Broadcasters Putting Faith in Mobile TV
Broadcast executives hope new mobile DTV technology will succeed, but some aren’t sure how the industry will take advantage of it, TV executives told investors at a Bear Stearns conference this week. Sinclair CEO David Smith -- a big supporter of efforts by the Advanced Television Systems Committee to set a mobile DTV standard before the DTV switch -- was the most upbeat among TV executives to address the Bear Stearns crowd. “You're going to see the next evolution of the availability of over the air TV on essentially every device that can be made,” Smith said. “It will in all probability be an enormous boon to the industry.”
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But questions remain about what technology to use and how best to sell mobile DTV. “It’s a great idea, but I think there are a lot of bumps in the road before we figure out how to monetize this,” Gray TV CEO Bob Prather said. Broadcasters are feeling rushed. They plan to choose one of three proposed industry standards before next month’s NAB convention, Smith said. If they stick to schedule, lap-tops and GPS handsets with built-in mobile ATSC receivers and other new devices could be in stores by fall 2009, Smith said.
Even if the industry stays on time, it’s still nearly impossible to pinpoint whether and when the service will take off commercially. “All I can say is, ‘Hell, I don’t know,'” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said. “The killer app is the mobile application because we're not tethered to anything. But we think it’s a while away.” A big step toward mass adoption will come when industry sees the target audience growing beyond people trapped in airports who want to watch TV, he said. “It seems that’s where a lot of applications are aimed today,” he added.
Viewers will flock to mobile DTV, Smith said. “I see nothing before me at this time that says the public won’t adopt it,” he said. “Surveys… suggest very strongly that the consumer at large is prepared to pay a lot of money on a relative basis to watch over-the-air TV live on any kind of device they want,” he said. If the audience is there, the revenue will be, too, he said.
CBS already is making money on mobile video, but not by broadcasting from its own transmitters to mobile devices. Instead, it provides Qualcomm’s MediaFLO service with programming, receiving payments similar to retransmission consent fees from some pay-TV distributors, CEO Leslie Moonves said. “We are already getting retrans from Verizon” Wireless, he said. “We think mobile content… is growing tremendously and we're there.”
Using wireless carriers for mobile DTV distribution could get tricky for TV station groups, since networks will want a cut of carriage revenue, Prather said. “They're all going to have their hand out,” he said. Prather said the question is: “How do you make everybody happy if you've got a deal with one of the phone companies?”