By Allan Maurer
RESTON, VA—Avail Media Holdings, which recently merged Avail Media with TVN Entertainment Corp., has secured $95.17 million of a targeted $100 million raise, according to a regulatory filing. The combination of Avail and TVN created the largest independent producer of video content aggregation, management and services.
The company revealed the new funding, which includes equity, options and debt, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A spokesman for Avail declined comment on the current raise.
In May, as part of its TVN merger announcement, Avail said the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) had made a strategic investment in an undisclosed amount in the company to help it provide rural Telcos with IPTV programming for their customers.
The company delivers content from more than 200 content partners, including Hollywood movie studios, cable networks and independent content producers to more than 46 million homes and 120 million consumers.
In late 2007, Avail raised a $25 million B round led by Valhalla Partners with participation from its existing investors, Columbia Capital, Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Pioneer Ventures.
It also raised $5 million in debt financing from a strategic investors and Silicon Valley Bank in 2007.
Avail Media was founded in early 2007 as the result of the merger between Auroras Entertainment and Broadstream Communications. In September 2007 Avail acquired VOD programming supplier ViewNow.
Avail sells managed content aggregation services through an infrastructure for deployment of IPTV video. Avail also possesses a large content rights library of over 300 channels from national programmers, including premier content from programmers such as ABC-Disney, Turner, NBC- Universal, MTV Networks, Fox Networks, Discovery, and many others.
TVN Entertainment Corp., a top television on-demand company, works with every major studio, network, and telecommunications video provider in North America.
TVN says it supports an open, advanced technology platform, and offers the most comprehensive, end-to-end solution for licensing, managing, distributing and marketing on-demand content to virtually any platform.
Avail recently expanded its services to include video over broadband, targeted advertising and interactive applications.
Ramu Potarazu, former CEO of Broadstream Communications and COO of Intelsat, is CEO of Avail.
In a statement issued at the time of the Avail-TVN merger, Potarazu said, “In these challenging times, delivering value to consumers and investing in the future takes on even greater importance for our customers.
“The combined platform and reach of TVN Entertainment and Avail Media allows content owners and service providers of all types to outsource the manual, specialized function of managing and delivering video entertainment via an expert organization that performs these functions efficiently and cost effectively now and in the future.”
Online: www.availmedia.com; www.TVN.com; www.nrtc.coop
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