Mobile Television: The Emergence of a Personal-Mass Media Platform

Television through your mobile phone.  Sounds interesting.  However, the way it currently exists might be more of a headache than an actual convenience.  You get television streamed directly to your mobile phone and you watch it whenever you have free time during the day. If you’re a commuter who spends 3 hours in the metro in New York City, mobile TV can be a godsend, but if you spend the majority of your time in LA traffic like I do, it can be pretty useless.

Currently a very small number of people use mobile TV in the United States.  When comparing it to countries like South Korea, where 1 in 7 people are active Mobile TV users, we are pretty behind in the times.  However, looking at the United States as a whole, we are not a country who is big on public transportation.  Therefore, the things we need on a mobile platform are inherently different. 

Also in some ways, current mobile TV is going against the current trends in television.  People want to watch television on their own schedule… so what good is to have a mobile TV if all you get is commercials? or for that matter, that boring early afternoon programming?  By the time all the good shows come on, the majority of the people are already home.  If these mobile TV companies could come up with some kind of on demand system, where you get to pick what shows your mobile phone gets, that would definitely be worth looking at.

Overall, it doesn’t seem that mobile TV is going to catch up in the US any time soon.  If the companies want to reach an audience past the 20-something year old techie, they will have to come up with innovative programming that will surpass anything we have currently seen.