Internet pioneer Broadcast.com lived up to its flashy reputation when Web portal Yahoo! Inc. agreed to pay a whopping $5.7 billion for the trendsetter in online video.

Broadcast.com's spectacular sale, which sent both stocks soaring, marked a fitting finale for a company that first transmitted college basketball games from a spare bedroom and grew into one of the Internet's biggest success stories.

From its humble beginnings, the Dallas-based company helped pioneer the delivery of audio and video online, throwing down a competitive gauntlet to TV broadcasters whom industry experts believe could lose viewers to the Internet.

"We can do things that traditional media broadcasters were never capable of. What we can do is broadcast things like shareholder meetings, distance learning, anything you can think of," Todd Wagner, Broadcast.com's chief executive, told Reuters.

Broadcast.com isn't the only company offering online video, TV and radio, but it is arguably the most important, and seems to have a knack for making a splash.

Wagner and co-founder Mark Cuban started the company as AudioNet in 1995. The two former Indiana University students missed Hoosier basketball broadcasts so much so they set up an Internet system in Cuban's spare bedroom in Dallas to retransmit radio signals.

The company ballooned from one AM station to more than 80 stations a year later. By 1997, it was ``Netcasting'' events such as the Super Bowl XXXI and Princess Diana's funeral.

Its stock became an instant Wall Street legend after its $18 initial public offering quadrupled on its first day of trading in July 1998.

On Thursday, investors reacted with the typical bullish enthusiasm for the Internet, bidding Broadcast.com shares up nearly $12 to $130 a share and sending Yahoo! stock up more than $11 to $179.75.

The company also made headlines last February after a record 1.5 million viewers showed up for a live Victoria's Secret lingerie party. It also showcased President Clinton's grand jury deposition tape and John Glenn's return to space.

About a million people a day flock to Broadcast.com to view any of dozens of college and professional sports events or to sample its nearly 400 radio stations.

But the company has wrangled with the same problems afflicting other Internet companies -- huge demand that occasionally strains its ability to deliver content.

The huge response to the much-hyped lingerie show, publicized with advertising slots during the Super Bowl, resulted in clunky or blurry images for many visitors. Vast numbers of people were not even able to connect to the site.

And despite an audience of millions, only a fraction of Internet surfers have the speedy "broadband" service needed to enjoy the full fruits of Web-based video and audio.

Moreover, Broadcast.com has so far failed to show that it can turn a profit, posting a net loss last year of $16.4 million on revenues of just under $14 million.