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Tampa Tribune

By Richard Mullins, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Oct. 4--Pop quiz: What U.S. company hired 15 television news crews this summer to roam the country, reporting on everything from NFL games to city parades?

A) The Venezuelan cable network El Mundo.

B) The Central Intelligence Agency.

C) Sprint Nextel Corp., the cellular phone company.

If you picked "C," you're correct. Sprint is producing its own "Power Vision" TV shows for distribution to customer cell phone screens -- plus Spanish-language TV shows, short-form dramas from HBO, and NFL game previews hosted by CBS commentator James Brown.

Yes, live TV is coming to a very small screen near you.

In just the past few months, the largest cellular phone companies serving the Tampa Bay area have started broadcasting dozens of live TV channels such as Discovery Channel, Fox News, The Weather Channel and Comedy Central to their phones.

Fox Sports, for one, runs on three major cellular carriers and offers on-demand video clips sorted by sport, team and hot news of the day -- so viewers could watch a two-minute clip on the Los Angeles Dodgers playoff hopes, hockey in Chicago or NASCAR over the weekend.

Whether many people will actually watch TV programs on their cell phones is a hotly debated question in the cellular phone industry these days.

Optimists in the industry say cellular TV is a natural extension of Americans' increasing fascination with TV, buying ever larger televisions and putting them in more places -- kitchens, bathrooms, cars -- and now phones.

Others are less convinced.

"There's no way I'll watch TV on a cell phone. I don't know anyone who would," said Katie Lundberg , a 21-year-old University of Tampa student.

The junior says she loves her high-end LG phone which features a flip-out keyboard for text messaging. She'll listen to music on her phone, but "I just think this screen would be way too small to watch anything."

Pricing is another issue for Lundberg. Buying TV service for a wireless phone can cost an extra $20 to $30 per month, plus consumers should plan to pay $99 to $350 for high-end, video-capable phones. Cellular executives say they are in an early experimentation phase with mobile TV, trying many kinds of channel lineups and prices to see what appeals to customers.

"The phone is such a natural means to publish video content and this is something that is becoming a very real phenomenon," said Ted Woodbery, Cingular Wireless executive director of consumer data services.

Cingular, the largest U.S. cellular provider by subscribers, has signed up 27 TV channels and cut a video trading deal with the Internet video channel YouTube.com.

Next week, Cingular plans to turn on an upgraded wireless network in Tampa that improves video transmission -- largely to send TV shows and media downloads.

There's some evidence that cellular TV is taking off in the market.

Cellular TV subscriptions are up 45 percent to 3.7 million in the first half of 2006, according to the research firm Telephia. (The United States has about 219 million cellular subscribers.) And some interesting viewing patterns are already emerging: People tend to watch news in the morning, sports at lunch and comedy/entertainment on the way home from work.

ABC News is the most watched mobile TV channel, attracting 40 percent of the mobile TV audience, followed by The Weather Channel, Fox Sports and ESPN, according to Telephia. Fifty percent of viewers are age 25 to 36 and seven out of 10 viewers are male.

If anything helps the medium take off, it could be the shrinking attention spans of Americans, said Roger Entner , an analyst with the Ovum research firm.

"We can't seem to go a moment on our own without having something to do," Entner said. "Now we have this wonderful device in our hands that can take pictures, play games, listen to music and now even television."

At the same time, some projects aren't turning out as planned.

ESPN and Sprint pulled the plug on ESPN Mobile, their joint venture that put video and spot news on special ESPN-branded phones. ESPN will shut the service down Dec. 31, though a company statement says it is negotiating to offer a new service on another carrier soon. Though Disney, which owns ESPN, did not disclose financial details, stock analysts estimated the venture might have cost $100 million and reached just 30,000 customers.

Good Reason Cellular phone companies have good reason to push new media such as television, Entner said.

There are more than 219 million cellular subscribers in the United States.

"The only people that are left who don't have phones are children under 10 years old, people over 70 and then everyone in a coma or prison," Entner said.

That means any new revenue sources, he said, will have to come from selling other kinds of media to current customers, rather than recruiting new customers.

Meanwhile, cell phones are one of few items people rarely leave home without, making them one of the best opportunities for media companies and advertisers to reach people with messages all day long. And by offering video on phones, cellular companies open up a vast audience for advertisers -- with a powerful ability to target specific audiences.

"This is for people who are sitting, waiting for a plane, waiting for a bus, or a meeting, or in line at the DMV," Entner said. "You can think of cellular TV as part of your regular TV life -- some at home on the couch, and a combination of cellular TV shows and clips that you pick."

Jill Tremblay, a 19-year-old UT sophomore from Albany, for one, doesn't plan on signing up.

"The only place I could see watching TV on a cell phone is on a plane," she said, "and you wouldn't even get good reception there. There's no way I pay more for it."

MOBILE TV

The largest cell phone providers are launching a wide range of television shows on phones, with many shows customized to work better on the very small screen. Most services cost an extra $10 to $20 a month and require high-end phones that cost $99 to $350.

--Cingular Wireless: The No. 1 U.S. provider has nearly 30 live TV channels, including CNN, ESPN and the Weather Channel.

Price: $19.99 for the MEdia Net Unlimited package. HBO content is $4.99 per month for HBO Mobile and $2.99 for HBO Family Mobile.

--Sprint Nextel Corp.: No. 3 U.S. provider offers about 30 channels, plus video-on-demand shows.

Price: "Sprint TV Live" costs $9.99 a month. Sprint Movies cost $3.99 to $5.99 each.

--Verizon Wireless: No. 2 U.S. provider for now is focusing on on-demand video clips from shows such as "Fox News" through its Vcast service, with prices ranging from free to $2.99 apiece.

Price: $15 a month. Some premium content costs up to $1.99 each.

--Alltel Wireless: The largest regional U.S. wireless carrier offers 25 TV channels, a similar lineup as Sprint and Cingular.

Price: $9.99 a month.

--T-Mobile: No. 4 U.S. carrier does not offer TV on cell phones.

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