|
Newsday
NEW
YORK - Just months after Pseudo.com garnered major media
attention by securing a coveted skybox to cover the Republican
National Convention, the site announced Monday that it is
ceasing operations and laying off all of its 175 employees.
Pseudo.com, a pioneer in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, provided
continuous online video and other coverage of the convention,
promising to compete with the major television networks
for viewers.
But Monday afternoon, chief executive David Bohrman told
employees that the 6-year-old company would cease operations
immediately. Employees, he said, would be allowed time to
pack up, create resume tapes and look for other jobs.
"I'm sorry we couldn't pull this off," Bohrman was quoted
as telling his staff. "I think we all need to drink heavily
today."
Several employees, meanwhile, said late Monday that they
felt bittersweet about the end.
"This place is legendary, and I think it will continue to
be legendary because there's so much creativity here," said
Jeanne Meyer, a senior vice president and spokeswoman for
the company.
In May, Pseudo had secured $14 million in additional venture
capital financing. But by late June, it was forced to lay
off 58 people in order to slow spending. It also changed
its format, broadcasting 12 hours a day live instead of
producing expensive advanced video segments and programs.
Pseudo, which ran online Webcasting "channels" sending out
video over the Internet on various topics ranging from politics
to hip-hop music to technology news, had drawn much media
attention during the first of the two major conventions.
But the company said logistics prompted to drastically scale
back its coverage during the Democratic National Convention
in late August.
Media Metrix, a Manhattan-based firm which tracks Internet
traffic, said the company did not have an average of 50,000
unique visitors a day, the minimum traffic required to show
up on its rankings of news and content sites. During the
week of the GOP convention, sites such as MSNBC.com and
FoxNews.com had made Media Metrix rankings.
For the past several weeks, the company's board of directors
had been looking for either a buyer or other investors,
but that quest ended Monday. After having several conference
calls and meetings over the last week and weekend in searching
for a buyer, the board decided to shut down operations,
said Lisa Wiesma, vice president of Tribune Ventures and
a Pseudo board member.
In June 1999, Tribune Ventures, which is the venture-capital
arm of Newsday's parent, Tribune Co. - joined six other
companies to invest $14 million into Pseudo.
Wiesma added that potential buyers who were approached seemed
more interested in finding a new investment rather than
taking over a failing one. "Companies like to invest in
something fresh," Wiesma said. "People were quick to lump
Pseudo in with the dot-com situation in general."
Pseudo's demise also comes in the wake of other recent failures
of content companies. Earlier this month, Hollywood's Dreamworks
SKG and Imagine Entertainment laid off 70 of its 84 employees
and effectively scrapped their highly touted Internet venture
Pop.com before it even launched.
Analysts noted that Pseudo was ahead of its time, trying
to duplicate the continuous video seen on television before
enough homes were able to access this type of material using
broadband, or superfast, Internet service.
Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
News Services.
|
