WHY IS GLOBAL NATIONAL the only Canadian content I can get from iTunes for my Video iPod?
Why is the sports content on the Samsung a920 from Bell Mobility I’ve just started testing (downloads are surprisingly speedy, by the way) from ESPN? Where’s Sportsnet or TSN?
Why is its business news a bland CP report and not from ROBTv or Newsnet, for example? Why isn’t FashionTelevision the feed for the "fashion" channel on this nifty multimedia wireless phone?
Where’s Treehouse On Demand for these devices – my kids would flip for it (actually, there’s no kids content offered at all yet on the a920). Why is the service’s "Entertainment Minute" something pre-packaged from the States? Where’s ET Canada or Star! Daily or etalk?
At least the news is Canadian (from Global and CBC) and one of the Comedy channels is Ed the Sock. But as apparent Cancon goes, that’s it.
Back to my horribly underused video iPod. Why isn’t Corner Gas or The Mercer Report or Trailer Park Boys or ReGenesis or Falcon Beach or any other Canadian content available for sale on iTunes? It’s not the only place to get multimedia, of course, but Apple’s download portal is the easiest and best known way of getting it for iPod owners. iTunes is rapidly approaching a billion song downloads.
No one knows where the mobile media thing is going to go, but I do think it will be awfully popular. You wouldn’t think that people would watch TV shows or movies on these little screens but after owning an iPod for some months (and the Pixar shorts available for purchase are extraordinarily high quality, like a teeny HD movie) and fooling around with the a920 for about a day so far, with the option to see NHL game highlights on the go, is quite intriguing. I can’t wait for the Olympic highlights.
People are watching those skimpy screens, though. As of August 31st of 2005, for example, Sony said it had sold eight million movies for its PlayStation Portable device – to be seen on its 4-inch screen – in just four months since its May 2005 launch. Over 300 movie titles are now available for the PSP – about three times the number of video games there are for the device.
What I can’t figure out is why so little mobile Canadian content is available for devices like iPods and wireless phones. It’s zero revenue right now and tiny real estate, of course – but it’s real estate just the same. It’s eyeballs, as they say. And with these mobile devices, the eyeballs are attached to motivated, active and interactive viewers. The revenue for this will come and content owners – broadcasters and producers – should be moving far more quickly on this, or they will be usurped by others who are busily gaining a foothold in the market.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for regulation to make such a shift happen, or to force wireless companies to wait for Cancon owners to be ready. This shift should already be coming from the broadcasters themselves, pushing people to access their content from whatever screen works for their viewers at any given moment in time (a CRTC public notice on a hearing into TV to wireless devices is expected soon). But there doesn’t seem to be much of a rush from broadcasters and I think they’re missing the boat. Once these early users settle into a pattern, it will be difficult to crack for latecomers.
ABC, NBC and CBS seem to realize this as they all have made content available for download – for a price.
It might seem the prudent thing to do is wait and see where the market is going before acting. Two of the biggest names in photography, Polaroid and Kodak had similar thoughts as the digital photography revolution picked up steam. Polaroid ended up in Chapter 11 before being purchased and repositioned and Kodak announced this week it will post a loss of about US$850 million as it is still trying to restructure itself from its legacy film base into a digital company, a process that has taken years and cost untold hundreds of millions. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs.
I hope Canadian mobile TV announcements and rollouts are coming soon (and a Globe and Mail story today suggests CBC is getting ready to do something with Apple or Google or both for their video services, however.), because with the rapidly accelerating wireless growth in Canada, Canadian broadcasters could be left out of this new – potentially lucrative – media consumption model.
