Martez Moore, vice president of strategy and business development at BET, has outlined Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) attitude to mobile content: “If we can think about interesting, smart and creative ways to deliver our content, it has tremendous dividends. Because we’re connecting with our consumer not solely when they’re in front of their televisions at home, but we’re interacting with them constantly as they move around and live their lives on a daily basis. What that does is that allows us to capture additional mind share–attention share, if you will–and further deepen our connection with our customer. So it’s extremely important strategically and that was the real catalyst behind why we decided to become players in the mobile industry.” BET offers bundles of ringtones, wallpapers and games for $3.99 according to RCR Wireless, which is a strong differentiation from the more costly plans from other media players.
However, it wants to offer video programming and for that it needs to be on-deck in partnerships with carriers — it launched on Verizon’s Vcast back in February, and plans to be on Cingular in the second half of this year. Moore also seems to understand that the point of mobile from a content developer perspective is not to offer exclusive content to a carrier or to be able to issue a press release about a gee-whiz technology, but rather to provide content to as many of its customers as possible in the time and place of their choosing. “Exclusive content that is solely provided to one carrier to the exclusion of the other antagonizes that concept of meeting your customers’ demands,” said Moore.
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