Mobile DTV ‘Manifesto’ Urges Openness

Concerned that the Mobile Content Venture may be developing a closed mobile DTV platform, the Mobile500 Alliance has circulated among its TV station group-members a 12-point manifesto that asserts that any mobile DTV platform should be open to all broadcasters and that usage data be available to all.

“We want to make sure that any national system that is deployed to feed programming and handle audience measurement and consumer usage and transactional data remains available for broadcasters to participate,” Executive Director John Lawson told TVNewsCheck after it had obtained a copy of the “Statement of Principles.”

“That means avoiding any sort of proprietary technical barriers and rate structures that would make it prohibitive for some broadcasters to use the system.”

The Mobile500 is not trying to force MCV to bring Mobile500 groups in as partners or share revenue, Lawson said, it just wants an open platform.

Openness is critical not only to the Mobile500 members, but also to the consumer electronics manufacturers that are considering equipping mobile devices like tablets and smartphones with mobile DTV receive chips.

“We spoke to a lot of the CE guys at the CES convention [in last Vegas two weeks ago],” Lawson said. “What they made clear is that they want their devices to be able to receive content from any broadcaster.”

MCV is a joint venture of Fox, NBC and 10 other major TV station groups formed to take mobile DTV from a promising technology to a full-blown consumer service. Late last year, it promised that it would offer at least two channels (presumably built around NBC and Fox programming) of service in at least 20 top markets by the end of this year.

Feeling left out when the MCV partners announced their intentions last April at the NAB Show were just about every other TV station group, many with affiliates of NBC and Fox.

They coalesced into the Mobile500 Alliance, which is now led by Colleen Brown of Fisher Communications and Rob Hubbard of Hubbard Broadcasting as chair and vice chair, respectively, and Lawson as executive director.

Leaders of the MCV and the Mobile500 have expressed their intention to work together so that whatever mobile DTV system emerges will be available nationwide.

However, the manifesto itself is strong evidence that much has to be worked out between the two.

Together, the MCV and Mobile500 stations could eventually blanket the nation with mobile DTV service. Point 4 of the manifesto says that the Mobile500 members are committed to providing service to half the American public by the end of this year, and 85% by the end of 2013.

In Point 7, the Mobile500 paints its vision of the service. It would comprise:

• Local news, sports and weather.
• Emergency alerts without the chronic failure of landline and cellular networks in emergencies.
• A basic tier of advertiser-supported programming at no charge to consumers.
• Accessible rich media for persons with disabilities.
• Educational programming and applications from public broadcasters.
• Additional access to video-on-demand, digital video recording, pay-per-view, subscription and other services.

Like MCV, the manifesto says the Mobile500 believes in using conditional access, even though the basic service would be free to the public as conventional over-the-air broadcasting is.

“To preserve content rights, enable new business models and ensure the eligibility of noncommercial broadcasters to participate under FCC rules, free and paid content alike will come with conditional access and require consumers to opt-in on their mobile devices,” it says (Point 8).

The heart of the manifesto is Point 11, “principles governing the business relationship between the mobile DTV network system and any broadcaster that utilizes it.”

Those principles:

• Shared ownership and control of data generated from the consumer’s use of content that stations broadcast to mobile DTV-enabled devices, including audience measurement, demographic, geo-location and other permission-based information.
• Shared ownership and control over billing, transactions and other interactivity that may be conducted over any back channel and that is generated from the consumer’s use of associated content that stations broadcast to mobile DTV-enabled devices.
• Shared participation in future advertising delivery models (e.g., addressable ads based upon consumer data generated from mobile DTV devices) deployed for national and local markets.
• Nothing in any mobile DTV network system should exclude local broadcasters from sharing future subscription, pay-per-use, video-on-demand and other ancillary revenue-generating services as part of the mobile DTV platform, regardless of networks (e.g., 3G, LTE and WiFi) used to transmit the content.
• The manifesto not only speaks to the MCV, but also to the wireless carriers that subsidize wireless phones that use their networks and that have considerable say over what services the phones can access and what becomes of the usage data.
• “To ensure a competitive environment with wireless carriers, data generated from the consumer’s use of, or interaction with, content that broadcasters transmit to mobile DTV-enabled devices will remain under the shared ownership and control of the broadcaster and the mobile DTV network system, regardless of which back channel, including the wireless carrier’s, is used to send the data,” it says (Point 12).

To read the entire manifesto, click here.