Internet firm must turn over contracts BroadcastAmerica’s future still in doubt

PORTLAND – A federal bankruptcy judge on Friday ordered BroadcastAmerica.com to turn over copies of its contracts to a partner that wants to foreclose on the company.

BroadcastAmerica, Maine’s most prominent dot-com company, once billed itself as the world’s largest Internet broadcaster, airing 750 radio and 70 television stations over the Web. But financial woes forced it to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November.

BroadcastAmerica now wants to auction off the company as a whole in hopes that a buyer would keep it running. But it faces the threat of its assets being sold off separately if creditors succeed in converting the bankruptcy to Chapter 7 in which companies are usually liquidated.

BA Funding, which was set up in November by SurferNETWORK, entered an agreement intended to supply BroadcastAmerica with $1 million and SurferNETWORK with a 10 percent stake in the company. The partnership soured with concerns about BroadcastAmerica’s financial viability.

At a hearing Friday, BA Funding asked for copies of the contracts, which it considers collateral for the financing.

BA Funding is worried that some of BroadcastAmerica’s contracts with radio and television stations may soon become invalid, and it wants copies of the contracts as it considers its next move.

“Timing is very important,” said Brian Spector, a lawyer for BA Funding. “These contracts are very much like perishable foods: there’s only so much life that they have left because of the provisions – provisions we haven’t seen.”

According to BA Funding, specimen contracts showed that stations might have the right to terminate their contracts some time in mid-January because vendors that provided BroadcastAmerica the technology to “stream” radio broadcasts over the Internet shut down service last month.