SHELLY PALMER REPORT: Local Mobile Television: The Handset Is The Message

The National Association of Broadcasters NAB held their annual convention in Las Vegas this week and aside from the usual angst about the digital transition next February there was a moderate buzz about mobile TVIn his opening keynote address David K Rehr president of the NAB opined about a time in the very near future when digital broadcast television signals would be available on mobile handsets quotThat39s live TV on upwards of 345 million devicesquot he said quotThat39s your favorite morning show live on your handheld device on the bus to work That39s the baseball game keeping your boys quiet in the back seat of the car That39s not missing a college basketball game during March Madness because you can catch it on your cell phonequot He went on to speculate that this could mean 2 billion in revenue by 2012I am going to resist lowering myself to the use of pejorative quips such as quotI39d love the phone number of David39s drug dealer so I can get the stuff he39s smokingquot And I am going to refrain from any kind of personal attack because I really like David and I know he wasn39t trying to mislead anyone However there39s no way anyone schooledintheart could make an even remotely credible prediction that you could have 345 million digital television ready able to interpret and receive signals from local broadcast television signals handsets in the market by 2012 It is not a probable futureThat being said the biggest issue I have with this hugely optimistic prediction is that consumers have not demonstrated any meaningful demand for this type of product and there is really no business model to support it Let39s reviewFirst the tech stuff You can skip this part if you39re not a technocrat it will bore you to death According to the Open Mobile Video Coalition a group of over 800 television stations and media executives the industry is considering three possible systems MPH MobilePedestrianHandheld system jointly developed by LG Electronics and Harris Corporation and the AVSB system jointly developed by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Rohde ampamp Schwarz and a third system jointly developed by Thomson and Micronas TM Their goal is to pick one adopt is as an quotindustry standardquot and deploy the required broadcast technology as close as possible to February 17 2009 when television broadcasting in the United States goes all digital This is good Standards are good Brandon Burgess the president of the OMVC is a very experienced wellliked broadcast executive and I believe that he will get this doneNow just for kicks let39s take a quick look at one technical issue Each broadcast station has been allocated 1939 Mbps of DTV bandwidth which after audio and other stuff yields about 18 Mbps for the HD signal Consider the HDTV formats 1080i and 720p These are the most popular broadcast HDTV formats Get out your calculator and do the following bit of math 1920x1080x2997x16 for 1080i or 1280x720x5994x16 for 720p It doesn39t really matter which you pick in order to transmit it inside of 18 Mbps you39ll need to compress the information somewhere in the neighborhood of 501 If you want to add services like mobile TV an additional weather channel 24 hour news or sell data services to local businesses or a national aggregator where will get the bits from Right now then answer is to degrade your HDTV signal This is going to be a hard sell Picture quality is importantBut I digress Mobile TV isn39t like broadcast TV The screens are smaller and they are not usually in a 16x9 aspect ratio The only way to create an emotionally satisfying product will be to reformat local television signals or heaven forbid actually produce content for the format There will be no money to produce new content so the consumer experience is guaranteed to be compromisedBack to the bandwidth issue amp8230 most people think of mobile television on handsets with relatively small screens but that39s not the future Look at the screen on an iPhone or the 7quot diagonal in the headrest of your SUV Mobile doesn39t have to mean microscopic Bigger pictures will require more bits Where will broadcast stations get them You got it by degrading their HDTV signalsOK enough tech Let39s talk consumer value proposition unique selling principle and business model Television is free Which in our world means ad supported This works fine for broadcast television and it will work fine for broadcast mobile television But local television does not sell ratings they sell spots An immeasurably small local mobile audience will not significantly change the number of television households in a DMA How will local broadcasters profit from the additional audience Will they attempt to sell spots directly to the handset audience Who will reformat the ads Could a local advertiser who can39t afford to make a regular 30 second spot for themselves possibly afford to create a 15 for ten different handsets After all the graphics on a spot created to be viewed on a 7quot mobile screen will be unreadable on a 2quot handset screen Then there is the problem of deployment into the marketplace Right now Verizon sells dual tuner handsets featuring their VCast service and in some markets Qualcomm39s MediaFLO They charge 15 monthly for these services Consumer take rates have been moderate This is not a quotmust havequot technology or a service It39s a luxury feature and it is probably priced too high However Verizon is doing with their proprietary mobile services they are unlikely to support a new product or service that they will undoubtedly view as competition to their value chain Handset makers may be happy to make cell phones that are compatible with the new standard but which carriers will offer their cell phone networks and retail outlets amp8230 let me think amp8230 nope I can39t think of one just now I39m not going to say never but this kind of coopetition is quite rare in the carrier businessLast but actually firstly is consumer aspiration Does anybody want or need local television burning up the battery in their personal communications device This is a pretty significant problem Battery life is measured in hours and tuners and LCD screens use lots battery power This won39t really matter for automotive applications or fixed wireless devices but in the PDAcell phonehandheld game or device world battery life is everything Have a look at some postchurn out interviews and you39ll see a common theme quotI was watching a video on my cell phone and the battery died I missed a text message from my girlfriend That39s not gonna happen againquotIn truth there are a ton of interesting things you can do with the 70 Billion of free ATSC bandwidth that the FCC has given to local broadcast television stations News traffic and weather data services to automotive and GPS addressable or dynamic advertising insertion open Googlelike marketplaces for local television advertising that can be digitally trafficked through a national exchange and even Mobile Television But it39s not going to happen at scale within four years it39s not going to be the profit center that will save local broadcasting and it is not going to be an easy sell to content publishers creatives producers advertisers or most importantly consumersKudos to Brandon Burgess and the OMVC It will all start with an industry standard format And Kudos to David Rehr for firing up the crowd The most important thing we can do as in industry is to get everyone thinking about how we can leverage and build infrastructure to profitably move content from creators to consumersShelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked TV 2006 Focal Press Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences NY the organization that bestows the coveted Emmyamp174 Awards He is the ViceChairman of the National Academy of Media Arts ampamp Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology media and entertainment Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmyamp174 Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media You can read Shellyamp8217s blog here Shelly can be reached at shellypalmernetCheck out the Shelly Palmer Report archive

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SHELLY PALMER REPORT: Local Mobile Television: The Handset Is The Message

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