INTERTAINER, ADELPHIA IN PACT

By Jon Healey,
Times Staff Writer

Intertainer, a Culver City-based entertainment-on-demand service, said Monday that it signed a three-year deal with Adelphia Communications to provide its services to Adelphia's high-speed Internet and digital-cable customers.

The deal will more than double the reach of Intertainer by the end of the year, adding an estimated 375,000 Internet customers and more than 150,000 digital-cable customers. The company expects Adelphia, the nation's sixth-largest cable TV company, to deploy its services gradually on cable systems across the country, starting this year in Cleveland and possibly Beverly Hills.

Founded in 1996, privately held Intertainer has struggled to persuade cable and phone companies to deploy its service on their high-speed networks. Its major investors include NBC, Qwest, Sony and Microsoft, which owns 30% of the company. Also Monday, officials at Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTV unit, the leading satellite TV service, said they had agreed to test Intertainer on DirecTV DSL, a service that offers high-speed Internet access through phone lines. If the test goes well, the company will consider making the service available to all of its digital subscriber line customers. As of June 30, DirecTV reported 68,000 customers for its DSL service.