LAS VEGAS – When most broadcasters talk about new platforms, the discussion often centres around repurposing content or some other way of cutting up something that was meant for TV and then cramming it into an itsy bitsy screen.
According to panelists at today’s NATPE Mobile++ day in Las Vegas (which was organized by Achilles Media, the same company that produces the Banff International TV Fest), the days of producing for TV and then thinking about how it will fit, or sort of fit, on a two-inch screen (of a cell phone or other mobile device) or how best to make it work on the computer are drawing to a close.
According to Cyriac Roeding, vice-president of wireless for CBS Corp., TV scheduling itself is toast.
Being a CBS exec, Roeding offered a top 10 list of what is going to change in the next decade, and number six on the list was that TV scheduling as we now know it will move instead towards TV platforming, meaning that viewers’ favorite content will follow them wherever they go, on whatever device they happen to be using. "In 2017 we will transfer content to each platform in a seamless but different way," he said. The time of day for airing on TV won’t matter very much.
"Single platform plays are sooo 2007," he said.
Terms like "mobisodes" and "brand extensions" will grow as anachronistic as "prime time" as producers and broadcasters, thanks to the growing ubiquity of the cell phone, will now have about 18 hours to put their product in front of fans.
The mobile phone has already become in many parts of the world the primary device consumers use for communications, information and entertainment and it’s moving that way – albeit more slowly – in the United States and Canada.
And not only is it the most ubiquitous device, it’s the most personal, which is both fantastic and risky for programmers and marketers. CBS surveys say that in the 25 to 34 year old age group, 52% say they have their cell phone with them more than 90% of the time. In the 18-24 demo, 64% say the same thing.
As the mobile video veteran gave his view of what the world will look like in 2017, he reminded the delegates that just 10 years ago in 1997, companies like eBay, Amazon.com and Yahoo! barely existed. The current 800-pound Internet gorilla, Google, didn’t launch until 1998. Now those companies bring in billions of viewers and dollars of revenue.
So don’t expect the next 10 years will bring any less change, he said.
The exploding growth of wireless adoption and wireless applications is, potentially, great news for advertisers. While the reward can be high being able to market, one-to-one, to customers, the risk in blowing it – on their most personal of devices – is very high.
The mobile phone "is the most personal consumer electronics device anyone will ever own," industry consultant Graeme Ferguson said during a panel on mobile advertising. "Relevant ads with great quality and timing," will earn loyal customers, "but it’s very easy to get it wrong and piss people off."
Peter Cowley, director of interactive media at Endemol UK, the creators and licensors of such shows as Big Brother, Deal Or No Deal, Fear Factor and Star Academy, says his company is already producing in new ways, often thinking wireless mobile first before the big screen of the television.
"We really have to get good at creating content for these new platforms," he said.
He outlined the company’s wireless-only original programming for UK carrier O2, where Endemol created a reality series on popular British all-girl pop group Sugarbabes. It was available only on wireless and only to O2 customers.
Nokia was pulled in as a sponsor and band members were given Nokia camera phones to film themselves "in places a regular camera crew would never be allowed," said Cowley. Band members would respond to viewer text messages during the segments and even view videos sent in by fans. The show is now being talked about as one to be repurposed for TV.
And when it comes to the business model. Is it subscription? Pay-per-view? Ad supported? Consensus seemed to be towards ad-supported because although consumers have been conditioned to pay for all sorts of things on their phones, like $5 ringtones, don’t expect them to pay for video – especially video that’s available, free, elsewhere – or that they’ve already paid for through their cable bill.
"You can’t fleece the consumer for too much money. You have to get the advertisers to pay," said Cowley who said that when in 2003 the company charged 50p per download of Big Brother, it got about 10,000 downloads. In 2006, when they were free and ad-supported, there were over 24 million downloads.
Add to that the research presented by Telephia that showed a third of mobile video consumers responded to a call for action from the mobile advertising on their phone and you can see a compelling business model developing.
However, all this also involves negotiations with carriers, who’ll want a piece of the pie, and who were under-represented in a room dominated by producers and broadcasters. But the business is still in its infancy and no one had the final answer as to where the business model will ultimately be headed.
One word of good news – from a big media company – is that big media isn’t going away. The big media brands will continue to be key to building popular content and getting people to use the video capabilities of their cell phones. While more than 20% of Americans have video-capable cell phones, less than 10% use the feature, said CBS Corp.’s EVP and chief of research, David Poltrack in another Monday mobile panel.
The heft and breadth of traditional media companies is needed "to jump-start this market," he said.
Another inhibiting factor, added EVP and COO of BET Interactive, Scott Mills, is the sheer number of handsets out there and the fact there are no technical standards for mobile video production, meaning the user experience is often spotty, turning some early-adopters away from mobile video altogether. "There are so many handsets and the quality of the experience is no good," he said.
Many of the companies in attendance, like GoTV, offer a great mobile content experience – but it comes through their own proprietary technology, not a set of industry standard codes, making it more difficult to produce content that can be made available to a mass market.
Greg O’Brien is editor and publisher of Cartt.ca and is attending NATPE in Las Vegas.
