ITV pursues mobile users — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{All channels and location based programming} ITV pursues mobile users

5 Nov 2005 at 14:06 GMT Timo Poropudas

ITV, the biggest commercial television network in the UK, is planning to deliver more interactive TV, more local news services and new channels over mobile phones and broadband.

Jeff Henry, chief executive of ITV’s consumer division, speaking at the Nokia Mobility Conference 2005 in Barcelona, said that the business model for commercial TV is fundamentally changing.

“We are looking for distribution on all platforms and all devices. The next five years will be more demanding than the last 50.”

A major challenge, according to Henry, is to change people from “viewers into consumers”. This is vital if the industry is to move from being advertising funded to getting the bulk of its revenue from consumers.

A good example is the increasing use of SMS and phone voting in television shows.

Ten of shows brought in GBP 41million in revenues last year.

ITV has set up a new interactive division, ITVi, to expand on these opportunities. New channels would be available on broadband, some free and some on pay-per-view. Channel information is also being designed for mobile TV, with paid for content available that would not be broadcast on TV.

“ITV will spawn an entire family of channels to mobiles. With 100 per cent UK penetration, mobile has become a key distribution platform for ITV.”

ITV will launch the first broadband and mobile channels in early 2006. The company also plans to a launch a local TV service with an eye on the GBP 2 billion spent annually on classified advertising.

This would include Wap advertising services and some use of location-based e-commerce.

DVB-H and other technologies

ITV is involved in the DVB-H testing in the UK, but it is also looking at DMB and DAB, Henry said.

The company is actively pursuing 3G Mobile TV since the shareholders of the company demand short term revenue growth.

“If DVB-H is to become the industry standard for mobile TV it needs to be both adopted and in use way before 2012,” Henry maintained.

Land grab mode

According to Henry 3G Mobile TV is in land grab mode right now. Right owners are licensing mobile rights directly to mobile operators that are establishing themselves as content aggregators and broadcaster.

“3G Mobile TV will fail if there is no guiding principles agreed on licensing rights to broadcasters,” Henry said. This would lead to unstructured collection of content being presented to viewers.

“Mobile TV should offer TV as viewers know and understand it, but available on the move, and with extra interactive functionality.”