nation’s No. 2 concert promoter and owner of Staples Center, will allow Network Live producers to record and stream concerts and comedy performances. Wall said Network Live would also seek shows from other promoters.

The concert industry has been hurting recently. It set a gross revenue record last year, but that was fueled primarily by soaring ticket prices purchased by a dwindling number of concertgoers. This year ticket prices in North America have dropped 6% and concert ticket revenue has fallen 17%, according to trade magazine Pollstar.

Artists, who make much more money from touring than from record deals, will get a cut of the licensing revenue from Network Live, though terms have not been decided, AEG CEO Tim Leiweke said.

Some experts questioned whether there was an audience for live concerts. “I’m not sure people want to watch concerts on their computers,” said Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economics professor who studies the concert industry. “People go to concerts because they are social occasions.”

Card, the Jupiter Research analyst, agreed that concerts often made boring television. But he and AOL executives said many people turned to the Internet to watch music videos and clips of concert footage, which presents advertising opportunities.

CBS is trying to do the same thing as Network Live but for news. Its website offers a “video jukebox” so viewers can assemble their own newscasts, a blog explaining how CBS produces the news and video clips.