In the wake of a collapse of a deal with Bell Canada, Time New Media has told the 11 staffers working on developing and repurposing content for the broadband Road Runner project to seek other employment. Many staffers will be offered jobs within the Time Warner empire, said Dan Okrent, New Media editor.
Road Runner -- a cable-modem system that delivers text, audio, and video over fiber-optic TV lines at speeds up to 100 times that of standard telephone-line data transmission -- is a cooperative venture between Time Warner and the MediaOne Group. Last month, Microsoft and Compaq each announced US$212.5 million investments in Road Runner in exchange for preferred stock. With Road Runner 2.0 currently in beta, the company is shopping for new corporate headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Bell Canada was unavailable for comment, but sources at Time Warner confirmed that the failure of the two companies to reach an agreement precipitated the dismantling of the Road Runner team. Staffers received word 20 July, Okrent said, but no public announcement was made.
The shuffling of staff reflects a further ceding of Time New Media's editorial control of content development for the huge cable-modem project. Though the company may appear to be in an ideal position to develop innovative content packages for such high-speed data delivery systems, a bottom-up strategy of developing content seems to be working better for the emerging company. This is due in part to local markets being used as test beds for experimental applications of the service.
Road Runner subscribers in San Diego can append video messages to their email and will be able to take virtual walk-throughs of the San Diego Museum of Art, the Timken Museum, and Balboa Park within the next few months. Maine subscribers are able to navigate virtually through online maps, developed by DeLorme, that are much more graphically rich than those available to customers with only dialup Net access.
At a Senate subcommittee hearing on telecom mergers held on 7 July, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch expressed concerns that Microsoft's investments in cable-based systems such as Road Runner and Comcast would extend the software company's dominance to include Net access.
Time Warner president Richard Parsons told the committee that the Road Runner deal "explicitly and expressly" excluded Microsoft control over the software that pilots the company's set-top boxes.
