ENN "Up and coming" to New York City elevators.

The elevator was formerly introduced by Otis Elevators at the World's Fair in 1853. The first elevators climbed only as high as five stories and were used for equipment and livestock, but considered too dangerous for human transport. But today, with elevator safety beyond question, most passengers consider the ride just a boring inconvenience. "When you get down to it, what do you do in an elevator? You look at the numbers or you look down at your shoes," said Peter Irwin, president and CEO of Elevator News Network (ENN), a Toronto based new media company and originator of elevator news systems.

ENN has introduced a narrow cast network that uses the Internet to deliver up-to-the-minute news and information to the business community via 12.1 inch custom-designed slimline video monitors that are mounted in the elevator cabs of high-rise office buildings. Since 1997, the ENN system has been installed and operational in more than 500 elevators of Canadian office towers in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

ENN's success has prompted The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. to announce that it has made a significant investment as part of a $6 million financing plan to further ENN's well-established Canadian operations. In addition, the Whitehall Street Real Estate Limited Partnerships, Goldman Sachs' family of real estate opportunity funds, has signed a Letter of Intent for deployment of the ENN system in its office properties (totaling 24 million square feet) throughout the United States.

"These funds from Goldman Sachs will help us to sustain the strong momentum of growth ENN has achieved here in Canada and the commitment by Whitehall gives us a solid foundation from which to launch our business in the United States," said Irwin.

"In order to be successful in this business, you-must have the technology to install and maintain the concept, produce meaningful content in a format that appeals to the audience, and demonstrate that you can generate revenue by attracting advertisers," explained Irwin. "Because we have operated in Toronto successfully for three years, we are confident that our technology and service is superior to other firms now entering the business, and we believe that ENN will become a dominant provider of this service in the United States."

Based on numerous polls conducted by ENN, property managers believe the system is a great value-added service and an effective way to disseminate information quickly to tenants. In addition, ENN found that 92 percent of tenants say the information provided on ENN is informative. ENN is also popular with advertisers, in that companies such as Compaq, Warner Lambert and Futurestep.com have used ENN to reach a highly targeted audience of affluent, well educated and Internet-savvy office workers.

"Our track record of portfolio agreements with prominent Canadian real estate companies such as TrizecHahn and Brookfield, along with our success in drawing blue-chip advertisers such as Daimler Chrysler and Procter & Gamble, is a testament to the quality, reliability, popularity and effectiveness of our product," added Irwin.

Using a distribution system of digital video file servers and the Internet, a video signal is delivered to each screen which provides a steady rotation of timely information generated and updated by a local ENN production office. The ENN newsroom generates up-to-the-minute programming throughout the day, which includes general news, business, sports, market updates, weather and traffic information, as well as building specific tenant notices. There is no audio component and the programming is customized for each individual office building.

The ENN service is provided to building owners at a nominal subscription fee, which is offset by a share of the revenue generated through full-motion view video advertising messages appearing on the bottom one-third of the screens. ENN provides a guarantee to the landlord that sufficient advertising revenue will be generated to offset the cost of the subscription fee.

"Until now we have concentrated our efforts in the Canadian marketplace because we wanted to build our infrastructure and perfect our service," said Irwin. "Now that we have secured our product in the major office properties in Toronto and Calgary, we felt it was time for us to get aggressive in the U.S."

ENN plans to introduce its popular news network to office properties in the U.S. this year and is currently in final negotiations with several landlords in New York and Chicago. ENN expects to conclude these negotiations in the coming weeks and to be operational with elevator installations in U.S. office properties shortly thereafter.