Moonlight Projects is capitalising on its parent company Becker Entertainment’s extensive TV production and branded-content capabilities, teaming up with a major telco to launch mobile phone content by the middle of the year.
While the parties are yet to sign on the dotted line, it’s believed that Moonlight may soon be working with Optus and its pay TV channels, MTV and Ovation to launch ‘mobisodes’ to tap into the increasing trend towards mobile phones as a media platform.
And while some media companies have already made steps towards this area, there are yet to be any big success stories.
Moonlight Projects’, Simon Pelletier, said the problem is, no one has found a logical way to really take advantage of this emerging opportunity.
“You have to show unique content and what we’ve got is an inimitable model of embedding the mobile content into the television content and actually drawing it out so one actually leads onto the other,” Pelletier said.
However, he would not confirm which telco he had been in talks with.
A recent local example of such a collaboration was when XYZ Networks’ Channel V teamed up with Hutchison’s 3 mobile and production company Global Dilemma last year to create an interactive soapie called Forget the Rules, aimed at 18-30-year-olds. Three minute long episodes were aired on the pay TV channel, 3 mobiles and online, inviting audiences to vote on how they want the storyline to unfold.
Dragon Consulting senior consultant, Shane Williamson, said one of the key aspects of mobile TV is that the technology and user experience has to be “very positive”, then people will watch anything—even as long as half an hour.
“The DVB-H trials in Sydney showed that if you use the right technology people can’t keep their eyes off it, because you’re literally watching a small screen TV set and it looks exactly like it does normally. The issue for TV companies and carriers is not to re-purpose TV content for mobile.”
Seven Network head of cross-platform development, Shane Wood, argues however that there is definitely a market for mobile-spin offs originally made for television, but admits the real revenue will come from content specifically made for mobiles. He says, as yet, no one is sure if the best model to access such content should be subscription, pay per view or advertiser-based.
“While the initial results [of broadcasting to mobile trials in the UK, Europe and US] are encouraging, UK telco BT reported that the mobile digital radio made available during its mobile TV trial proved more popular than the TV. So that may be an insight into consumers’ view of the product,” Wood said.
