Mobile Content Venture

A joint-venture of 12 major broadcast groups across 12 markets plan to launch a number of on-air, digital and live interactive events to promote Dyle’s mobile TV service and new Audiovox wireless receiver.

Mobile Content Venture’s Dyle mobile TV service will use Rentrak’s Mobile Essentials solution in combination with Rentrak’s StationView Essentials solution “to help MCV members align traditional TV ratings with broadcast mobile TV performance.”

The electronics maker will offer a back-seat entertainment system that will receive Mobile Content Venture’s Dyle moblie TV service.

The Dallas-based wireless carrier on Friday took the wraps off a long-promised smartphone that is capable of receiving  the Dyle mobile broadcasts of stations aligned with the Mobile Content Venture, the consortium of NBC, Fox and leading TV groups. 

Mobile Content Venture, a little known, but powerful consortium of broadcasters, wants to deliver local and live TV to phones and tablets. But does anyone care?

CBS commits to simulcasting the Dyle mobile DTV service at four of its O&Os and has given permission to five affiliates  to get on board.  ABC has given the go-ahead to its affiliates in Dallas and Orlando. In addition, NBC has given its affiliate in Austin, Texas, permission to air its signal on the condition that it uses Dyle’s conditional access. For all that’s going on at NAB 2012, click here.

Broadcaster-owned MCV and Mobile500 showed devices and apps that they say consumers may use to receive their broadcast-based mobile services later this year. But neither had a launch date or particulars about programming. Meanwhile, Syncbak demonstrated its authentication technology designed to give copyright holders comfort that the programming TV stations put on broadband networks will stay in their local markets.

The unit, which attaches to the bottom of the Apple iPads and iPhones, contains a mobile DTV tuner and turns conventional earphones into a receive antenna that can pull in UHF and high-band VHF signals.

Later this year, MetroPCS will offer a new Samsung smartphone with a mobile DTV tuner chip and telescoping antenna. Subscribers will be able to register for Mobile Content Venture’s Dyle service and watch “national and local” programming broadcast by TV stations. More announcements from MCV are forthcoming.

Los Angeles’ KMEX and Miami’s WLTV will be among the broadcasters deploying Dyle, the consumer-facing brand presenting live mobile TV.

It’s looking like it will be at least another year before TV stations will be able to offer over-the-air programming to smartphones, tablets and netbooks. Much progress has been made, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. But broadcasters don’t have all the time in the world. They are in a competition with broadband. If broadcasters drag this out too long, the broadband carriers will come up with their own “broadcast” solution and broadcasters won’t get their chance.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition finds that while stations in 48 markets will be ready to go, tablets, smart phones and other personal devices capable of receiving the signals will be not be available until well into 2012. OMVC is working on the necessary guidelines so that samples can be built and shown to retailers at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The group hopes the new name and logo will help consumers identify mobile TV enabled devices. MCV will use the Dyle brand to certify that a device is capable of receiving and decrypting live mobile broadcast TV signals. The name and logo are part of MCV’s strategy to drive awareness of and educate consumers about mobile TV, MCV said.

The group of broadcasters promoting mobile DTV is ramping up its plans for a service that will be compatible with whatever the other major mobile initiative, Mobile Content Venture, develops. Mobile500 planners are proposing a joint venture with broadcasters that will develop and market 15-20 channels, including five or six local free channels, 14 or 15 national pay channels and a “hybrid” VOD service using the wireless broadband network, but fully integrated with the broadcast service in a single user interface.

Counting the 20 markets from previous announcement, Mobile Content Venture has now promised to introduce the service in 32 markets by the end of this year. New markets on list include Seattle, Miami, Denver, Cleveland, St. Louis, Charlotte, Raleigh, Kansas City, Columbus, Las Vegas, Tulsa and Montgomery.

The importance of tailoring mobile DTV business models to meet evolving consumer needs was one of the topics at Monday’s panel on the new medium and potential revenue stream for broadcasters. Others include lessons from more mature mobile markets overseas and updates from representatives of the Mobile Content Venture and the Mobile 500 Alliance.

As U.S. broadcasters prepare to launch mobile DTV services, they’ve learned important lessons from earlier, similar efforts overseas. First, it’s become clear that to succeed, a mobile service must include free content that consumers know and like at the time they expect it to be on. Then, it must also offer premium content, games and more.

The Mobile500 Alliance executive director says that TVNewsCheck’s Jan. 20 story on the Mobile500 Alliance’s “statement of principles” may have” created for some the impression of a level of discord between the Mobile500 Alliance and the Mobile Content Venture that doesn’t exist.”

The Mobile 500, concerned that other mobile DTV proponents may be working toward a closed platform, details in 12 points that it’s in the best interests of broadcasters, consumer electronics manufacturers and the public to avoid “any sort of proprietary technical barriers and rate structures that would make it prohibitive for some broadcasters to use the system,” according to Mobile500 Executive Director John Lawson.

Digital security technology specialist Nagra-Kudelski will handle “conditional access” as the Mobile Content Venture outlines that and other technical details of its upcoming mobile DTV service.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition, led by Anne Schelle (left),  will highlight mobile DTV tech during the annual convention in Las Vegas this week, explaining the technology and displaying the growing number of devices equipped to receive mobile DTV. It will release more encouraging results from its recent consumer trial, and it will open up its ranks to non-broadcasters — device manufacturers, app developers, content providers and others hoping to exploit the new platform. Backing it up will be representatives of two consortia of broadcasters — the Mobile Content Venture and the Mobile500 Alliance — committed to bringing the mobile DTV services to market this year.

The broadcast industry has been developing mobile digital TV for several years, and a small number of stations are on the air, but the platform’s availability remains limited. In 2011, the technology is expected to gain momentum as the Mobile Content Venture, a group of 12 major broadcasters, will be upgrading stations to start delivering mobile DTV in 20 markets covering more than 40% of the U.S. population.

The announcement by the Mobile Content Venture that at least 40 NBC and Fox O&Os and affiliates will start broadcasting ad-supported mobile DTV service next year is the first step in moving broadcast TV into what promises to be a revolutionary and profitable future. Now what’s needed is for the networks to work out the  copyright issues so that all stations can take all their network programing mobile. And perhaps now, the FCC will start to realize that there are more better ways to serve consumers and more efficient uses for TV spectrum than just handing it all over to broadband.

Led by the Mobile Content Venture, the O&Os and affiliates of the two networks will air at least two ad-supported mobile DTV channels in at least 20 markets by the end of 2011. The effort is aimed at encouraging the manufacture of mobile receivers and sparking consumer demand. MCV would not discuss what the programming will be, but industry sources said it will likely be simulcasts of the stations’ conventional broadcasts. “The good news…is that we are finally getting going,” says MCV’s Eric Moreno.