Glitch Hobbles Lingerie Webcast

The first Internet broadcast of Victoria's Secret's Spring Fashion Show turned out to be a bust for some of the millions of fans who jammed the site, causing major technical problems.

Many Web surfers who hoped to catch a glimpse of supermodels strutting in racy lingerie were instead greeted with jagged video and audio problems.

"That says to me the technology is not up to snuff," said Wendy Hargle, a computer technician in Berkeley, Calif., who tried to view the show. "Someone did not anticipate the level of interest."

The much-hyped fashion show was held in New York and marked a milestone for the Internet. It was one of the first large-scale live video events in which a corporation invested money and prestige.

A television ad for the 14-minute event was shown during Sunday's Super Bowl, and other ads were placed in newspapers.

The company said the site was flooded with over 1 million hits within the first hour after its fashion show commercial aired during Sunday's Super Bowl XXXIII.

"For viewers to leave their TV sets during the Super Bowl to log on to the Victoria's Secret's site is amazing," said Ed Razek, president of brand and creative services for Intimate Brands.

"We expected to have a large response to the live Webcast Wednesday, but Sunday night's reaction was way beyond what we could have predicted," Razek added.

The Wednesday show was Webcast using "streaming video" technology. Streaming video allows Web surfers to view live video without downloading large files. The quality of the video depends on the number of people watching, how powerful the computers are, and how congested Internet traffic is.

Before the show, Anne Marie Blaire, senior manager of Internet brand development for Victoria's Secret, said the computers - run by Broadcast.com - were configured to handle between 250,000 and 500,000 simultaneous viewers. Figures for the total number of people viewing the Web site during the show would not be available until later Thursday.