By Glen Dickson
Consumers are interested in the possibility of watching live mobile digital TV (DTV) broadcasts on their cellphones or other portable devices, particularly for watching local news content, according to a Magid Media Labs survey commissioned by the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC).
The OMVC, a collection of some 800 local TV stations that counts large station groups like Fox, Gannett and ION as members, has driven the development of a new mobile DTV standard for the past two years. That standard will be demonstrated in a range of new receiver devices at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month. But the group has yet to conduct a formal consumer trial of the technology, and skeptics say it is unclear how appealing local mobile DTV broadcasts will be to consumers amidst a variety of on-demand mobile video offerings and existing broadcast services like Qualcomm's FloTV subscription product.
While the OMVC plans to conduct a formal consumer trial in Washington, D.C. early next year, it commissioned the Magid survey to give it some advance intelligence heading into the trial and to help broadcasters consider business models for the service, says OMVC executive director Anne Schelle.
The survey, which Magid conducted online with 1,000 adults aged 18-59, discovered that 46% of mobile device owners find the idea of watching live TV on a mobile device "appealing," with that number rising to 65% for adults 18-29, the so-called "Millennials." When asked what the chances are that they would actually watch live TV on their mobile device, some 36% said they definitely or probably would, with that number rising to 48% for young adults.
