XTV Goes Out of Business
Parent company ITVN also ceases operations.
By: Sherri L. Shaulis
Posted: 04/16/2008
WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. - XTV and its parent company, ITVN, have closed following a failed effort to sell to a Canadian company.
A document filed on April 3 shows the companies ceased operations that day and the board of directors resigned Feb. 11, leaving CEO Charles Prast as the sole officer.
The document said ITVN "formally ceased conducting all operations and permanently terminated its business of distributing television broadcasting over the Internet to paid subscribers."
Prast did not respond to emails seeking comment, and a message on a phone registered to Prast said it no longer was accepting voice mail for him.
XTV closed with no remaining assets but had roughly $10 million in unpaid liabilities, including more than $8 million in unsecured debt.
XTV got its start in 2005, when it was co-founded by David Koenig, an adult-industry entrepreneur who owns Holio.net. About $1.6 million of XTV's startup capital came from Interactive Brands Development, the parent company of the now-defunct Internet porn billing company iBill, in exchange for 22 percent of the shares.
In the filing, XTV blamed the closing on a subscriber base that grew too slowly, the inability to raise additional money and a failed bid to sell to BroadShift Inc., a Canadian aggregator and distributor of narrowcast Internet protocol television.
"Unfortunately, BroadShift was unable to obtain sufficient funding to complete the purchase of the ITVN assets, and the purchase was formally abandoned in December 2007," the filing stated.
With its video-on-demand technology, XTV consumers could connect a set-top box to an existing broadband router, plug in the set-top connector to a television set and subscribe to the VOD channels.
In a 2005 article, Forbes magazine said ITVN's 5,000 or so subscribers had access to 30,000 hours of porn, organized by 70 fetish genres, studios or performers.
