Variety – Justin Oppelaar
11/30/2000
SightSound retools for move from content to tech
NEW YORK — In an apparent move to distance itself from the perilous world of online entertainment distribution, SightSound.com is expanding and reorienting its corporate structure toward technology rather than content, as well as taking on a new name.
The Pennsylvania-based Web entertainment infrastructure company, henceforth to be known as SightSound Technologies, is dividing its businesses into three distinct units: SightSound Innovations, SightSound Systems and SightSound.com.
The Innovations division will function as a research and development lab, fostering new content delivery technologies and licensing the fruits of its labor to entertainment companies that want to put their content online. The company currently has four patents issued and roughly 30 under review by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
SightSound Systems will design and build the backend infrastructure for film and music companies that want a turnkey system to get their wares into cyberspace, said SightSound prexy and CEO Scott Sander.
“We were approached by companies around the world and major studios in this country that asked if we would build them a similar system,” Sander told Daily Variety. “We wanted to capitalize on that demand.”
SightSound.com will operate the company’s online entertainment portal, which offers music and video content for download. The site’s offerings include full episodes of Comedy Central’s “South Park” and “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist” animated series, as well as the original direct-to-Net sci-fi film “Quantum Project.”
Sander said the move reps a continuation of SightSound’s ongoing strategy to capitalize on its inhouse engineers, investing in new technologies rather than branding.
“While other people were spending their money on sock puppets, we were continuing to develop new products,” he said. “This is an expansion to recognize the interest in those innovations.”