Matt Kapko

RCR Wireless News
Concerts are nothing new on mobile. Sprint Nextel Corp. aired the first concert on mobile in 2005 with a huge marketing push behind a Bon Jovi concert that year. Others have followed since then.

Verizon Wireless gets the nod for being the first carrier to broadcast a concert live over its network, which it did last month during an intimate Madonna concert in New York City.

The category got another boost last month when AT&T Mobility launched an exclusive concerts channel on its Mobile TV with FLO service on MediaFLO USA Inc.’s network.

Each of the nation’s top three carriers have experimented with varying approaches to artist performances. While there are many similarities, there are also distinct differences.

Sprint, the early pioneer

Sprint Nextel has done a mix of live and taped recordings that it makes available on-demand for later viewing, said Aaron Radelet, a company spokesman.

The carrier determines what artists’ customers are most interested in and will either cut a major sponsorship with them, put on an intimate, private show with the artist or tag along for a select performance, Radelet said.

Last year, the carrier was the only U.S. mobile operator to provide footage from the Live Earth concerts around the world, he said. Much of its content remains available and is indexed by song title and artist name.

On the Sprint Exclusive Entertainment channel, the carrier plays an average of 200 clips a week, Radelet said.

The carrier has also done exclusive on-demand concerts with Busta Rhymes, Juanes, Wolfmother and 50 cent.

Verizon’s deep catalog

Ed Ruth, VZW director of music, said the carrier has been doing taped live performances for two to three years now through various artist and venue partnerships, including Live Nation.

Since the company put on an intimate Madonna concert at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom last month, it’s top two clips on its Vcast service have been from that show, Ruth said.

“The majority of what we do is going to be on-demand,” he said. “There are going to be strategic partnerships that we absolutely want to do live ventures with.”

He called the MediaFLO service an option that the company is looking into for live performances, which fit in very will with the format. He hinted at some major announcements the carrier plans to unveil soon.

“It’s part of a larger strategy for us,” Ruth said. “This is an opportunity for us to showcase a concert in general,” he said. “There are many different valuable traits to it.”

And because of that, the carrier packages performance videos with behind-the-scenes footage and other content that will give fans a look at another layer of the artist, Ruth added.

Prior to selecting artist partners, Ruth said the carrier considers the artist’s performing ability, album quality, how easy the artist might be to work with and what issues it might run into surrounding licensing and other clearance dilemmas.

The carrier inks about 10 deep relationships with artists a year.

AT&T, Control Room, MediaFLO

When AT&T Mobility launched its Mobile TV with FLO service last month, it came out swinging with a 24/7 exclusive channel dedicated to concerts.

Control Room, a production and distribution company, signed a deal with the carrier to provide full concert footage from about 30 artists to air in 24-hour cycles on the channel each day. One day might be Lenny Kravitz and the next might be Rage Against the Machine.

The channel is exclusive to AT&T for 60 days.

Mike Bailey, VP of programming at MediaFLO USA, said MediaFLO selects which artists to air and decided to run the channel in 24-hour blocks while Control Room provides the content and helps optimize the channel for the FLO service.

“Our MTV channel is extremely popular, and the Control Room channel has also proven highly successful. We anticipate that music-related content, including live concerts, will continue to play a key role in our programming going forward,” he wrote in response to questions.

“As a part of a well-balanced programming lineup, we believe music … has a key role to play in attracting customers, particularly younger customers, to the FLO TV service.”

Bailey declined to release any specific viewing data. As to why the channel is only being made available for 60 days, Bailey said MediaFLO has seen great success with limited-duration channels that it’s done previously with X Games and Big Brother.

“We believe that these special programming offerings help to keep the service fresh and exciting for consumers,” he said.

GoTV on the concert experience

GoTV Networks Inc. has centered much of its concert programming on the experience a fan would have if they were at the concert or festival, Possum Hill, an executive producer at the company, wrote in response to questions.

“We hit as many concerts and festivals as possible,” Hill wrote. Viewership increased when the company started including snippets of live concert performances in addition to its acoustic lounge performance, Hill added.

“With the crazy costs of festivals and concerts these days, people want to see their favorite acts some how, some way.”

RCR Wireless News
SAN FRANCISCO — You could cut the anticipation with a knife leading up to Apple Inc.’s Worldwide Developer Conference this morning. The company delivered the iPhone 3G to thunderous applause more than 75 minutes into a nearly two-hour presentation.

The sold-out event brought 5,200 people to the company’s annual gathering for developers and kicked off with details about the iPhone 2.0 software, App Store and 11 new application demonstrations from developers.

“I think it’s widely believed that this is the phone that changed phones forever,” CEO Steve Jobs said.

Calling the iPhone “one of the most amazing products I’ve ever had the pleasure of being involved with,” Jobs checked off five major areas that Apple was pressed to improve on — 3G support, GPS functions, enterprise features, third-party applications, more scale and a lower price — and he said the company delivered on each with the new device. The 3G iPhone is scheduled to launch in 22 countries on July 11.

“We did figure out what our next challenges are, the next mountain we have to climb to go to the next level,” Jobs said. Although 6 million iPhones have been sold thus far, Jobs said the price must drop before reaching greater scale.

“We need to make the iPhone more affordable,” he said. Apple hopes to sell 10 million iPhones by year’s end. The company currently commands a 2.6% share of the handset market in the United States and 0.6% worldwide, according to Strategy Analytics.

The lower price

The 3G, 8GB iPhone will sell for $200 in the United States, with the more spacious 16 GB model priced at $299 — both with a 2-year contract at AT&T Mobility. (The first-generation iPhone continues to be listed on the AT&T Mobility site at $399 for the 8GB model and $499 for the 16GB model, though both are tagged as “temporarily out of stock.”) The pricing likely comes as bad news for handset vendors trying to catch up with the first generation of the device.

Further, the new pricing indicates a new business model for Apple and AT&T Mobility.

“The new agreement between Apple and AT&T Mobility eliminates the revenue-sharing model under which the carrier shared a portion of monthly service revenue with Apple,” AT&T said in a statement. “Under the revised agreement, which is consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements, there is no revenue sharing and both iPhone 3G models will be offered at attractive prices to broaden the market potential and accelerate subscriber volumes.”

AT&T Mobility said it expects iPhone subsidies to dilute its earnings per share by 10 cents to 12 cents through the end of next year. The carrier said things will then turn around in 2010.

AT&T said unlimited iPhone 3G data plans for consumers will be available for $30 a month, in addition to voice plans starting at $40 a month. Business users will pay $45 per month for data, in addition to a voice plan.

Click here for more details on AT&T’s plans for the 3G iPhone.

The developers

Scott Forstall, senior VP of iPhone software, introduced 11 different engineers that each has developed applications that will be available through Apple’s iPhone App Store at launch or shortly after. Sega, eBay, Loopt, TypePad, Associated Press, Pangea Software, Cow Music, MLB.com, Modality, MIMvista and Digital Legends Entertainment all showcased their applications built for the device to varying levels of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd.

“We’ve developed for nearly every mobile platform; this one is the best,” Loopt’s Sam Altman said. “We think this is a new era in mobile.”

Apple’s Forstall also introduced a new feature that allows iPhone users to receive notifications of changes on an application even when the user isn’t actively using the application. Instant messaging messages and more will be made available through a new Apple Push Notification Service that maintains one consistent link with the device, rather than requiring multiple applications to run in the background.

Click here for more details on forthcoming iPhone applications.

The specs

During his presentation, Jobs showed off the iPhone’s performance over a Wi-Fi hotspot, a 3G network and an EDGE connection. The new device pulled up NationalGeographic.com over 3G in 21 seconds and took 59 seconds on the EDGE network. Wi-Fi clocked the site in at 19 seconds. “You can see that the 3G speeds are actually approaching Wi-Fi,” Jobs said.

The “3G” aspect of the new iPhone calls out the device’s tri-band HSDPA support in the 850/1900/2100 MHz bands in addition to its quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support from the previous model. (No word in Apple’s press release about support for HSUPA technology, which AT&T Mobility has baked into its recent network upgrades.) Apple claims the device will have 10 hours of talk time in GSM mode and 5 hours of talk time in UMTS mode. The device continues to include Wi-Fi capabilities as well inside its new, slimmer profile.

Speaking of aesthetics, the 3G iPhone will now come in two colors: black for both models and white for the 16GB model. The new colors are rendered in plastic that will replace the previous models’ aluminum casing.

The new device also includes assisted GPS technology and Bluetooth 2.0, which were both lacking in the original model. The GPS functionality was central to several new applications that were presented during the event that also highlighted new applications developed for the iPhone platform through its software development kit.

Apple also touted the new device’s support for enterprise applications, as well as Apple’s new MobileMe service that pushes e-mail, contacts and calendar events from a central Apple server to the iPhone. The MobileMe service is set to replace Apple’s previous .mac service.

Other “improvements” to the device include a flush headphone jack and the inclusion of a “SIM ejector tool.”

RCR Wireless News
MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — The writing team of Terry Rossio and Jocelyn Stamat wasn’t allowed to write during the 100-day-long writer’s strike that ended last February, but they were able to think and imagine — and that’s exactly what they did.

Enter “HighSpeed Dating,” a new made-for-mobile and online short sketch comedy series that got its first preview here at the MEFCON conference last week.

“This is sort of speed dates gone horribly wrong,” said Rossio, an Oscar-nominated writer/producer who’s worked on “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Déjà vu,” “The Mask of Zorro,” “Shrek” and others.

Rossio was drawn to the idea and the medium because it emphasizes ideas, performance and writing with a much more immediate return, he said. “You don’t need a lot of spectacle to have fun with these and you can explore the human condition in an endless amount of ways,” Rossio added.

“It lent itself to something that we could do on our own. On some of these big movies — on “Déjà Vu” I think it was like seven years in creation,” he said. “A lot of times you embark on these projects and the reward is years away, if at all.”

But even more powerful than that is the appeal of maintaining control of the entire project down to the final two-minute clip, he said.

So far they’ve shot 10 episodes and have spent $28,500 thus far with plenty of post-production and more costs still to come. Frank Chindamo, who runs Fun Little Movies, a mobile video production company, said he was absolutely thrilled at the opportunity, just marveling at the scripts.

“This is like the best made-for-mobile script I’ve ever seen,” he recalled thinking after Rossio and Stamat first presented him with the idea. The company is now meeting with potential sponsors to come on board before it releases the series later this year.

The pair of clips shown at MEFCON were quick witted, wasted no time moving the story along and got laughs from the audience along most of the way.

Sketch comedy on mobile is about eccentric characters, diving right into the topic and presenting ideas that are entertaining, interesting and might even make you think a bit, Rossio said. Every word has to be funny, give a characterization or move the story forward, he said.

“To do comedy pieces like this … you get the sense that you are really bound by what people want to see,” Stamat said.

“They want to be rewarded and they have to be rewarded otherwise you’re losing them in 30 seconds,” she said. “It’s better to err on the side of being quick.

Stamat, who is also a trained professional surgeon, admits the idea originally stemmed from her own failed attempts at speed dating.

Rossio said content for mobile and online will garner more value and industry-wide recognition in the next couple years.

“It’s a meritocracies system,” he said, adding that it will quickly get included in industry award categories and such with more popularity surrounding the medium.

Indeed, Fun Little Movies won the content award at the 2008 Mobile Entertainment Forum awards last month and other organizations are honoring content producers for their work in mobile.

“It’s not another summer movie that someone’s shoving down your throat with advertising,” Rossio said. Recognition will flow from viewers upward.