Mobile500 Alliance Preps to Introduce Mobile DTV Service This Year
TV broadcasters in the Mobile500 Alliance are preparing to introduce a commercial mobile DTV product by Q4 2011, Executive Director John Lawson said in an interview. The alliance is working on securing programming contracts for some national networks and is in discussions with consumer electronics manufacturers about incorporating mobile DTV receivers into more devices, he said. Business plans haven’t been finalized, but the group expects to offer a mix of 15-20 free and subscription-based mobile DTV channels and begin rolling out to markets before the end of the year, he said.
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"We know local content is highly valued by consumers of mobile video, so we want to really play up that strength,” Lawson said. “But we also know we need some national content to create an overlay stations can cut in and out of for their local programming,” he said. Most local TV stations aren’t set up to run a 24-hour news operation, he said. “We're exploring content rights with a select group of distributors to provide content to our members that would be cleared for mobile broadcasting,” he said. The alliance now claims 46 members that own or operate 420 stations, Lawson said.
Though the programming rights remain unclear, if mobile DTV takes off as a consumer service, the rights holders will license their content for mobile DTV, said Rob Hubbard, vice president of the alliance and Hubbard TV president. “We know we'll be able to find enough programming,” he said. “The rights go to where people are using them. As long as there is a service that people want and accept, the rights will be there,” he said. Wholesaling mobile DTV service is one of the potential business models the alliance is considering, Lawson said. That would pair broadcasters’ local programming and distribution resources with a national content distributor that “has experience with subscriptions, billing and the back office relationships necessary for this kind of a business,” Lawson said.
Meanwhile, the Open Mobile Video Coalition’s technical advisory group is making progress creating a baseline set of specification for mobile DTV devices with the support of the Mobile500 Alliance as well as the Mobile Content Venture, a joint venture of Fox, NBCUniversal and several top TV station groups, Lawson said. The goal is to give manufacturers confidence that the entire broadcasting industry will support a unified approach to sending and receiving the content, he said. Manufacturers want “an open device and they want it to be able to receive content from as many sources as possible,” he said.
Broadcasters in the alliance won’t run into any antitrust problems or be subject to program access or carriage rules that cover other vertically integrated pay-TV operators at the FCC, Hubbard said. “We don’t think so and we've had good counsel review that,” he said.