REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 28, 2004 — A full century after the first official New Year celebration in New York City’s Times Square, people around the world will experience this New Year’s Eve tradition in a way never before available through an exclusive live webcast on MSN®
Video.
MSN is the exclusive online provider of the official Times Square New Year’s Eve 2005 celebration. Starting around 6 p.m. EST, when organizers light and raise the world-famous New Year’s Eve Ball atop One Times Square, and continuing through the ball drop at midnight, MSN Video viewers will be able to select from three streams that will capture all the revelry. The webcast will end at 12:15 a.m. In addition to the Times Square New Year’s Eve world feed and individual environment cameras, MSN will host the first ever Times Square New Year’s Eve 2005 webcast with New York City’s own Z100 radio personality Romeo leading the festivities. The collaboration between the Times Square Alliance, Countdown Entertainment, Clear Channel Entertainment TV and MSN allows millions to share in the excitement of the 100th anniversary of the New Year’s Eve celebration at Times Square. Limelight Networks will support the streaming video for this unique online experience.
“The Times Square 2005 MSN webcast demonstrates how interactive digital media can enable people to not only share but participate in the excitement,” said Adam Sohn, director of MSN. “It illustrates how digital media can provide coverage of live events beyond what a viewer can get on TV.”
“The Internet has become a widely accepted medium for viewers around the world to access live entertainment,” said Erik Gabler, vice president of business development for Limelight Networks. “We are excited to support this trend by delivering high-resolution video streams across our scalable distribution platform on New Year’s Eve.”
“Times Square has always been a place where cutting-edge communication technologies are unveiled, from the advent of the famous news ‘zipper,’ which announced the end of World War II and was unveiled on the New York Times Building in 1928, to the first Jumbotron in the 1980s,” said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, which, with Countdown Entertainment, co-produces New Year’s Eve. “So we’re thrilled to be taking this next step with the world’s technology leader, Microsoft.”
The Times Square 2005 MSN Video webcast will break periodically to stream advertisements live from select companies, offering advertisers a new way to reach an audience that was previously available only via broadcast TV. The Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration presented on MSN Video can be viewed at http://msnvideo.com/newyears .
About Limelight Networks
Privately held Limelight Networks is the first comprehensive digital-delivery network, providing reliable IP delivery solutions that include live and on-demand streaming media, content delivery, storage and hosting as well as “Tier-1+” bandwidth services. Limelight’s efficient network architecture and strategic distribution points around the globe, combined with powerful download management and reporting tools, enables some of the industry’s top content providers, webcasters and enterprise customers to reduce the cost and complexity of delivery, while ensuring unmatched performance. Limelight Networks’ innovative delivery platform has been proven to cut dramatically the costs associated with rich media distribution. For more information, visit: http://www.limelightnetworks.com .
About MSN
MSN attracts more than 360 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 40 markets and 20 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering Web services to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. The most useful and innovative online service today, MSN brings consumers everything they need from the Web to make the most of their time online. MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com . MSN worldwide sites are located at http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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