The Internet entertainment venture was created last fall by some of the most powerful and talented executives in

Hollywood, including Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Ron Howard. Microsoft co founder Paul Allen invested $50 million, so money wasn't a problem. A top Disney executive

signed on to Wholesale NFL Jerseys run the operation, and stars like Steve Martin and Drew Barrymore agreed to make short films for the Website. Declared Katzenberg: "Just as MTV introduced a new

entertainment forum for music videos, we think this new enterprise will offer a new form of entertainment for Internet users."

It hasn't worked out that way. Pop's a flop its Website hasn't launched and probably never will. Its owners laid off all but a dozen or so people in early September. Now Katzenberg

describes the experience of trying to build an Internet entertainment site as "humbling." And an executive at another big studio asks, "If those guys can't do it, who can?"

Who, indeed? Entertainment on the Internet, a notion that has attracted hordes of would be Spielbergs and such well heeled investors as Allen and Netscape founder Jim Clark, for now

remains mostly an unfulfilled promise. Most of the pioneers who have tried to deliver short films, animation, TV shows, or movies online have attracted tiny audiences and piled up red

ink. One wildly overhyped site, called the Digital Entertainment Network, burned through $67 million in venture capital before going bankrupt last spring; investors Chase Capital,

Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and NBC were among the losers.

But the category shouldn't be prematurely buried because of a couple of high profile failures. Internet entertainment is still looking for its own William S. Paley or I Love Lucy a

brilliant entrepreneur or creative breakthrough to help define the new medium. A solid business model would help too. "There isn't a rational economic model for the creation of

Internet entertainment content yet," says Yair Landau, president of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment. That's why big players like Sony, Disney, and America Online have been

reluctant to pour money into what's been called Netcasting.

"We're a little bit ahead of ourselves Wholesale NFL Jerseys in bringing this content online," says Justin Post, Internet media analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown in San Francisco, who's bullish on

Internet entertainment in the long run. But right now, he says, "it costs more to deliver content on the Internet than you can monetize." He's counting only the costs of encoding,

storing, and delivering multimedia content, not production or marketing costs.

No matter dozens of companies, mostly small, are out there aggregating and producing Web shows, and many more want into the game. venture capitalist whose fund, Jump Investors, gets about

ten entertainment oriented business plans a week. "They want to create the next South Park online. They wholesale jerseys think they've got the next $1 billion franchise."

What makes the business so alluring is that a sizable audience already turns to the Internet Cheap NFL Jerseys for fun. The trouble is, not many of them log on to watch the literally thousands of short movies and

TV like "shows" now online. More new shows will debut this fall on the Internet than on television, but fewer people will tune in to all of them, taken together, than saw a single

episode of CBS's Survivor. For the typical dial up user, watching animation or short films online is frustrating:

Either you can peer at streaming, herky jerky images on a matchbook sized screen or you can wait for content to download, which is no one's idea of fun.

What's needed to clear up the picture? Mostly patience, the enthusiasts say. Internet entertainment sites will flourish once broadband and wireless connections to the Web proliferate

and the online advertising business matures, going beyond banners to so called rich media ads that look like TV commercials. That, plus personalization, should add up to a business:

Entertainment sites can store programs on the Web, aggregate eyeballs over time, and learn who their viewers are and what they like; that will be Cheap Jerseys valuable information for both