Mobile TV - Is it the future?

(c) Digital Spy

Mobile TV is part of the multi-platform 'pie' that all broadcasters currently seem to want a slice of. With new content deals between television and telecommunications companies now agreed every week, the opportunity to watch your favourite show on the move is becoming more of a possibility. But do people really want to watch the next episode of Eastenders on the train, on such a small screen? Do they even realise they can? Joanne Oatts looks at the realities of mobile TV.

In the past few months we've seen several major content providers - Buena Vista and Disney, ITN, BBC and Channel 4 to name but a few - sign up with the major mobile companies to allow them to broadcast their content across a mobile platform. As the variety of content grows, the mobile firms are hoping that the uptake of watching TV on mobiles, as well as the other services 3G can offer, will increase. But it’s a slow process, and many in the industry have major concerns about where it's all heading. They believe that while mobile will certainly be an important platform for the future, spending your entire content budget on full episodes of shows that are never going to be watched by the average mobile user is not a great business model.

In Japan and South Korea, where mobile television usage is at its highest, the reality has been around for over a year - and most of the population has already signed up to watch the country's main channels on their mobiles. That's fine over there, but can we really see our crowded trains, already polluted with the noise of music-playing phones and other handheld devices, being a place for catching up with X-Factor?

Nicholas Wheeler, managing director of mobile news channel ITN On, says you have to think of your audience. "We're not engaging with the 'old TV consumer' anymore, the guy who sits in front of the telly passively absorbing whatever's on the box. We're engaging with a younger 'communication' focused audience," he said, speaking at the recent Next Gen TV conference. "They are the 'i-pod' generation: In control, confident with technology - they take a bit of everything and soon as they don't like it, they go off and find something else."

"They're smart and they're social, and this whole revolution is about communicating more with each other. They want flexible ways to pay, and be able to download and pay for it on their mobile phone. Broadcasting (shows) is not enough, contact and engagement is a better way of looking at it, and obviously you can do that with great content," he added.

Geoffrey Ellis, senior vice president of development and distribution, Walt Disney Television EMEA, owners of the Disney Channel, agrees: "It is Disney channel's audience that will determine the new channels of the future. What we as TV executives call 'new media', kids don't call anything at all. Kids are very comfortable in this world, frequently consuming four or five things at once. Have we really thought about the impact that this competition for kids' attention has on our businesses or on our business models? If we're honest, nobody's really certain of what some of these businesses will be."

Disney has recently announced a nine-country deal to make full and half episodes available on mobile in those countries as part of a satellite subscription fee. "There is no advertising deal, we're looking for uptake. Not too big on insights - we've only just launched, but there are a surprising number of kids who do watch on the go, on their mobile phones. When you excite your audience and get the 'playground' chat going, then it’s an additive experience. It's not something that's undermining our main business, quite the opposite."

The BBC is also spending a lot on multi-platform. An extra £35 million from the corporation's "Big Idea" fund is going towards pushing content across its non-linear platforms, plus it already has a number of content deals with mobile providers. But Tim Davie, BBC director of marketing & communications and the audiences division, believes that watching whole channels on mobile, like in Japan, is a long way off. "Looking at the ratings, on average 60% of the UK is watching BBC or ITV on a weekday evening, and that figure goes up to 70% at the weekend, so we're a long way off from moving completely away from linear viewing," he said.

So when 3G uptake does take off, where are we going to be watching this? Travelling seems to be the main environment, but head of TV and video at Orange, Deborah Tonroe, says it will be more widespread than that: "Anywhere where you're bored basically. We do get quite a lot of at home viewers, which is surprising. But it is generally when you're mobile. "At work" was quite a high proportion in our research. If you work in a factory and you get a 15-minute break and you don't smoke, what do you do? You look at your mobile," she said.

So what are we going to be able to watch? Mike Shaw, ABC's president of sales and marketing, thinks it has to be appropriate content, both in time and quality. The US network currently offers "mobi-sodes" of 3.5 minutes on its mobile platforms, "That seems to be the model we're in, it is an extension of our other services, it’s a great promotional platform, and you can catch up with the highlights of your favourite show," he said.

Research in the US found that sport was top for mobile content usage, with entertainment, news and humour making up the top four. ITN On's Nicholas Wheeler says that to make it engaging, the content has got to be worthwhile: "This whole mobile and entertainment area has to reach out beyond girls, game and gambling, and take on things which are genuinely useful and interesting. News, sport and weather have a very good part to play in the mobile environment."

ITN On is a made-for-mobile TV station with an average viewing time of 7 minutes. Viewers watch a 15-minute news reel, with live content at certain times of the day. One journalist operates the channel, producing and editing the content and then putting it into reel for the next time it comes round. The station has larger-than-normal on screen text for each story, so you can understand the story, even if you're in a noisy environment. The station already has relationships with the main mobile operators, and has deals with ITV news, Channel 4 news, Google, BT Yahoo! and MSN. The Telegraph has even signed up to stream ITN On through its website to provide a video news service.

Wheeler believes that while mobile is a young person's format, he doesn’t agree that that's the only audience. "Informative useful content is perhaps winning through in what is seen as a very young persons thing, but I don't totally agree that its just 18-24, certainly from our information 24-44 is a very key market, and they are actively downloading and looking at this content as well," he said. He also thinks cost may play a part: "When you think about it, they're the people who can afford the Smart phones and the cost of looking at content as well. The younger people are looking at it too, but there is quite a breadth of interest in what is going on."

But why aren't more people taking up the services, if there is such a variety of content? "Perhaps it's that we haven't yet created something they want to engage with, or that perhaps they don't actually know what their phone can do, which is probably a more common occurrence," he said. "But even if they do know, maybe the parts they need are too difficult to find, and there's certainly a big marketing job that needs to be done in terms of making that clear and available."

Going forward, the main interest for the mobile operators is whether mobile TV generates revenue. Most of the services in the UK are via a pay-per-view or monthly or daily subscription, but to increase uptake and alleviate fears around the services catching people out and charging them over the odds, what about making it free through an advertising model?

ABC's Shaw says those opportunities are unclear: "We haven't figured out an ad model. We don't know whether watching ads on your phone, like in iTunes, is really a business at this point in time. Whether we get to the point where we show full episodes with ads is really up in the air."

But Wheeler is more positive about the idea. "We certainly feel that the advertising money, which is clearly going out of television at a fast rate, is definitely ripe to move into mobile in the next year or so. It’s a fantastic advertising medium. It’s a personal medium, one to one, and it's targeted. There's an awful lot of information that could be given to an advertiser, should that be possible. It’s a fantastic advertising tool and we need advertisers to understand that."

Although he does understand that no advertiser is going to put its name to a service that is, at times, unreliable. "The customer experience needs to improve. It's got to work every time, and it's got to look as good as TV. You want to be able to switch channels, the sort of things you would expect from a television service, including EPG. Advertising money is ripe for something new and we think mobile can provide that. The on-demand market is already a £650 million market. That is a big market."

While some detractors dismiss the emergence of mobile TV, there are clearly some companies out there who are making a success of the medium with relevant, appropriately packaged and editorialised content. An understanding of the medium is key, but it's clear from all those who spoke at the Next Gen TV conference that while each of them searches for a business model to "follow", there is so much about new media that is still unknown. Who knew YouTube or MySpace would be so successful? Jeremy Wagstaff of The Wall Street Journal Asia puts it like this: "A few years ago, if someone had told us we would be able to pack a phone, an address book, a half-decent camera, access to email and the internet, a music player and a video camera into a device the size of a Snickers bar, we would have been excited and sceptical in equal measure."

Wheeler says the best way to learn is just to get out there. "I think its important to get it out there, make the mistakes now, find out what its all about and move forward when the 3G handsets become more prevalent," he said. "You've got to be in it to win it."

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