Broadcast.com

Broadcast.com was an Internet radio company founded as AudioNet in September 1995 by Christopher Jaeb. Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban later led the organization and eventually sold to Yahoo! on April 1, 1999 for $5.7 billion, making it the most expensive acquisition Yahoo! has made.[1] The service has since been discontinued.

Broadcast.com
Type of site
Broadcasting
Internet radio
OwnerYahoo!
Founder(s)Christopher Jaeb
Todd Wagner
Mark Cuban
Martin Woodall
URLbroadcast.com
broadcast.yahoo.com
(Both redirect to yahoo.com)
CommercialYes
LaunchedSeptember 1995 (1995-09) (as AudioNet)
Current statusDiscontinued

History

The company was founded in 1989 as Cameron Audio Networks, named after its founder Cameron Christopher Jaeb, who received an initial investment from his father.[2] Jaeb wanted a method for people to be able to listen to out of town sports games. The original idea, a shortwave radio that would receive broadcasts inside a sports venue, morphed into a hand-held device that would receive customized satellite broadcasts.[2] With the support of his father Tom Jaeb, he incorporated.[2]

Jaeb then began soliciting the rights to broadcast radio and professional sports games live on the Internet, making 80-100 calls per day.[2]

In 1994, through a class that his girlfriend was taking, Jaeb was introduced to Todd Wagner, an attorney at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.[2] Wagner introduced Jaeb to Mark Cuban, who invested $10,000 in exchange for 2% of the company.[2] Cuban wanted to listen to the basketball games of his alma mater, Indiana University.[3] Cuban and Wagner worked out a deal whereby Jaeb would keep 10% of the company and would get a monthly salary of $2,500 but Cuban would take control of the company.[2] The company was renamed AudioNet.com in September 1995 in conjunction with the reorganization. At first Cuban picked up signals from KLIF (AM) in his bedroom and then streamed them on the internet.[3] The company grew from mainly broadcasting sporting events to broadcasting U.S. presidential nominating conventions and many other events.[3]

In 1998, AudioNet was renamed to Broadcast.com and in July 1998, the company became a public company via an initial public offering.[4] The stock price soared 250% on its first day of trading, a record for a newly issued public stock.[4][5] After the IPO, the company was worth $1 billion, Mark Cuban was worth $300 million, and Todd Wagner was worth $170 million.[5]

On April 1, 1999, less than 9 months after the IPO, Yahoo! announced the acquisition of broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in stock.[6] At the time, broadcast.com had 570,000 users, and the purchase price was $10,000 per user. Cuban sold most of his Yahoo stock that same year, netting over $1 billion.[7] Founder Chris Jaeb, whose stake was diluted to less than 1% of the company, received approximately $50 million from the sale.[2]

The service became a part of Yahoo! Broadcast Services.[8]

Yahoo shut down much of its broadcast services in 2002[9] and broadcast.com has since been discontinued. Yahoo's high-profile purchase of broadcast.com has since been called one of the worst internet acquisitions.[10][11]

gollark: And "who can pay most" is simple and objective.
gollark: For example, you're incentivised to not spent unreasonable amounts of it, because you have finite amounts of it and it's hard to get.
gollark: Using money has many advantages.
gollark: I mean, what's the alternative? Give it to someone *randomly*? Allocate it based on some notion of what's "best for society", which you probably can't calculate in a way everyone will agree on?
gollark: Something something noncentral fallacy. Just because it has aspects similar to bribes, doesn't mean all the bad connotations of "bribe" should reasonably be carried along.

See also

References
  1. Forbes: Broadcast.com
  2. "The Unknown Founder Who Got 10% of Broadcast.com". Mixergy. September 28, 2012.
  3. Logan, Robert K. (2010). Understanding New Media. Peter Lang.
  4. "Broadcast.com's bang-up IPO". CNET.
  5. BARBOZA, DAVID (July 18, 1998). "Broadcast.com Soars in an Opening-Day Frenzy". The New York Times.
  6. "Yahoo! buying BCST.com". CNN Money. April 1, 1999.
  7. "Yahoo's evolution from rising to fading internet star". Associated Press. Salon.com. July 25, 2016.
  8. PIOTROWSKI, JULIE (November 30, 1999). "Broadcast.com Now Yahoo Broadcast Services". Fast Company.
  9. Wingfield, Nick; Mathews, Anna Wilde (June 26, 2002). "Yahoo Plans to Shut Down Some Broadcast Services". The Wall Street Journal.
  10. http://fortune.com/2013/05/21/5-worst-internet-acquisitions-of-all-time/
  11. https://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2015/03/03/yahoo-20-years-hits-flops/8.html
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