Content Deals

IDV Global Media-On-Demand: Chinese Seek US Content
A coalition of government policy makers, technology and broadband companies from China have rocked up to the NAB2005 Media Show in Las Vegas.
They’re in town to invite opportunity-seeking US companies to supply programming and interactive content to the Chinese coalition-backed IDV Global Media On-Demand platform, expected to launch in China early next year.
Developed by California-based IDV, the platform was a top-secret project until premiered at the China Media-on-Demand Coalition press conference last week in Beijing, and reflects China’s eagerness to create new technologies for the Internet and telecom.
IDV-Global Media – headed by ex-Microsoft’s Xbox game console designer, Kevin Bachus – expects the new technology to allow Chinese media companies to securely distribute programs worldwide, direct from publisher to consumer.
Bachus rose to media attention when he left Microsoft to start a rival games console business, Infinium Labs. Their product, the Phantom Game Service, downloaded game content directly over an Internet connection. Digital-Lifestyles has been covering the Phantom since the start of 2004, from its first demo, through the announcement of its launch, to them receiving a $50 million credit investment.
Some of the press had speculate that Bachus had left Infinium. At the start of this week he issued a statement denying that he had left Infinium for IDV Global Media.
Duncan Clark, managing director of the Beijing-based consulting firm BDA China Ltd., warned that IDV-Global Media will need support from a range of participants, including telecoms, media and electronics companies (and the government agencies that regulate them) for the project to work.
“What this initiative claims to attain, aligning the interests of many different players in the value chain, is something that has eluded many a media mogul outside China,” Clark sagely added.
IDV GMOD’s platform is an end-to-end solution that includes a second generation PC with a 3D “platform-on-platform” architecture developed by IDV – the first system to receive certification from China as the standard for second generation PCs.
Content will be delivered to consumers by digital feeds from global sources, including a next generation Internet, based on the IPv6 technology, with revenue sharing arrangements for partners.
This system will supply sports events, movies, TV shows, next gen games and other interactive entertainment direct to private residences or hotel rooms worldwide, with the same interface, in High Definition (HD) quality video.
The wonderfully named Dr Fan Yeqiang, deputy director of the China Institute of Policy Studies (CIPS), said in a statement, “Now US media publishers and distributors have a direct platform on which to earn millions of dollars in incremental revenues from their content in the China market. We are offering a safe, certified delivery system never available to US media companies before.”
NAB2005 Media show
21 April, 2005
Electoral Commission Supports o2 WAP Site To Boost “Da Yoof” Vote
The Electoral Commission is supporting efforts to get the UK’s young voters well up for the forthcoming election by encouraging them to get down wiv their mobiles.
With voting turnout fairly miserable among 18-25 year olds, mobile operator o2 has tried to get “Da Yoof” interested by adding an election section to its O2 Active WAP portal.
This will include information on postal voting, how to find the nearest polling station, how to vote, how to obtain a postal vote and answers to frequently asked questions about politics.
Voter turnout fell to an all time low of 59% in the 2001 General Election, and recent polls have suggested that turnout in the coming general election may slump as low as 55 – 56%.
Turnout was lowest in 2001 amongst the younger generation of voters and a recent poll of 3,000 O2 Active users around the 18-24 mark revealed that only 38% intended to vote.
Becky Lloyd, campaigns manager at the Electoral Commission rapped: “It’s important that we communicate with the younger electorate in particular through a medium with which they are comfortable and familiar and mobile phones are a good way of doing this.”
Russ Shaw, Marketing Director at o2 beat boxed, “The Electoral Commission is trying to increase participation in the General Election. O2 Active provides a perfect mechanism for doing so by putting a simple tool for learning more into the pockets of 3.8 million people. This is just one way that this new, instant, always with you communications medium can be utilized by organisations and businesses trying to reach more people, particularly amongst younger audiences.”
It’s not the first time o2 have promoted the use of their mobiles for political discourse – in November 2004, the company hosted a “live text chat” with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Wicked!
The UK’s mobile users are among some of the earliest adopters worldwide. According to new research by MobileYouth, a British child will own its first mobile at age eight, compared to a US child, who will own theirs at 12.
o2 WAP portal
o2’s “live text chat” with Tony Blair.
20 April, 2005
BBC Launches Creative Archive Licence
The BBC has moved a step closer to establishing a ‘public domain of audio-visual material’ with the launch of its ‘Creative Archive’.
The BBC, Channel 4, the British Film Institute and the Open University have teamed up to create the Creative Archive Licence, which aims to pave the way for the legal downloading of film, TV, radio archives and digital content via the Internet by the public.
The four partners in the Creative Archive Licence Group have issued a call to other organisations to join them, with Teachers’ TV and the Arts Council England already committing themselves to join the gang.
The Creative Archive Licence will give a new generation of media users legal access to material which they can use to express their creativity and share their knowledge – all completely free of charge.
The Licence follows on from pledges in the BBC’s Building Public Value document which committed the broadcaster to ‘help establish a common resource which will extend the public’s access while protecting the commercial rights of intellectual property owners.’
Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC liked the look of it: “The Creative Archive Licence provides a unique solution to one of the key challenges of rights in the digital age, allowing us to increase the public value of our archives by giving people the chance to use video and audio material for their own non-commercial purposes.”
The Creative Archive Licence offers an innovative approach to the rights issues that often affect the use of archive material, allowing people to download and use footage and audio for non-commercial purposes.
Each user will agree to abide by the licence conditions before gaining access to any of the available material.
The hope is that soon-to-be launched pilot download schemes will help fuel creativity activity across Britain, with clapperboard-toting types using the footage in personal projects, classroom presentations and their own arty-farty creations.
The long term aim is for work created under the licence to be uploaded back to the originating Website and then shared with others across the Internet.
Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute, liked the cut of the project’s jib: “The Creative Archive Licence gives UK citizens increased opportunities to access and engage with moving image material from the bfi National Film and Television Archive. The project is an important step forward in enabling people to create their own works and explore the potential of digital film-making.’
The Creative Archive Licence hopes to emulate the success of the US based Creative Commons system, where less rigid copyright arrangements have stimulated artistic activity.
The BBC will initially be making footage from natural history and factual programmes available under the licence later this summer, and the BFI will be releasing a package of silent comedy, early literary adaptations, newsreel footage and archive footage of British cities in the early 20th century.
Interestingly, because the BBC is license fee funded they are releasing the content to UK-only Internet users, relying on a GeoIP solution to allow downloads from only UK hosts (not that we think it would be particularly hard for determined folks to circumvent those restrictions).
Creative Archive
14 April, 2005
Vodafone Appeases Content Suppliers with Marketing
There has been much rumblings of discontent from content suppliers to the mobile phone industry, and, as the globally dominant brand, Vodafone have been taking a lot of the flack.
With sales soaring through the roof, you’d think all would be cream cakes and Earl Grey tea in Mobile Land, but trouble’s been a-brewing concerning the split of income from subscribers for the content.
In a world where content providers are used to calling the shots about product pricing – and the mobile companies are used to a similar position of dominance – an uneasy truce has been maintained, with the best spilt available being 50/50.
Clearly dissatisfied with their lot, content providers have been making long whining noises in the direction of Vodafone. They want more money but – not surprisingly – Vodafone aren’t to keen to dish it out.
Feeling the pressure, Vodafone have tried to placate their grumbling partners in the short term by dishing out a sizzling barbeque of buzzwords, liberally doused with PR doublespeak.
We’re not sure if their partners are going to have much of an appetite for what’s on offer – if they can make sense of it – but it seems that Vodafone are offering to spend more on marketing mobile games (without altering their percentage split of the income.)
The extra promotion will clearly be good news for content providers, but the more cynical amongst us will be quick to point out that Vodafone will clearly benefit from the extra publicity too.
It looks like Tim Harrison, Head of Games at Vodafone Group Services, had been smoking pure Moroccan Buzzword when he came out with this piece of baffling industry-speak: “Having pre-agreed, pan-regional marketing and distribution capacity will allow us to run multi-territory co-marketing more easily, improve efficiencies for our partners and benefit the industry as a whole.”
Vodafone will be rolling out their grandly titled ‘Marketing and Distribution Plan’ by the end of April, with the remaining Vodafone Operating Companies and partner markets enjoying “maximised marketing and distribution efficiencies” by the end of Q3 2005.
Vodafone
Vodafone press release
13 April, 2005
Napster Live, Music TV Series To Broadcast On UK’s Channel 4
Napster UK has teamed up with Channel 4 to broadcast a short series of live TV music shows, creating the first national terrestrial television programme to be run by a digital music service.
Napster UK has announced the deal to broadcast the predictably titled “Napster Live”, which will take the form of six 11 minute programmes featuring “established and emerging acts”.
Each episode will serve up an exclusive performance of two songs by a featured artist, along with an interview, biography and the all-important competition spot.
The programmes are being put together by independent television production company Blaze TV (who also knock out the weekly music show CD:UK).
Included in Channel 4’s ‘T4 Youth and Music’ programming, the first show will be screened at midnight on Saturday April 16 and feature rock band Garbage.
Other acts so far confirmed for Napster Live on Channel 4 include MOBO-winning UK R&B artist Estelle and UK rockers The Subways.
Napster Live already exists on the Napster digital music service as audio-only recordings, but the TV show will showcase a new format produced exclusively for Napster and Channel 4 by Blaze TV. Music from the TV show will be made available online at a later date on the Napster UK service.
“We’re incredibly excited to be teaming up with Napster on what feels like a truly unique and exciting proposition for 4Music,” frothed Neil McCallum, Commissioning Editor, T4, Youth & Music. “The bands booked are exactly the sorts of artists we’ve been supporting and this allows us to capitalise on bringing even more live music to a wider, up-for-it audience.”
“To extend the Napster experience to television is the logical next step in the UK roll out of the biggest brand in digital music,” purred Leanne Sharman, Napster vice-president and UK general manager.
Building up to a crescendo of mutual backslapping, Sharman added: “Channel 4 has a deserved reputation for groundbreaking and forward-looking programming as well as championing live music, so we’re delighted to make our TV debut on their platform. Napster is also extremely fortunate to have a partner like Blaze TV whose production skills, expertise and contact book have proven invaluable in creating this series.”
Not one to miss out on the quote frenzy, Conor McAnally, Blaze TV director of programmes, offered this insight: “In a world where the production and consumption of music are changing so drastically and so rapidly we are delighted to be involved with the market leader in music digital downloading and to have been given the opportunity to create exciting new programming for Channel 4 whose commitment to music, and especially new music, is unparalleled in the UK”.
Although eleven minute pop music programmes are hardly going to change the face of modern TV, Napster’s move reflects the inevitable convergence between online and terrestrial TV, with download charts already hitting the mainstream.
The series will be broadcast every Saturday night on Channel 4 from April 16, 2005 for six weeks.
Napster UK
Channel 4
4 April, 2005
R.E.M. On-Demand Music Channel Launched By HomeChoice
Video Networks, providers of the HomeChoice entertainment and communications service, has announced the addition of a brand new R.E.M. video-on-demand (VoD) channel to its platform.
HomeChoice customers keen to keep on losing their religion will gain exclusive access to the channel – which has been entirely designed and built in-house – from 31st March 2005.
Earlier this year also saw the re-release of nine of R.E.M.’s most successful albums including Green, Out of Time and Automatic for the People. The launch of the R.E.M. channel ties in with the band’s UK tour.
The V:MX R.E.M. channel is being trumpeted as the first artist specific video-on-demand package in the world and will sit within HomeChoice’s suite of V:MX music channels, which feature a library of over 3,000 music videos.
The R.E.M. channel will offer a R.E.M. videography (a what?!), featuring the nine re-released R.E.M. albums.
Sofa reclining HomeChoice customers will be able to access music videos – and associated live and documentary footage – by selecting the appropriate album cover using their remote control.
The functionality of the HomeChoice service will let customers create their own R.E.M. play list from the music videos on the channel and optionally purchase downloadable tracks by SMS.
While useful, this isn’t quite as slick as it sounds: if a viewer hears a track they want to buy, they have to click on the onscreen information button which will provide a number to text. A code is then sent back to them which they can enter when they log onto the Internet to download the music track. When we spoke to HomeChoice, they told us they were working on a more integrated way of getting pay-for content to their customers.
Naturally, there’s the usual ring tone guff provided for those who like to display their ‘individuality’ with irritating phone noises, with the channel offering 10 R.E.M. true tones of their most popular tracks, purchasable via SMS for £3 (US$5.60 /€4.40) each.
The R.E.M. channel will also include four competitions throughout the life of the channel, with prizes including an MP3 player pre-loaded with R.E.M. tracks, a pair of VIP tickets to R.E.M.’s concert in Hyde Park in July plus several R.E.M. goody bags.
The deal is what ghastly corporate types would call a “synergetic win win situation”, with Video Networks telling us that “no money has changed hands as both parties have brought certain elements to the channel and will then be sharing the revenue from the downloads and ring tones.” This would make sense, Warners/R.E.M. are providing a lot of content, and HomeChoice/Video Networks are providing a lot of design, programming and, of course, bandwidth. Video Networks have 34 people working in their in-house design studio and within the TV product team.
Roger Lynch, Chairman and Chief Executive, Video Networks Ltd said: “The addition of this on-demand channel is not only a true coup for R.E.M. fans but also ensures Video Networks continues to offer the most innovative music content on TV in the world today.”
The R.E.M. music channel will be automatically available to all shiny, happy customers who currently subscribe to the HomeChoice music package.
The negotiations for the deal with Warner Music have been underway since the beginning of 2005, brokered by a Video Networks BizDev person, who joined them from the music business. The service launches on 31st March 2005 and is available for a total of 16 weeks.
Home Choice
Video Networks
R.E.M. official site
4 April, 2005
3G: Adventures In Compelling Content – Pt 3
With a lucrative mobile market hungry for content, it’s not surprising to find a host of companies getting their thinking caps on.
Conker Media, Mersey TV’s digital development and production division, has already created mobile content for teen-tastic TV soap Hollyoaks, but it’s aware of the challenge ahead:
“It’ll be interesting to see whether we can develop something which is effectively stand-alone and which doesn’t have a TV property with it,” said Lee Hardman, head of Conker Media in an interview with Peter Keighron at Broadcastnow.
“If you can crack that it will be seen as a breakthrough.”
Conker’s latest idea is “textual intercourse” (stop tittering at the back) which gives new writers and directors the opportunity to tell a story on slides with 160 characters.
“In a strange way it’s going back to quite traditional storyboarding,” says Hardman. “I think it’s going to require somebody with good storytelling skills – traditional skills – in order to get the audience’s attention five days a week, 52 weeks a year.”
Last year, Nokia introduced its “Nokia Shorts” competition which invited ‘film-makers’ to enter movies created on consumer level digital video cameras.
The shorts had to be no longer than 15 seconds long, with the winning entries being screened at the Raindance festival, a leading British independent film event.
The winning filmmaker was given the opportunity to make a longer film with a professional crew and a training course at Raindance.
In addition, the winner and two runner-ups each received filmmaking training courses courtesy of Raindance.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 has commissioned cutting-edge animators Empire Square – creators of the Gorillaz music project – to create a series of 90-second to three-minute clips to work on a mobile platform.
In an interesting reversal, the animations will also be shown on TV channel E4.
Although it’s clear that there’s no lack of enthusiasm from creatives to get involved with the mobile industry, the big problem for the network owners is how to extract some revenue out of the content.
Although ventures like the ‘Nokia Shorts’ competition are great for attracting favourable PR and showcasing the potential of 3G, they’re not going to get the network cash tills ringing.
In the next instalment, we’ll look at the problem of raising revenue streams from mobile content.
Nokia Shorts
Raindance Festival
Conker Media
broadcastnow (reg required)
18 March, 2005
Cell Phone Porn On The Way Up
Thrill-seeking mobile phone users around the world slapped out US$400 million on pornographic pictures and video in 2004 – an amount that is expected to rise to US$5 billion by 2010, according to a report by research group Strategy Analytics.
Surfers seeking saucy smut contributed to the fast growth of the adult entertainment sector on the World Wide Web.
Media industries were fast to take advantage of the new medium, with porn connoisseurs among the first to get high-speed Internet access for downloading X-rated films.
In the squinty-small screen of mobile communications, however, pornography might not do as well, with high telecommunications charges and tiny displays reducing the thrill.
“In 2010 we estimate that expenditure on mobile adult content will represent just 5 percent of total end-user spend on mobile content services,” said analyst Nitesh Patel.
“We expect services that are built around sports, music and media to perform better, because they appeal to a wider audience of users,” he added. In addition, there is value in offering news bulletins or a recently scored goal on a mobile screen.
The US$5 billion forecast for 2010 represents a huge upward shift from Strategy Analytics’ earlier predictions, with the company noting that adult entertainment businesses are aggressively building services and customers appear happy to shell out for them.
Playboy and rival Private Media Group have ramped up their offerings, and many mobile phone makers are busy implementing strategies to make sure no subscribers aged under 18 years will be able to access X-rated services.
Additionally, the growth in colour screens (one in every two phones sold in 2005, predicted to rise to four out of five by 2010) along with enhanced video capability is expected to increase the ‘value’ of mobile-delivered porn.
Elsewhere, anecdotal evidence from countries that have a technological edge shows a throbbing interest from consumers, with adult content registering over 23% of the traffic over South Korea’s SK Telecom in late 2003.
17 March, 2005
Is 3G Content Delivering? – Pt 2
Unlike the creative whirlwind that accompanied the dot.com explosion, innovation seems to be a lot slower in the 3G content market.
Limited by strict marketing and corporate product strategies, 3G owners haven’t exactly had a lot to shout about when it comes to mobile content.
Although watching tiny video clips of goalmouth action has a certain appeal (particularly when it’s Cardiff City doing the scoring), all of the networks seem to be offering much the same collection of services.
Predictably, there’s already been many lucrative tie-ins with popular TV shows.
Fans of the teen soap Hollyoaks were offered daily MMS picture slide exclusive stories and Celebrity Big Brother fans could download “behind the scenes” shots, updates and summaries of the show.
ITN news got in on the act too, supplementing their mobile news updates with “today in history” style clips trawled from their vast video archives.
Perhaps Vodaphone’s 60-second “mobisodes”, based on the hugely successful ’24’ series was one of the more successful TV offerings on 3G, with scenes written and shot exclusively for 3G.
All twenty-four instalments of ’24: Conspiracy’ ran for sixty seconds with a cliff-hanger ending leading directly into the next instalment, thus keeping consumer’s fingers hovering over the ‘download video’ key.
“Joel Surnow, Bob Cochran, Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland and their entire creative team have built ’24’ into one of the world’s leading television brands. It’s incumbent upon us at the studio to continually develop new initiatives to service, enhance and extend that brand,” commented Twentieth Century Fox Television President Gary Newman.
“The ’24’ mobile series and the licensing and marketing partnership with world wireless leader Vodafone are truly unprecedented in our business, as they capitalize on the absolute latest in technological innovation and represent a whole new way to reach our fans and promote the original television series.”
So far, almost all the 3G content has been linked to a TV show or brand and mobile consumers seem to value the exclusivity of such content.
While this kind of cross-platform repurposing of content appeals to opportunistic TV stations looking for additional revenues, for the mobile platform to flourish as a medium in its own right, it needs content that exists in its own right.
We’ll take a look at what kind of ideas are bubbling up in part 3.
Hollyoaks Interactive
Fox 24
11 March, 2005
Ikivo, Adobe In Mobile Content Deal
AB (formerly ZOOMON), has announced Ikivo Animator for Windows, a Mobile SVG software application for producing high-quality SVG Tiny animations.
Designed to work with the industry-standard Adobe Creative Suite, Ikivo Animator offers tools to let designers and developers rapidly design, animate, test, and deploy rich Mobile SVG content to mass-market devices.
“Adobe Creative Suite has revolutionized print and Web workflows and is now poised to have a similar impact in mobile content authoring,” said John Brennan, senior vice president of business development at Adobe.
“Designers have previously been hampered by the lack of visual design tools for authoring mobile SVG content. Working with Adobe, Ikivo is introducing an effective mobile content creation workflow based on Ikivo Animator and Adobe Creative Suite, enabling designers and developers to create extraordinary content for mobile distribution.”
Ikivo is hoping that their software will soon become an integral tool in a mobile designer’s armoury and we’ll all soon be grooving to Ikivo-created cray-zeee animations on our handsets.
SVG content created in Illustrator CS can be imported into Ikivo Animator where a set of tools will allow designers to move, scale, rotate, and change their attributes over time; embed interactivity; and output the finished animation in SVG Tiny.
In-between cappuccinos, designers can use the preview tools in Ikivo Animator to see how their work will look on different targeted mobile devices.
Designers can then incorporate their animated SVG Tiny graphics into XHTML pages or MMS presentations using GoLive CS.
This new workflow enables designers and developers to prepare animated SVG Tiny graphics, such as comics, infotainment, location-based services, maps, financial services, and – more than likely – really irritating cartoons for distribution to mobile consumers.
Ikivo CEO Stefan Elmstedt comments “Ikivo solutions are being used by major phone manufacturers, such as Siemens, Sony Ericsson, and network operators throughout the world. Now we are extending that value by partnering with Adobe to provide strategic mobile solutions.
The combination of Adobe’s design and publishing power and Ikivo’s unique Mobile SVG software applications create a fantastic push for overall support of Mobile SVG within the emerging market for 2D based mobile graphics.”
Ikivo Animator for Windows is available immediately with Ikivo Animator scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2005.
Ikivo
Adobe Creative Suite
SVG (w3.org)
11 March, 2005