Http://Www.Audionet.Com: A Cyber Hit

To listen to his beloved LSU Tigers play football, Andy Johnson took to the streets, driving around the Boston suburbs on a Saturday night and tuning in on his car radio.

His wife thought his behavior was a little odd, but Johnson knew he wasn’t alone.

“My wife has no idea what college football in the south is all about,” said Johnson, 33, of Swampscott, Mass. “I told her there were probably people all over doing this.”

For Johnson and thousands of other frustrated fans who try to follow their college teams from afar, the solution may be just a mouse click away on the Internet.

“We’re their connection to salvation,” said Mark Cuban, president of Dallas-based AudioNet. “Alumni are just going gaga over it.”

Cuban’s year-old AudioNet helps relay live radio broadcasts each week for more than 80 schools, from Division I-A Miami to Division III Albion College.

On a home computer with audio capability and the right software, fans can usually enjoy clear, AM-radio-quality sound.

“It’s basically like being able to listen to the radio, but you can listen to it anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world,” said Dharm Guruswamy, 24, an Atlanta resident who uses the service to follow his alma mater, Maryland.

Since many people pay a monthly flat fee for unlimited Internet use and the software is free, costs for a service like AudioNet are relatively low.

The broadcasts use Progressive Network’s RealAudio software, which encodes the sound, transmits it in data packets over the Internet, decodes it on the other end and then plays it back, all within seconds.

“This is exactly the kind of things we would have hoped would come out of this technology,” said Jay Wampold, spokesman for the 2-year-old Progressive Network.

“This is a great use for it, to have the ability for people to listen to games who otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”

The broadcasts were the brainchild of Cuban and partner Todd Wagner - two frustrated Indiana alums who found it hard to catch all of the Hoosier basketball games.

“We said, ‘Let’s see if we can make it happen over the net,’ and we started running with it,” Cuban said.

On a recent Saturday, more than 75,000 people tuned in to listen to nearly 50 college games, with some games attracting as many as 5,000 listeners, Cuban said.

The company holds the broadcast rights to Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Purdue and Wisconsin games and makes them all available on the Internet.

“We don’t have a full appreciation of where this will be able to take us in terms of marketing,” Gardner said. “We’re really in the infant stages of this thing.”

John Hook, 36, of Knoxville, Tenn., used to spend as much as $15 to catch the end of a Penn State game through a pay-to-listen telephone service. Hook, who occasionally uses the Internet service, hopes the technology progresses beyond improved audio.

“In another two or three years, I expect to be able to pull in the television broadcast of the game right through my computer,” he said.

The Web site for AudioNet broadcasts is http://www.audionet.com.

Games broadcast by Learfield Communications are available at http://www.gamecruiser.com.

The RealAudio software is available at http://www.realaudio.com.