Mobilizedtv

Movies, TV and Video for Mobile

Digital Hollywood/Santa Monica, CA—Movies, TV and Video for Mobile was the topic of discussion for a panel that ranged over opportunities for creating, advertising/marketing and monetizing. Moderated by Frank Chindamo, president of Fun Little Movies, panelists included Mark Hyland, vp of marketing, QuickPlay Media; Katharine Linke, Director, Multi-Platform Programming, Disney Channel & Disney XD at Disney Channel; Jack Hallahan, vp, advertising and brand partnerships, MobiTV; Jim Eadie, vp, digital distribution, MTV Networks; Edward Skolarus, vp, business & operations, Fox Reality Channel; Madeline Herdrich, vp of mobile, North America, Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment Group; and Mike Bailey, senior director of programming, Qualcomm’s MediaFLO.

The importance of the mobile screen for entertainment immediately took center stage. “It’s funny this is called the 3rd screen,” says Bailey. “I have a 13-year old daughter for whom this is the #1 screen in her life.”

The future of mobile entertainment shows opportunities for enormous growth, said the panelists. “For movies, it’s moving to people watching full-length films on their devices,” says Herdrich. “VOD and download to own is the first step. Then content will be just like Apple: a cloud of content that people can access wherever they are, whatever device they’re using. That’s where the future is going, although it’ll take some steps to get there, and a lot of competition.”

QuickPlay’s Hyland agreed, “With all the new retailers of content, there will be different places where you’ll have entitlements to programs,” he added. “That has to be sorted out. There’ll be an interesting world of entitlements and identities.” He predicts that premium content will continue to be a big part of the revenue picture, “even if there is tons and tons of advertising.” “The reality today is that paid content pays the bills for a lot of content providers and that won’t be traded away soon,” he says. “There are tons of people launching ad-supported services on mobile, which is great, so people can learn they can watch programming on mobile. But as a business, you need to see services that are paid for in some way.”

For Linke, programming in the children’s entertainment world means dealing with the FCC, making advertising a more complicated model. “It’s subscriber revenue model,” she says. “Our goal is to let kids know they have Disney Channel content on any device.”

Eadie notes that there are probably 10 million mobile TV subscribers in the U.S. “We’re in subcsripion model as well,” he says. “The opportunity is growing and it’s been a slow curve to adoption. But 10 million is nothing to sneezed at.”

For aggregators such as MediaFLO and MobiTV, growing the subscriber base is another kind of challenge. “A whole lot of things need to come together,” says Bailey, who mentioned the impact of the DTV transition and the upcoming broadcasters’ ATSC mobile signal as well as the fact that cars with MediaFLO devices are in the offing.

“We continue to build our relationships at the carrier level,” reports Hallahan, who says MobiTV is “in deep discussion with Verizon. “We’re also looking overseas with players in Europe and elsewhere. The applications today with our horizontal platform into vertical applications, you can work against the kid or sports markets. We’re building an outgrowth on the success of the March Madness app.” But he agreed that it’s currently an educational job to get consumers to adopt mobile TV. “Change the mindset, so people know that you can watch video and TV on your handset,” he says.

Chindamo wondered whether a crucial event or simply slow growth will create the tipping point for behavioral changes. “Right now it’s 6 or 7 percent of the people who are watching video on their phones,” he says.

Herdrich thinks larger screens on mobile devices will drive adoption. “Samsung introduced a device with a very large screen and the uptake was huge,” she says. “People realize it’s a really enjoyable experience. That’s why 30 percent of people with iPhone watch videos on it. Every new phone, the screens are getting better, the phones have better video quality and memory.”

Children, however, don’t have to be trained to watch video on the mobile phone, says Linke. “They’re watching phones since birth,” she says. “What we’ve seen is a huge growth with pre-school programming on the mobile devices. [Skeptics] said parents won’t hand a $400 phone to a 2-year old, but our numbers are showing they are.”

Eadie believes a number of factors will help the growth of mobile video. “People picking up a phone and realizing it’s more than a communication device,” he says. “Everyone has their own iPhone story. If consumers realize there’s a value proposition, that’s the first step to realizing there’s more you can do than talk and video is part of that value chain.”

The cost of a subscription or download varied across providers, but all were reasonably priced: a family friendly MediaFLO package for $13/month; Paramount’s Herdrich quoted $3.99 to $5.99 to rent a movie for 24 hours and another 99 cents to extend. Skolarus said its TV shows, which are part of Media Flo, cost 99 cents to download an episode to the device.

The challenge of getting robust and reliable metrics is another often-discussed topic in mobile TV, and each panelist had a different story to tell. Linke says the Disney Channel relies on information from the carrier. “We don’t have a lot of details,” she says. “We get total unique users, but we don’t know the demographic breakdown.”

MediaFLO’s Bailey admits “it’s been a challenge to unlock the usage.” “The daily video consumption is approaching 25 minutes today for a typical FLO TV user,” he relates. “With our content providers, we give an indication of where they’re strong and where they’re not, in day parts.” Hallahan reported that MobiTV offers similar data around unique viewers and channels but that they are not audited by Double Click or Nielsen. “But Nielsen has done studies that correlate with about a 30-minute viewing session per day,” he adds. “In terms of demo, we triangulate with the kind of content people are watching and what kinds of handsets are being used more often.”

Mobile TV in the future will be a hybrid mix of short clips and long-form content, agreed all of the panelists. Hyland notes that “the communications function of the device” is what is key to content going forward. “The video may be a full episode, but the context in terms of how you’re viewing it and what you’re doing on the phone is different” he says. “Even a half hour show, which is 22 minutes, you may see that in two or three sessions as you’re interrupted by a call or doing something else. It’s too early to see the impact it’ll have on the culture of TV.”

Hallahan notes that they’re seeing an increasing number of people watching mobile to catch up with programs they weren’t aware of. They demonstrated that by running episodes of Mad Men where the viewer could catch up with the show by clicking on the characters and getting more information, a way that mobile adds value.

Skolarus says that the subscription-based model is preferred as an ROI. “You’re spending the same amount of money in production and post, which is a lot,” he says. “Hulu is a great advertising model because it’s syndicated through AOL, and you’re seeing 330 million views last month. With that CPM, you can make money on this. With the mobile phone, are you going to get 10 million views?”

Hallahan noted the new mobile TV player: TV broadcasters who have created an ATSC mobile TV standard and plan to broadcast free over-the-air mobile TV. “It will be complementary to pay services,” says MediaFLO’s Bailey. “We offer a free channel today that lets you look in live to the service. Advertising is a key component as well. All these are levers being moved to crack what’s compelling. But, ultimately, I don’t imagine a totally free offering of what you’re going to watch.”

Tags: ATSC Mobile DTV standard, Digital Hollywood, Disney Channel, Fox Reality Channel, Fun Little Movies, MediaFLO, mobile TV, mobile video, MobiTV, movies for mobile, Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment Group, Qualcomm, QuickPlay Media, TV for mobile, video for mobile

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under Advertising/Marketing, Content, Home Feature.