Dispute Sidelines On-Line Broadcasts

Harvard football fans hoping to tune into grid-iron action from their home computers were out of luck last Saturday.

Normally broadcast.com, in conjunction with WHRB, makes the station's coverage of Crimson games Internet accessible.

But a contract dispute between WHRB and the Internet company prevented the coverage of the Sept. 19 football game vs. Columbia from going online, station officials said.

WHRB released a statement concerning the disruption of its Web coverage.

"While our live coverage of these games is normally broadcast over the Internet, we are unable to do so for the Columbia game due to certain contract issues with broadcast.com," the statement read.

WHRB President Ashwin Vasan '98 said yesterday that the station had not yet signed a contract with broadcast.com for this football season.

The station hopes to make next week's game at Colgate available over the Internet, according to the statement.

Broadcast.com--the self-proclaimed "leading aggregator and broadcaster of streaming media programming on the Web"--has similar arrangements with other colleges and professional sports leagues.

Other station officials declined to comment yesterday.