Some interesting sound bites from Mobile Content World Australasia:
–Jon Penn, SVP for Asia Pacific, FreemantleMedia Licensings Worldwide, quipped that these days they should call themselves an entertainment producer. In terms of mobile, he said: “There is really only one main threat — and that is if we don’t do anything we’re going to die.” So Freemantle is experimenting with different types of content, figuring that this is the best time to do it since the revenue figures are still low, so there’s not much risk in getting it wrong. Some examples: Taking content from old brands (Toadies Tips from the House of Trousers, a podcast by a character on the soap Neighbours; Baywatch Quickies, a Baywatch episode in a few minutes), current shows (behind the scenes footage from Australian Idol) and new brands (Atomic Wedgie, short form comedy on Sprint).
–Bob Schukai, VP Turner Broadcasting, noted that: “It’s simple for us to create content more multiple platforms, it’s the business model which is tricky.” So the company is looking at a dual distribution strategy, going off-portal so the content is available and also working with carriers for on-deck distribution.
–Frank chindamo, president of Fun Little Movies, mentioned in his talk that Fun Little Movies is in beta testing for launching on the iPhone later this year. The likely business model will be a pay per clip, but that’s not official. He also said that that FLM’s advertising rate is $50 CPM.
–Pavel Grochowicz, general manager Telecom New Zealand, spoke about mobile convergence, suggesting that telcos were looking at horizontal integration because the advantages of vertical integration had mostly been legislated away. However, horizontal integration creates extremely high levels of complexity, and solving that issue can itself raise problems — for example, some solutions require new handsets. As Grochowicz said: Can you imagine saying to customers “we want you to buy a new handset so we can save money” — it’s actually quite a difficult conversation to have.”
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