The Federal Communications Commission Tuesday released technical papers supporting and expanding on its national broadband plan spectrum proposals, including making its pitch for reclaiming broadcast spectrum.
In the U.S., young people’s media usage is markedly different from that of older generations but is likely to converge with their elders as they themselves grow older, according to Nielsen SVP of Consumer Insights Dounia Turrill at the Consumer 360 conference in Las Vegas 6/16.
That’s the suggestion of Tim Doyle, made in a blog post at an SNL Kagan website. Doyle says that a consortium of cable companies led by Comcast, and including Cox and Time Warner, made a speculative spectrum buy and are now simply sitting on it.
By Tim Doyle
FCC Media Bureau Chief William Lake again pitched broadcasters on the possible windfalls they could reap from spectrum auctions. And they may now be listening.
At SNL Kagan’s TV and Radio Finance Summit in New York on June 16, Titan Broadcast Management President Bert Ellis seemed open to FCC auctions of broadcast spectrum, if the price is right.
"If someone wants to buy all our spectrum for $20 million, we’ll do it," he said, adding that the company would listen to offers for less. More broadly, he said TV stations need more options, such as the auctions or the ability to broadcast more HD streams.
Initial feedback from the Open Mobile Video Coalition’s consumer trial of mobile DTV service in Washington is positive, according to the OMVC.
"We’ve had viewers praising the picture quality and the flexibility mobile DTV provides them," said Aaron J. Heffron, VP of Harris Interactive, on behalf of the coalition.
Among the findings:
The trial involves about 150 consumers and nine TV stations broadcasting 23 channels with dozens of free programs on specially-equipped mobile DTV receiving devices. The service also includes interactive advertising, electronic program guides, closed captioning and emergency alerts.
The trial started in May with consumers equipped with a specially-modified Samsung Moment phone. This week, OMVC is deploying prototypes of the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbooks with built-in mobile DTV receivers. It will later offer mobile DTV-equipped DVD players from LG Electronics and Tivizen receivers from Valups.
Managed by OMVC, the trial is sponsored by LG Electronics and Samsung.
comScore has released data from its comScore MobiLens service showing that the UK had more users accessing sports content from mobile devices than the other EU5 countries (Germany, France, Spain and Italy), in April 2010, while Spain exhibited the strongest growth rate in the category.
The European market for mobile sport access has increased 52 per cent in the past year to 25m users in April 2010. The UK had nearly 7m users, approximately 1m more than its nearest rival, Italy. The Spanish market grew by an impressive 85 per cent over the past year, more than twice the growth rate experienced by the UK (41 per cent). Germany is the second fastest-growing market in Europe (up 58 per cent) followed by Italy (53 per cent) and France (42 per cent).
The comScore analysis also found that live sports, particularly football, are a significant driver of mobile sports content consumption. In the UK, the peak usage time for viewing sports content on mobile devices is on weekends between 3pm and 6pm.
“Given that Premier League games traditionally kick off at 3pm on the weekend, we’re not surprised to see the jump in sport consumption at this time,” says comScore senior mobile analyst, Alistair Hill. “The GSMA Mobile Media Metrics data shows this granular level of mobile web usage for the UK market, supporting the hypothesis that football is a key driver of mobile sports activity.
“Incidentally, we also observed a peak in mobile sport access in June 2006, around the time of the last World Cup. With so many more smartphones and internet-enabled handsets, along with more mobile-friendly websites than ever before, we anticipate that the FIFA World Cup will drive mobile web usage to record levels in Europe.”
Mobile Content Venture (MCV), the recently-announced mobile content joint venture comprised of 12 major broadcast groups, announced that Erik Moreno, SVP of Corporate Development for Fox Networks Group, and Salil Dalvi, SVP of Mobile Platform Development for NBC Universal Digital Distribution, have been appointed interim Co-General Managers. The 12 broadcast groups included in MCV are Belo, Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Fox, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, ION Television, Media General, Meredith, NBC, Post-Newsweek Stations and Raycom Media.
Mobile broadcasting soon will be picked up by any mobile device or in-car entertainment system that has that has a special electronic chip. For devices that don’t have the chip, an adapter could be purchased.
Don’t have time to watch television at home?
Soon you will be able to pick up over-the-air local television broadcasts on the bus, at the airport, or anywhere else you can think of.
That’s thanks to a new broadcasting format that lets television stations beam their free live broadcasts 24 hours a day to cell phones, laptops and other portable devices. So far, mobile broadcasting is only happening in a few test markets such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago. But the technology is expected to make its debut across the country, including Northeast Ohio, later this year.
Last week, broadcasters and electronics manufacturers set aside their spectrum-allocation differences long enough to chat about a shared future in mobile digital TV. The meeting of the minds, which took place at the Newseum in Washington, marked the launch earlier this month of the Open Mobile Video Coalition’s D.C. market test of mobile DTV. Through the test, D.C.-area stations and select cable channels are being delivered to several hundred consumers armed with mobile devices that include built-in DTV receiver chips.
By Harry A. Jessell
TVNewsCheck, May 28 2010, 2:26 PM ET
The FCC has disbanded its $20-million broadband task force with a pat on the back for a job well done, but its proposal to take back a large swatch of TV spectrum lives on as a torment to broadcasters.
The FCC is inviting broadcasters and others to FCC headquarters in Washington on June 25 for a daylong Broadcast Engineering Forum to discuss the proposal and its implications for broadcasters.
Broadcasters have little choice but to accept and participate. The FCC has many ways of making life miserable for broadcasters who don’t show respect. When the FCC says jump, the broadcasters just hope it’s not into the Tidal Basin.
BERLIN — When South Korea plays Greece on June 12 in its World Cup soccer opener in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, life will not necessarily grind to a halt back in Seoul. Many fans will instead follow a live broadcast of the match on their mobile phones. In South Korea, free-to-air mobile TV is a five-year-old fact of life. According to the country’s broadcasters, 27 million people — 56 percent of the population — watch regularly. Continue reading »
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN
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