September 13, 2007

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

AT&T has won the exclusive rights to stream the Austin City Limits Music Festival from its Blue Room music-focused Web site. AT&T is also the presenting sponsor for the event.

Fans likely will watch the online performance closely. The Blue Room concert streams recently generated a great deal of controversy after it was discovered that a third-party vendor was censoring politically charged language from several performances. The issue boiled up when fans discovered several seconds of silence during a Pearl Jam performance at Lollapalooza that masked lyrics critical of President George W. Bush.

A subsequent review of past Blue Room performances found similar editing. AT&T apologized for the incidents and promised that it will not happen again.
The Austin City Limits Music Festival takes place Sept. 15-16.

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