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Mark Cuban is a hard man to catch. When Fast Company first spoke with the co-founder of Broadcast.com, Cuban was in the midst of what he called the "broadcast.com 'sprint'" -- a race to maintain the streaming media site's position as the leading aggregator and broadcaster of programming on the Net. Nearly a year and a half later, Cuban's Dallas-based online audio and video distribution channel is pulling ahead of the pack following a merger that created Yahoo! Broadcast Services, part of the portal's comprehensive network of Web properties.

"Our vision was to create a new entertainment and information medium any way we could using the Internet as a base," says Cuban of Broadcast.com's 1995 launch. It wasn't long ago the network was run from a spare bedroom in his apartment. "Today we are the leader, and our mission with Yahoo! is to combine our digital media leadership with their incredible network to create the dominant 21st Century media company."

By using both high-speed broadband and dial-up connections, Yahoo! Broadcast Services digitally delivers audio and video content 24 hours a day to more than 100 million users worldwide via the Net. Since the August 1999 merger, Yahoo! Broadcast has brought upwards of 36,000 programs and live events to the desktops of daily Internet users including round-the-clock, streaming media content from 448 radio stations, and 65 television stations and cable networks across the country.

"We rarely if ever produce original content," says Cuban. "We only use content that has some level of demand. This way we don't have to pay to create demand, which is the hardest and most expensive asset to create."

Yahoo! Broadcast's strategy is simple, says Cuban: give people a reason to come back to the site by aggregating content.

"You might come to listen to a sporting event, but stay when you see that there are hundreds of thousands of other choices as well," he says. "And, of course, we hope you come back again and again."

Prior to the acquisition by Yahoo!, Broadcast.com established its hefty market lead by inking several exclusive distribution deals to stream a sure-fire programming schedule that appealed to America's deepest passions and obsessions: sporting events. By securing partnerships with more than 450 college and professional sports teams to deliver game day content online, Broadcast.com has provided audio and video feeds for NCAA, NHL, NFL, and Major League Baseball games and playoffs. The network also digitally delivered several NFL Super Bowls, including Super Bowl XXXI, which made history by attracting 500,000 users to the site on game day. And when John Glenn returned to space in October 1998, Broadcast.com provided live video and audio coverage of the shuttle Discovery's lift-off. Add to that list streaming video of President Clinton's Grand Jury testimony, 24-hour news coverage by the BBC and CNN, and alliances with TV stations in top-ten markets, and Broadcast.com had a solid stronghold on the streaming media market.

Not much has changed since.

"When there's breaking news, Yahoo! Broadcast has the unique ability to present local audio and video coverage from our 550- plus radio and TV stations," says Cuban. "It doesn't get anymore real-time than that. We're also fortunate in that every single one of our radio and TV partners, including our sports partners, refresh their content continuously."