Kate Bulkley, Media Analyst.

Media Money: Behind the Numbers. Does the long-heralded concept of mobile TV make any money?

By Kate Bulkley

Broadcast News

For Broadcast June 14, 2007

If Peter Bazalgette can't figure something out first time, what chance the rest of us? Two years ago Baz stood up at a conference in Cannes and said how excited he was about mobile TV content. Last week, in a town just down the Cote d'Azur, the same Baz had a very different view.

In 2005, made-for-mobile programming seemed an obvious direction to take, opening a massive new distribution platform that seemed much more feasible than broadband TV on the internet. Mobile phone operators have always known how to get money from their customers. Compare that to the "it's all free" attitude of the internet and mobile phones were seen to be the future.

But in 24 months Baz has turned 180 degrees. Now he (and others) will tell you that there are problems. He'll tell you that mobile phone operators have not worked out the revenue shares or how to incorporate ads into their TV content; that the range of different networks means mobile shows have to be made in dozen of different versions; that marketing shows is problematic because of who controls the "home page" on the phone screen.

What is mobile TV to the audience anyway right now £ is it clips or streamed channels or what? And pricing? Well, as long as operators continue useage-based charging for mobile content rather than all-you-can-eat flat rates, the customer is very wary.

Broadband TV looks a better bet in 2007. Everyone with content is posting stuff to the web, creating websites and getting into bed with the likes of MySpace. There may be chaos on the web, but it still seems a great opportunity for content £ and one Baz likes the look of.

Are imports worth their hefty price tags?

Say the words Six Degrees in the crowded lunch room at Soho House and watch the TV execs flinch. Last year ITV spent good money on the US show only to see it pulled from schedules before filming finished on season one.

This year UK buyers headed to LA with a tighter hand on their wallets. Who can blame them? Lost may have averaged 1.1 million viewers a week during its recent run on Sky One, but the satellite broadcaster had to spend almost £1m per episode to get it - about twice what a normal US hit show might cost.

The back of the cigarette packet calculations suggest this equates to 89p per viewer per episode. A good deal? Sky head of acquisitions David Symth is tight-lipped, but admits: "Ratings are important but they aren't the whole picture. It's important for us to have shows which attract subscribers and ones that keep subscribers."

Sky One's deal to buy season three of Prison Break poses more questions. How much do you pay for the difficult third series of a popular drama? Some experts would say you need three or four series to build a brand properly and Sky clearly believes it can make something of the show's 1 million regular viewers on Five.

Five has bet an estimated £300m on eight years of Neighbours and is likely needs at least 2 million viewers per show to break even (and this in a market where advertising is at a fairly low ebb).

Evaluating the worth of TV imports is a complex cocktail. They may be costly but they can add a status show to your schedule, create a marketable franchise and draw in ample audiences and ad revenues. They also have the potential to hit the youth demographic so viewers (and advertisers) look at you differently.

One US show whose title seems to sum it up is Disney's drama about a lawyer to a wealthy New York family: Dirty Sexy Money. There's a few broadcasters that would fancy some of that.

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