Worst of the Week: Please Change the Channel

Hello!

And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCR Wireless News to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!

And without further ado:

So I’ve been trying out various mobile TV services for the better part of two years now, and I gotta say: So far, the mobile TV market is pretty much crap.

Now, I’m not trying to be mean. I know it’s hard work creating quality video content. Even regular TV has its ups and downs. After all, that show “King of Queens” has been on for, like, years, and watching it is physically painful. And have you seen that new sitcom, “War at Home?” I mean, geez.

But that doesn’t mean that the mobile TV market has to suck so hard. There’s plenty of stuff on TV that I wouldn’t mind watching on my phone—but unfortunately virtually none of it is actually available on a phone.

Take, for example, Sprint TV. Samsung kindly let me borrow their A900 phone for a month, and I used the opportunity to watch lots and lots of Sprint TV. And you know what I found out? There’s nothing worth watching on Sprint TV. Sure, there’s the Discovery channel and the TLC channel, but I personally hate learning, and I get angry at anyone who tries to educate me about anything. There’s also the Fox News channel on Sprint TV—but since I’m a professional journalist I am unable to watch Fox News for more than five minutes without scratching out my eyes in fury over what Fox News considers “news.” The rest of the 20 or so channels on Sprint TV consist of stuff like CSPAN and CSPAN2 (I am not kidding).

(One thing I want to note: Sprint Movies is actually a pretty good service. The movie selection is good, and the video quality is pretty good too. But some movies are only available for a 24-hour period, and I dare you to watch all of “Anger Management” on a cell phone in the span of 24 hours.)

Unfortunately, Sprint TV is about the best there is when it comes to mobile TV. Sure, Verizon Wireless has Vcast, but have you actually tried to watch any of that? First of all, it takes forever to launch the Vcast application, and then you only have the option of watching 50-second video clips—there’s nothing that you can just turn on and watch. I ended up spending more time downloading and skimming through menus than I did actually watching anything on Vcast. (The only good thing about Vcast is that it has clips from Dave Letterman’s show, which, unfortunately, is on after my 8 p.m. bedtime.)

Cingular Video is equally annoying—the best that’s available is their HBO stuff, and most of that is just 50-second clips of 30-minute shows. Why would I want to watch 50 seconds of “Sex in the City?” In fact, why would I want to watch “Sex in the City” at all?

The only good part about the HBO stuff on Cingular Video is that they have stuff from “Entourage”—but they only have one full episode of “Entourage” to watch and I’ve already seen it.

And what’s really annoying is that Cingular Video has “mobisodes” featuring Johnny Drama and Turtle from “Entourage.” I actually watched all four of these mobisodes—and let me tell you, there’s a reason they don’t show mobisodes on the regular “Entourage” show. Mobisodes are supposed to be designed as short clips for on-the-go cell phone users, but instead come off as two-minute commercials with miniscule production budgets and uninteresting content.

Why can’t I just watch “Entourage” shows on Cingular Video? If you’ve got one episode stored on a server somewhere, can’t you just add the rest of the season onto that server? The reason people like “Entourage” is because they watch entire “Entourage” shows, not two-minute clips featuring two of the show’s five main characters.

The sad part is that the mobile TV market really, really, really goes downhill after Sprint TV, Vcast and Cingular Video. I mean, have you had the chance to check out ROK Entertainment’s new service, “FreeBe TV?” Let me tell you: There’s a reason it’s free. The channels include: “The Movie Vault” with silent movies from the 1920s (I am not kidding); “Mind Control” with public-service ads about date rape from the 1950s (I am not kidding); and “Monkey News Network” with monkeys reading news (I am not kidding).

Although I do like free stuff, I’m assuming ROK Entertainment simply did a Google search for video content that they would not have to pay royalties for, and then they thought up some catchy names for channels on which to show that content. But hey, it’s free. (Update: ROK Entertainment assures me that its “FreeBe TV” service is just in the beginning stages. “ROK has immediate plans for developing and expanding the content delivered via FreeBe TV, and we will notify you when this happens.” So there you go.)

So now, my point: Why does mobile TV have to be so crappy? Did you know that ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS all broadcast their shows out FREE to anyone with a TV and rabbit ears? Here in Denver I can watch “The Simpsons” three times a day (6 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.) without paying a dime. Why can’t someone just make a “Simpsons” channel on a cell phone? I would totally spend all my free time watching that channel.

I’m assuming the problem is that Fox won’t license out “The Simpsons,” and that cellular carriers don’t want yahoos like me hogging bandwidth on their networks by watching hours and hours of “The Simpsons.” I understand that. But would Homer? If Homer bought a phone from Sprint that gets “live TV,” does he know that he’s actually getting CSPAN2 live?

I’m just saying that, if you’re going to sell mobile TV to people, you might want to sell mobile TV that is actually worth watching. It’s sort of like the iPod: When Apple introduced it and iTunes, I’m guessing the music selection was pretty good from the very start. It would be hard to sell a music download service that only had music from Mariah Carey and Vanilla Ice.

But hey, maybe MediaFLO and DVB-H will make mobile TV awesome. After all, what do I know?

OK! Enough of that. Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. I am very interested to hear your opinions on this topic. Please send me an e-mail with your thoughts: mdano@crain.com. All thoughtful e-mails on this subject will be published in their entirety in next week’s column.

Wanna check out other Worst of the Week entries? Click here for past columns. And now, some extras:

• RFID company Digital Angel just announced a patent for an RFID chip that would be implanted in diabetics and would alert them when their glucose levels become dangerous. I know: Wow, huh? Anyway, I wish they had a similar chip that could monitor dangerous levels of BS. But then, of course, I wouldn’t be able to write this column.

• There’s some new study out that says heavy mobile phone use can affect sperm production in men. Soon we’ll be a childless industry! I should probably stop carrying my phone around in my underwear.

• Hands-On Mobile and NBC Universal announced a new cell phone game called “Flirting by Blind Date.” It’s for people who watch that TV dating show “Blind Date,” and who want to “have fun flirting” via text messages with other people who watch that show. This must be the slowest form of flirting ever invented; it takes me 10 minutes just to type out “b home soon.”

• Cingular put out a fun press release about how families should use text messaging to stay in touch during Halloween. One of Cingular’s suggestions is that a parent could send a text message “to her daughter on a blind date to ask her how the date is going. ‘Is he Mr. Wonderful?’ or ‘Is he a frog or a prince?’” I cannot wait for my son Owen to grow up so I can pepper him with nagging SMS messages: WHERE R U??? WHY ARNT U HOME YET????? WHAT IS THE LICENSE PLATE OF THE CAR YOURE RIDING IN????????? and so forth.

• Nortel recently announced it is helping rural cities deploy wireless mesh networks. According to the company’s press release, one of the cities it is helping is Carlsbad, New Mexico, which Nortel describes as “on the brink of massive and rapid economic growth.” If you’ve ever been to Carlsbad, you would know why I think this statement is hilarious. Although, I guess compared with Wagon Mound, N.M., or perhaps Magdalena, N.M., Carlsbad is in fact a bastion of economic prosperity. Homes.

• A mobile social networking company called FunkySexyCool Inc. recently announced that its product will be sold through Vodafone in Germany. FunkySexyCool describes its product as “the largest party on your mobile phone.” Because, see, you might have 10 or 12 parties on your mobile phone, but none of them is as big as FunkySexyCool’s party. Anyway, when I start my mobile social networking company (because, judging from the number currently available, everyone in the world will launch a mobile social networking company at some point) I’m going to call my mobile social networking company BetterThanYourMobileSocialNetworkingCompany. That way, no one will be in doubt as to which mobile social networking company is the best. Because it will be mine. Because it will be called BetterThanYourMobileSocialNetworkingCompany.

• And finally, CommerceTel has officially released the greatest mobile content application of all time: Jerry Springer ringtones. I’m guessing they go something like this: “MotherBLEEP I’m gonna BLEEP you sonofa BLEEP wanna BLEEP kill BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP neuter BLEEP sofa BLEEP BLEEP cole slaw BLEEP” and so on and so forth.

I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at mdano@crain.com.