Will iPhone and G1 owners sit still for full-length TV shows?

NEW YORK, N.Y. - At the "Future of Television Show" Wednesday night, top brass from NBC and MTV said their companies now plan to stream full-length TV shows to iPhones and G1s. But other speakers argued in favor of shorter clips for phones.

Apple's iPhone and T-Mobile's Android-based G1 are turning into big catalysts for mobile TV development, speakers agreed. But the experts differed over what kinds of TV content will go over best on mobile phones.

The iPhone, Android G1, and other new smartphones offer large enough screens for full-scale TV programming, contended Salil Dalli, senior VP of mobile platform development for NBC Universal Digital Distribution.

Beyond that, until lately, the mobile phone market has been so fragmented that TV content for phones was looking cost prohibitive, according to Alice Kim, senior VP for digital distribution and partner relations at MTV Networks. "You had to port content to every single device," she illustrated.

In fact, MTV was about ready to scrap its plans for mobile content entirely -- except for games -- until the iPhone and G1 came along, Kim conceded.

"[But] the iPhone is making huge waves in the market," she told the audience. MTV has already produced content for the iPhone, and it's now working on TV fare for the G1. Two other mobile platforms will be added next year, although Kim didn't say which ones.

She did voice hopes, though, that content for the G1 will run actually run interchangeably on other Android phones, as it's "supposed to [do]."

NBC's Dalli said that, after considering otherwise, NBC has decided not to tweak its TV shows -- very much, at least -- for running on mobile phones.

"What we've found is that [people don't want] a two-minute version of 'The Office,'" according to the NBC senior VP. Instead, consumers are out for the "flexibility" of watching their favorite shows on a choice of a conventional TV or mobile phone.

NBC also plans to stick closely to consumer "behaviors that already exist." Mobile users will "start with typing in a URL" to get to a Web page for streaming video, Dalli said. NBC does expect to add a content search feature to its mobile TV fare, though.

Kim said that MTV ultimately decided to run most of its content "as is" on mobile devices, after earlier forays at content trimmed down for specific phones. New media streaming technologies such as MediaFLO are helping that to happen, according to the senior VP.

On the other hand, on one of MTV's shows -- about the musical group the Jonas Brothers -- participants have used cameras on mobile phones to shoot some of the video aired in the program.

MTV has also pondered the idea of bundling video applications on phones, but this concept is precluded by the difficulty of coming up with programming that would cut across the demographics of various consumers buying the phones. A 30-year-old male who regularly tunes in to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" isn't likely to want to watch "The Hills," she pointed out.

But some of the other speakers didn't agree that video content should be the same for mobile phones and TVs. Frank Chindamo, president and CEO of Fun Little Movies, said his company deals only in creating video content specifically for mobile platforms.

While The Hallmark Channel's movies are available for streaming to mobile phones, noted Henry Schlieff, president and CEO of CrownMedia Holdings/Halllmark Channel, he expressed doubts that people will be willing to watch full-length movies on a phone screen. Clips and "snippets" will work better, according to the CEO.

Schlieff also acknowledged that Hallmark doesn't have the financial resources to "be a Disney." But, he said, Hallmark is now looking at the possibilities of releasing its films on Blu-ray DVD, as well as at increasing the budgets for its TV movies to lure better known actors.

A film such as "Slumdog Millionaire" would be the type of movie "we could do," said Schlieff.

The advent of the iPhone and Android phones will also change the game for network service providers, speakers predicted. Service providers will leverage video and other mobile apps -- together with smartphones -- to sell higher bandwidth 3G and 4G wireless offerings, according to NBC's Dalli. "We think we can help providers like Verizon," Dalli said.

But meanwhile, service providers will find themselves veering away from the role of selling pure bandwidth into the position of being content providers themselves, said MTV's Kim.

In their new roles, service providers will go with whatever content will sell best, suggested Shelly Palmer, host of MediaBytes and author of Television Disrupted.

Consequently, a small application such as a location-based online dating service might fare better than full-length TV shows on mobile platforms, according to the digital TV specialist.

And while some members of the TV broadcasting industry are obviously enthusiastic about Android, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) recently lobbied hard but unsuccessfully to thwart a Google-led campaign to the FCC to open up the white spaces of the spectrum to Android-based and other consumer devices.

For its part, the NAB argued that consumer devices operating in this spectrum would interfere with TV broadcasting equipment, Palmer noted.

But the answer to the interference question still isn't known, Palmer told the group. For every engineer who claims that interference will occur, another engineer will attest that it won't.