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Transcript of From Broadcasting to Multi-Casting: The Mobile Phone and 'the Future of Television'
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From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and the Future ofTelevisionMax Dawson
Keywords
Mobile television; broadcasting; television; new media; telecommunications; spectrum;remediation; vaporware
Bio
Max Dawson is an Assistant Professor of Screen Cultures in Northwestern UniversitysDepartment of Radio, TV & Film. His essays on television technology and form haveappeared in the journals Convergence, Technology & Culture, The Journal of PopularFilm and Television, and numerous edited collections. He is currently working on a bookmanuscript on the cultural history of new television technologies.
Contact
Department of Radio, TV, & FilmNorthwestern University1920 Campus DriveAnnie May Swift Hall Room 213Evanston, IL [email protected]: 847-467-2389
Note: this is a draft of a work in progress. Please contact me
before citing.
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From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and the Future ofTelevision
Both wireless carriers and entertainment companies are used to being the 800-pound
gorilla in any room. Now that theyre in the same room, something has to give.
Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President of Mobile Media, Telephia1
To publicize the June 2007 debut of its latest mobile phone, the consumer electronics
giant LG hosted a party celebrating the past, present and future of television at
Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California. The small-screen theme of LGs Mobile TV
Party was a nod to the new phones defining feature: inside the LG VX9400 was a chip
that enabled it to tune in specially-encoded live television signals transmitted over a
vacant channel in televisions UHF band. Joining LG in celebrating the phones launch
were a bevy of TV icons, including The Brady Bunchs Chris Knight, Star Treks
George Takei, and Happy Days Scott Baio. After walking the red carpet, LGs guests
made their way through a museum-style exhibition of television technologies that began
with black-and-white receivers and culminated with the VX9400. This exhibition, which
LG dubbed the living timeline of television history, opened up onto a massive
soundstage on which had been erected scale reproductions of the sets of some of the
best-loved programs of the 1960s and 1970s. For the rest of the night partygoers
mingled within a recreation of the Brady familys living room, posed for photos in the
captains chair of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and dined on cheeseburgers and
shakes in Arnolds Drive-In (Fathom4, 2007).
LGs placement of the VX9400 at the conclusion of the living timeline of
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television history translated into spatial terms an argument advanced by many in this
period: that mobile devices were the future of television.2 The Mobile TV Partys retro
theme and guest list, however, made it difficult to ignore the many parallels between this
vision of televisions future and the mediums past. Like the black-and-white receivers
that greeted partygoers at the entrance of the living timeline, the VX9400 featured a
tiny, low-resolution screen, used an antenna to receive a handful of channels that aired
fixed schedules, and lacked the ability to record, pause, fast forward, or rewind
programming. In many respects, this television of the future owed more to the 1950s
nostalgia sitcom Happy Daysthan it did to the fantastic world of Star Trek. For aside
from its portability and $15 dollar a month subscription fee, there was little to distinguish
mobile television from the broadcast television that Happy Days Cunningham family
would have enjoyed within the comfort of its living room in 1950s Milwaukee.
LG was by no means alone in promoting the notion that televisions future would
involve the revival of broadcasting by mobile devices. During the 2000s consumer
electronics manufacturers, mobile communications companies, broadcasters, Internet
companies, and global media conglomerates poured billions of dollars into the
development of technologies for delivering television programming to mobile phones
and other portable devices. The first mobile television solutions to emerge from these
ventures were patterned after early Internet video platforms, and used mobile carriers
voice networks to transmit television programming on an on-demand basis. As the
decade progressed, however, mobile televisions backers doubled down on their
investments in technologies that emulated or refashioned aspects of broadcast
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television. These solutions, which included Crown Castle Communications Modeo,
Aloha Partners Hiwire Mobile Television, Texas Instruments Hollywood mobile digital
broadcast platform, mobile DTV, and Qualcomms MediaFLO (the technology that
powered LGs VX9400) moved mobile television signals off of carriers voice networks
and onto portions of the radio spectrum that had until recently been occupied by
television broadcasters. Each capitalized on the latest advances in video compression,
radio spectrum optimization, power consumption minimization, and mobile chip design
to accomplish something that television had done quite well since the 1940s: deliver
multiple channels of linearly-scheduled programming over the air and in real time to an
unlimited number of viewers located within a defined geographic area. If you thought
UHF [broadcasting] had gone the way of eight tracks and Betamax, think again, noted
CNN in 2005. The broadcast spectrum could be the future of television (Malik, 2005).
The irony that the developers of these futuristic digital technologies should
aspire to emulate analog broadcasting at a time when fewer than ten per cent of
American viewers received their television signals over the air was not lost on
contemporary observers. In a review of one of the many commercial mobile television
services introduced in this period, a journalist with the ChicagoTribuneacknowledged
with a smirk that mobile television was a bit like TV in the 70s: no VCR-style recording,
only eight channels, and in some areas youll have to raise the phones antenna to
improve reception (Gwinn, 2007). Media scholars have likewise taken notice of mobile
televisions retro inflections. Shani Orgad (2009, p. 198) observes,
the novelty of mobile TV is continuously articulated in tandem with, and in relation
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to the old. Industry experts, journalists and analysts frequently claim that mobile
TV evolves from, builds upon and enhances existing and previous technologies
and familiar social contexts.
As Orgad notes, and as LGs Mobile TV Party confirmed, mobile televisions backers
have not shirked from these comparisons with televisions past, but rather have
encouraged them via the designs of their technologies and themes conveyed within
their promotional texts.
Orgads description of mobile televisions relationship to broadcasting and other
old media evokes Jay David Bolters and Richard Grusins (2000) use of the term
remediation to describe the dialogic relationships that emergent media may enter into
with their predecessors. Indeed, mobile televisions hybridization of the technologies
and protocols of television and mobile telephony is exemplary of the ways that
established and novel media adopt, rework, comment upon, and reform one another.
Scholars have detailed the parallels that exist between mobile television programming
and the heavily-segmented formats that predominated on American network television
in the late 1940s; between mobile phones tiny screens and the playing-card sized
cathode-ray tubes of early television receivers; and between the promotion of mobile
television in the 2000s and of portable television receivers in the 1950s and 60s (Carey
& Greenberg, 2006; Dawson, 2007; Groening, forthcoming). And yet despite the
considerable amount of attention that has already been paid to mobile televisions
remediation of broadcasting, the questions of why these parallels should exist in the first
placeand what their consequences might beare rarely addressed. Why have the
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backers of mobile television, an emergent medium touted by many as the future of
television, so aggressively sought to revive the residual protocols of broadcast
television? What are the factors that motivated the shift from the on-demand paradigm
of the United States first mobile television services to technologies that behaved more
like conventional broadcast receivers? And what are the larger implications of this
paradigm shift for media industries, policies, and audiences?
This chapter takes up these questions, exploring the overdetermined contexts
and consequences of mobile televisions transition from an on-demand to a broadcast-
style paradigm in the United States. It argues that the anachrony of mobile television
and of the conception of the television of the future that mobile television projects was
more than just an ironic historical curiosity or a marketing strategy employed to
familiarize a novel technology. Rather, mobile televisions remediation of earlier forms of
television registered the stakes of broader institutional conflicts that predate the delivery
of television to mobile phones. For nearly a decade the adversaries in these lengthy
conflicts used mobile television or, more accurately, the prospectof its widespread
adoption in the near future as a weapon within fights over resources and policies. In
fact, many of the conflicts over mobile television had less to do with the technology itself
than with the rules that would dictate the terms under which these adversaries would
compete and collaborate with one another in the future in media markets that had yet to
be defined. And yet despite these adversaries mutual preoccupations with positioning
themselves for the future, within the contexts of these conflicts anachrony was
cultivated, as opposed to tolerated. In these fights, it proved equally effective as a
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rationale for change as it did as an argument against it.
The following sections offer a diachronic sketch of the sides within and stakes of
the conflicts that have shaped and continue to shape mobile television, paying
special attention to the clashes between mobile communications companies and
broadcasters. The war between these two 800-pound gorilla[s] has been waged on
multiple fronts, and has involved shifting configurations of temporary alliances with
various other stakeholders (Kapko, 2007). It is not the only conflict that has influenced
mobile televisions development, yet it is the one that has most impacted peripheral
skirmishes over technical standards and programming formats; content licensing
agreements; hardware and monthly subscription pricing; and the division of costs and
profits amongst producers, distributors, and various middlemen. By examining the
contexts of this particular conflict, this chapter identifies mobile televisions remediation
of broadcast television as an institutional practice. Within the field of new media studies,
the concept of remediation is most often employed to describe the interaction of the
artifacts, forms, social practices, and modes of perception associated with multiple
media. Mobile televisions brief history in the United States highlights another dimension
of remediation: the interactions of corporate cultures, business models, ideologies,
traditions, and reputations that take place when institutions and industries are thrust
together by technological convergence and regulatory reform.
The uncomfortable proximity of convergence
Although the jurisdictional conflicts that have surrounded mobile television are
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complex and multisided (Altman 2005, p. 22), the factors that initially provoked them
may nevertheless be conceptualized in rather straightforward spatial terms. In brief, the
primary adversaries in these conflicts were groups that in the 2000s found themselves
in close and oftentimes uncomfortable proximity to one another, first within the
marketplaces in which they operated, and then later within the progressively cramped
quarters of the nations radio spectrum.
As Carolyn Marvin (1990) argues, the public launch of a new medium often
involves the rearrangement of physical and/or social spaces, and may alter the literal
and figurative distances between groups engaged in negotiations over power, authority,
representation, and knowledge. New media, she writes, intrude on these negotiations
by providing new platforms on which old groups confront one another. Old habits of
transacting between groups are projected onto new technologies that alter, or seem to
alter, critical social distances (p. 5). Marvins observations about new media and the
uneasy proximity they may engender pertain specifically to relationships between and
amongst a mediums various cohorts of users. But they are equally relevant to
institutions and entire industries habits of transacting. The introduction of a new
medium may destabilize the customary terms governing competition and collaboration
within various markets, altering the balances of power that such customs typically
maintain. For this reason hegemonic institutions often find it in their best interests to
actively or indirectly impede the dissemination of innovations that threaten to radically
rearrange the spatial arrangements of media markets (Winston, 1986).
Between the 1980s and the 2000s, the distances separating participants in
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telecommunications and media markets contracted quite dramatically in the United
States. These entities new proximity recalled a much older arrangement of the spaces
of American telecommunications and media markets, namely that which existed during
the first two decades of the twentieth century, when the infrastructure and the
institutions of telephony, telegraphy, and broadcasting were all thoroughly integrated.
The reunification of the American telecommunications and media industries was a
gradual process, but was sped along in the end by digitalization, and specifically by the
refinement of methods for distributing digitized voice communications, Internet Protocol
packets, and video over the same wired and wireless networks. The technological
integration of media and telecommunications distribution infrastructures encouraged
and facilitated the flow of capital, intellectual property, personnel, expertise, and
business models between companies that for decades had collaborated under a
collection formal and informal rules that had been quite specific about their roles and
about the limits of their jurisdiction. But as these flows have intensified, and as cross-
industry mergers have grown more common, these rules have become more easier to
ignore, rendering customary distinctions between, for instance, phone companies, cable
television multiple service operators, and Internet service providers fuzzy.
As infrastructural integration gained momentum in the 1990s, prominent
libertarian cyberboosters and high-tech industry executives prophesied the imminent
and inevitable reunification of the telecommunications and media markets (Gilder 1990,
2000; Gates 1995). However, industrial convergence was not, as its most vocal
proponents insisted, a logical and necessary outcome of infrastructural integration, but
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instead a product of legislative intervention. The comprehensive policy reforms enacted
by the United States Telecommunications Act of 1996 formally ended the enforced
segregation of telecommunications and media markets. Though it would be a number of
years before viable cross-industry competition occurred, by the mid-2000s companies
such as Comcast and AT&T offered triple play packages that bundled together voice,
video, and broadband Internet services.
In addition to removing policy obstacles to cross-platform competition, the
reforms of the 1990s created conditions amenable to the re-consolidation of United
States telecommunications markets, which since the break up of the Bell System
monopoly in the 1980s had been compartmentalized by region and by technology
(Fotheringham and Sharma 2008, p. 200). Amongst the biggest beneficiaries of these
reforms were mobile communications companies, and in particular the operators of
nationwide mobile phone networks. In the 1990s the United States major mobile
network operators embarked on an acquisition spree, swallowing up smaller regional
competitors, long-distance and local fixed line telephone companies, and retail Internet
service providers. By the mid-2000s, the mobile communications retail market was
dominated by four major networks: Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel, and
T-Mobile.3 The first two of these networks were subsidiaries of massive
telecommunications conglomerates with portfolios that included fixed line and mobile
telephone services, wholesale and retail Internet services, and, by the mid-2000s,
multichannel television services.
The United States four major mobile network operators benefitted from massive
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economies of scale and, in the case of Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, cross-
platform synergies, such as the ability to bundle their mobile services into their parent
companies triple play packages (Fotheringham and Sharma 2008, p. 15). However
they came into existence at a particularly challenging time for the mobile
communications industry. Since the early 1980s, the United States population of mobile
phone subscribers grew from just over 90,000 to more than 200 million (FCC, 2010a).
By the early 2000s, however, the mobile communications retail market began showing
the first signs of saturation (Nuechterlein and Weiser 2005, p. 260). With a dwindling
number of potential new customers available to them, mobile network operators turned
their attention to luring subscribers away from their competitors. The fierce competition
that ensued sent voice call revenues the flywheel of the industrys growth over the
previous two decades (Fotheringham and Sharma 2008, p. 206) into decline, placing
mobile network operators and their voice-centric business model in a precarious
position (Charny, 2004; Nuance Communications, 2006).
To stave off the industrywide slowdown predicted by many telecommunications
analysts, mobile network operators diversified, introducing an array of premium-priced
data services in the early 2000s that included text messages, web browsing and email,
adult services, video games, and music and ringtone downloads. In conjunction with the
rollout of these services, operators invested heavily in network upgrades, including the
construction of third-generation (3G) mobile networks designed to provide faster data
transfer rates. The first of these premium services to pay off was text messaging, which
generated $2.5 billion for the mobile telecommunications industry in 2004. But network
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operators had their eyes on the even bigger potential windfall represented by
multimedia services, and mobile television in particular. Mobile television services had
recently been introduced by mobile network operators in Europe and Asia, and even in
their embryonic stages these services made a significant impression upon
telecommunications analysts. Between handset sales, subscription and data
transmission fees, premium pay-per-view charges, and advertising, mobile television
presented network operators, but also chip makers, consumer electronics
manufacturers, and media companies, with an impressive range of revenue
opportunities. Optimistic analysts predicted that mobile television could replace voice
communications as the mobile phones killer app (Goot, 2003; Hellweg, 2005), and
forecasted that it would generate between $6 and $27 billion annually by the end of the
decade (Reardon, 2006).
For mobile network operators locked in cutthroat competition with one another
over shrinking voice margins, mobile televisions multiple revenue streams represented
a promising solution to the dilemma of how to maintain growth in a decelerating
marketplace. As reported by the technology website CNet, by 2004 enthusiasm for
mobile television had grown to the point where some mobile industry executives were
publicly claiming that mobile televisions revenues would save the cell phone industry
(Charny, 2004). But mobile television also represented a potential bridge to a future in
mobile network operators would no longer be solely or even primarily be in the business
of voice communications. By adding television packages to their lists of services, as the
majority of the United States mobile network operators did starting in 2003, they began
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the process of reinventing themselves as fully-diversified entities that would compete in
multiple markets, as opposed to exclusively with one another.
The future of broadcast television is mobile4
Mobile network operators multimedia ambitions led them into new markets, as well as
into new portions of the radio spectrum. In these spaces they encountered old partners
under new circumstances, but also institutions that they had limited experience in
dealing with. Amongst the latter were broadcasters, a group that shared mobile network
operators interest in the possibility of delivering television programming to mobile
devices.
Whereas mobile network operators multimedia ambitions were driven in large
part by their industrys growth imperatives, broadcasters interests in mobile television
were survival oriented. The period of the mobile industrys rapid growth coincided with
the unravelling of the hegemony of American network broadcasting (Lotz, 2007). As
mobile network operators subscriber rolls expanded, American broadcast networks
cumulative share of the national television audience fell precipitously, from
approximately 75 per cent in 1985 to 43 per cent in 2010 (Seidman, 2007).
Broadcasters advertising revenues followed this downward trend, spurred by the
ascendance of cable, the advent of new commercial-skipping technologies such as the
digital video recorder (DVR), and the economic downturns that bookended the 2000s.
The local affiliate stations that together comprise the national broadcast networks were
particularly hard hit by the industrys downturn. While most of these stations continued
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to be profitable, their future viability became a subject of much debate within the popular
press and within the industry itself (Schechner and Dana, 2009). Questions about the
sustainability of free-to-air broadcast television were broached with increased frequency
(and urgency) in the press during the 2000s. A 2006 IBM Business Consulting Services
report captured the pervasive sense of crisis surrounding broadcast television in this
period. Today is the beginning of the end of TV as we know it, the report explained,
and the future will only favor those who prepare now (IBM Institute for Business Value
2009, p. 1). Amongst those not expected to survive this paradigm shift were broadcast
stations, which, as one journalist put it, appeared to be head[ed] for extinction
(Wasserman, 2004).
As these debates over televisions future and free-to-air broadcastings lack of
one unfolded, the owners of the nations more than one thousand broadcast television
stations did as the mobile network operators discussed above and began to explore
alternatives to their traditional business models and revenue sources. The range of
options available to them was more diverse than ever before, thanks again to legislative
intervention. As discussed by Lisa Parks in her contribution to this volume, every local
broadcast station in the United States was required in this period to convert its facilities
to the nations new digital television broadcasting standard, or DTV. When crafting the
rules governing this changeover, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had
been extremely charitable toward free-to-air broadcast stations. In addition to granting
each station what essentially amounted to a rent-free lease on a second channel for the
duration of the conversion (allowing them to simultaneously transmit in analog and
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digital), the FCC also refrained from placing stipulations on how stations would use their
digital channels. Stations were at liberty to use these channels as they saw fit, provided
they continued to offer at least one free-to-air channel that adhered to the vague public
interest principles that govern the licensing of free-to-air broadcasting in the United
States.
The potential uses of these new digital channels were many, and included high
definition broadcasting, multiple channels of standard definition broadcasting,
subscription channels, wireless data services, or mobile television transmission. While
the majority of local stations elected to use their digital channels to transmit high
definition video, mobile television held a particularly strong appeal for broadcasters
(Dickson, 2007a; Whitney, 2009). Having initially been shut out of the deals that
broadcast networks struck with companies such as RealNetworks, Apple, and Google to
deliver their programming via the Internet, station owners appreciated the opportunity
that mobile television presented to directly tap into a new and potentially lucrative
revenue stream (Dickson, 2007b). Broadcasters investments in mobile television also
promised the return of substantial symbolic dividends. By insinuating themselves into
the incipient mobile multimedia market, broadcasters stood to remediatetheir own and
their industrys reputations at a time when both were suffering. Bolter and Grusin (2000)
contend that remediation often entails the reform (or more precisely the rhetorical
rehabilitation) of one medium by another, as when a new mediums promoters present it
to the public as an improvement or upgrade on an already established medium. They
write: Each new medium is justified because it fills a lack or repairs a fault in its
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predecessor, because it fulfills the unkept promise of an older medium (p. 60). Although
the very possibility of this reform is predicated upon an acknowledgement of the
perceived inadequacies of an older medium, as an institutional practice remediation
may also involve the rehabilitation of an older mediums tarnished reputation. Material
and/or figurative associations with new media may imbue familiar ones with a sheen of
novelty, and even may provide new justifications for their existence. Through these
associations, old media may shed their customary uses or their sedimented cultural
meanings, in a sense becoming new once again.
In the case of mobile television, the nations beleaguered broadcast industry had
much to gain from an association with the mobile communications industry, which
despite having its own economic problems nevertheless continued to enjoy a reputation
for innovation within policy circles, the investment sphere, and public opinion. The
pressures on broadcasters to reform their industrys image were particularly acute
during this period. The steady stream of popular media reports forecasting the
impending demise of free-to-air broadcasting placed the national networks and their
affiliate stations in a position in which they were continuously required to answer
questions about their health and relevance. Another source of pressure originated from
within policy circles. The costly and protracted conversion to DTV exacerbated anti-
broadcasting sentiments that had been percolating within think tanks, academic
departments, and media watchdog organizations for quite some time by this point.5
Local stations repeated failures to comply with the deadlines specified by the FCCs
conversion timetables resulted in the postponement of the commissions reclamation of
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analog televisions portion of the radio spectrum. These delays prolonged stations rent-
free leases on their second channels, blocking the transfer of the analog television
spectrum to the mobile communications companies and public safety organizations that
had obtained the rights to occupy it following the conversions completion.
The economic and public safety ramifications of these delays resulted in a wave
of negative publicity for the broadcast industry. Would-be users of the spectrum joined
policy experts and media activists in demanding a reexamination of the terms under
which the FCC licensed broadcast stations. Some proponents of reform made more
radical recommendations, which included for instance Tak[ing] TV off the air and
reallocating its spectrum to more efficient or intelligent uses (San Miguel, 2008). The
crux of many spectrum reformers arguments was that broadcasters a group that,
according to one spectrum reform advocate, had grown so complacent that its idea of a
major innovation is the miniseries (Platt, 1997) were squandering the immense value
of one of the nations most important and valuable resources. Signals transmitted in
televisions portion of the radio spectrum travel long distances, and are capable of
passing through walls and other obstructions, making them attractive for a wide variety
of potential uses, and extremely valuable on the open market. Proponents of spectrum
reform estimated the cumulative market value of broadcasters spectrum holdings to be
upwards of $60 billion, and projected that in the hands of more innovative users this
spectrum could generate an additional $1 trillion in benefits for the country in the future
(Eggerton, 2009). As the DTV conversion dragged on, and as the American economy
sunk into recession, proponents of spectrum reform found support for their platform
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within the FCC and the White House. Following the election of President Barack
Obama, who had pledged during his campaign to make universal broadband Internet
access a priority of his administration, the FCC began formal investigations of the
feasibility of comprehensive spectrum reallocation.6
Under pressure to demonstrate to an increasingly unsympathetic policy
community their worthiness of the choice spectrum they occupied, the nations
broadcast station owners scrambled to ready a free-to-air mobile DTV standard that
would enable them to simulcast their channels to handheld devices. Though for the time
being mobile DTV remained vaporware that is, a product that is under development
thus exists only conceptually or in a prototype stage, this did not stop broadcasters from
trying to sell the public and the policy community on its importance. John Caldwell
(2000, p. 6) describes the routine practice of promoting vaporware as both a corporate
theoretical exercise and a marketing high-wire act. Broadcasters in this period busied
themselves with both activities, working on the one hand to stoke anticipation for a
product that was still years away from being ready for the market, and on the other hand
to establish a theoretical framework through which to understand the future.
Unsurprisingly, this theoretical framework was buttressed by the structuring ideologies
of free-to-air broadcasting, which since the early twentieth century have included
localism, liveness, and public service (Boddy, 1990).
In the various speeches, public service announcements, and press releases
industry lobbying groups such as the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and
the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) made the case that this vaporware
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represented the best bet of ensuring these cherished principles survival in the digital
future (Whitney, 2005). But in addition to reasserting a commitment to free-to-air
broadcastings structuring ideologies, these groups also highlighted the important
contributions a healthy and innovative broadcasting industry would make to this future.
For instance, a 2010 press release issued by the OMVC stated that:
The emerging Mobile DTV platform is the natural evolution of television and is an
indispensable part of the nations broadband solution. In the public policy debate
over spectrum allocation, we urge Congress and the FCC to carefully consider
the essential role Mobile DTV can play as a resource for emergency alerts, as a
source for vital public information, and as an ingredient in the countrys
broadband future (RBR, 2010).
The broadcasting lobbys defensive maneuvers played liberally with linear chronology:
by hyping a throwback mobile DTV standard that was not yet ready for
commercialization, broadcasters made retro vaporware a central element of their efforts
to rhetorically create for themselves and for their industry the future that their critics
argued they lacked. But despite the assuredness that characterized these lobbying
campaigns, a sense of desperation persisted around mobile DTV, growing stronger as
its development dragged on. As one trade journalist observed, Mobile DTV provides a
means for broadcasters to remain relevant in the 21st century. Thats important, for if
broadcasters dont use their spectrum efficiently to serve the majority of the population,
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there are many other companies out there willing to pay a high price for that spectrum
(Lung, 2009). Amongst the many groups circling broadcasters spectrum were mobile
network operators, whose multimedia ambitions hinged upon their annexation of it.
Emergent technologies, residual protocols
During the 2000s broadcasters and mobile communications companies each identified
mobile television as key to their respective industries futures. At least initially, agendas
shaped by distinctive institutional cultures, industrial legacies, and technological
considerations led these two groups to pursue diverging mobile television solutions. The
multimedia ambitions of the mobile communications industry and the survival tactics of
free-to-air television broadcasters would however over time place these two industries
on a collision course. By the end of the decade, broadcasters and mobile companies
preferred methods of delivering television programming to mobile devices shared a
number of attributes in common. Though these methods continued to employ
incompatible transmission and reception technologies, the user experiences they
offered both owed much to the protocolsof free-to-air broadcast television.
The basis for this distinction between mobile televisions technologies and
protocols is Lisa Gitelmans (2006, p. 7) proposal that the term mediumbe understood
as encompassing both technological instruments and the vast clutter of normative rules
and default conditions[] which gather and adhere like a nebulous array around them. As
defined by Gitelman protocol is a flexible category encompassing a mediums uses,
business models, the forms its content or messages take, the standards and regulations
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governing its implementation, and even ideas about its cultural meanings. Though
protocols have a tendency to sediment and become inertial, beneath the encrustations
of common sense that surround them they remain sensitive and dynamic. Protocols
may change in response to technological developments, as when the introduction of a
new technology prompts the reappraisal and revision of a mediums extant regulations.
But they may likewise be influenced by a much wider range of changeable social,
economic, and material relationships (p. 8), including the institutional practices of
remediation described above. In its efforts to reform its own identity or reputation, a
broadcaster, a mobile network operator, or any other institution may remediate the
protocols of other media and other institutions. Protocols are in this respect intermedial,
and register the shifting dynamics of power and status that play out in the interactions
relationships between media institutions.
The mobile television solutions explored by mobile communications companies
illustrate the complex and unpredictable ways that media institutions remediate one
anothers protocols. For as greatly as mobile technologies have changed since
American mobile network operators first began carrying television programming over
their networks, mobile televisions protocols have undergone equally dramatic
transformations. The protocols that have so far taken shape around mobile television
are schizophrenic and unstable, and remediate practices, forms, regulatory frameworks,
and social and financial arrangements associated with broadcast and cable television,
mobile telephony, and personal computers and the Internet.
2003 was the year of the debut of the first of the services that used mobile
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networks to deliver television-like video content to Americans mobile phones. That year,
Sprint and AT&T Wireless began loading a selection of their top-of-the-line phones with
software that allowed customers to access a rotating selection of about 100 on-demand
video clips, many of which were sourced from broadcast television networks.
Provenance notwithstanding, RealOne Mobiles video clips resembled Internet slide
shows more than they did television. Due to the limited processing power of handsets
and the bandwidth constraints of existing mobile networks, clips ran at between one and
four frames-per-second (as opposed to televisions thirty frames per second). Even
then, similar to Internet video sites RealOne Mobiles streams were prone to frequent
buffering, pixellation, and losses of synchronization between their audio and video
tracks.
If the poor picture quality of RealOne Mobiles television clips evoked the
Internet, so too did many of the other protocols that coalesced around this and other
mobile multimedia services in this period. RealOne Mobile was a mobile version of
RealNetworks RealOne GoldPass, a subscription-based multimedia service that
delivered a similar selection of short television clips, as well as streaming music, radio
stations, and movie trailers, via the Internet to personal computers. As RealOne Mobile
was joined in the fledgling mobile television market by Verizon V Cast, ESPN Mobile,
Ampd Mobile, and Cingular Video, many of these services adopted the monthly
subscription fees, clip-based content libraries, and on-demand delivery methods of
Internet multimedia services. Institutional protocols were passed between Internet and
mobile multimedia ventures as well for instance, mobile television preserved the
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convention of third-party companies serving as aggregators of other distributors
programming. In the case of RealOne Mobile, for example, RealNetworks acted as an
intermediary between via two very different types of distribution networks, licensing
content from television networks, and then subsequently processing and packaging that
content for re-distribution mobile networks.7
The protocols that RealOne Mobile and other fledgling mobile television
aggregation services inherited (or appropriated) from their Internet counterparts
hybridized with the normative rules and default conditions of the United States mobile
communications industry. Until recently, the United States major mobile companies ran
their networks as walled gardens, placing restrictions upon the hardware their
subscribers could use and the software applications and content they were permitted to
access. The cornerstone of the walled garden was the subsidized handset: to entice
prospective customers to enter into these enclosures, operators offered deep
discounts on mobile phones. These discounts came with two major conditions: first,
customers were required to commit to contract of a specified duration (typically twenty-
four months); and, second, network operators modified these subsidized phones so that
they worked only on their networks. Early mobile television services adhered to this
convention. Network operators made available a selection of subsidized multimedia
handsets loaded with software that allowed them to receive television clips and other
forms of multimedia content, but only from aggregators with whom operators had
standing compacts. These restrictions allowed network operators to manage their
subscribers use of multimedia services, for instance by blocking access to the Internet
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and its bandwidth-intensive free video sites. They also meant that all transactions
between mobile television viewers and aggregators were conducted within networks
walled gardens, putting network operators in positions to negotiate arrangements in
which they would be paid by both parties.
What kinds of programming could subscribers watch after signing up for one of
these walled garden services? Much of the video content available on mobile phones
during this period was repurposed from broadcast and cable television. Apart from one
service that delivered a selection of twelve streaming television channels with fixed
schedules, most mobile multimedia packages were dominated by short television clips
presented on an on-demand basis. The most common sources for these clips were
heavily-segment television formats, including news, late night talk shows, sketch
comedy series, sports highlights, and entertainment reports (Dawson, 2011). For
instance, Verizon V Cast debuted in 2005 with a programming lineup that included brief
highlights from The Daily Show, Entertainment Tonight, and ESPNs Sportscenter. Go
TV presented condensed CliffsNotes versions of weekly episodes of ABCs Desperate
Housewivesand Alias, while Sprint Vue featured clips culled from a selection of current
and classic CBS programs, including CSIand I Love Lucy. Though there was a great
deal of talk in this period about creating short-form programming geared specifically to
the small screens and limited processing power of mobile handsets, original content
that is, content not recycled from television remained scant (Dawson, 2007). Rare
exceptions included made-for-mobile spinoffs of popular primetime television series: for
example, Verizon licensed a series of minute-long mobisodes based on the FOX
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drama 24for its V Cast service, while Cingular Video included a premium HBO
channel featuring an exclusive Entourageminiseries.
Though most of the programming available from these services was sourced
directly from broadcast and basic cable television networks, or else based on popular
television franchises, the most direct influence on this programings presentation
remained the protocols of early Internet multimedia services. By 2005, however, these
protocols were themselves being overhauled, with the subscription-based models
pioneered in the late-1990s by aggregators such as RealNetworks giving way to the
web 2.0 model exemplified by YouTube. In contrast to aggregators like RealOne
GoldPass, which sourced their programming directly from television networks, record
labels, and movie studios, YouTube operated a free video hosting service that initially
relied exclusively on site visitors (and creative applications of safe harbor copyright
exemptions) for its content. Within a rather short period of time YouTube was joined in
the web video marketplace by a number of startups that combined free hosting services
with social networking platforms. Like YouTube, these sites were free, device- and
platform-agnostic, and encouraged user participation via uploading, tagging,
commenting, embedding, and sharing features.
The explosive growth of YouTube and its competitors inspired an avalanche of
press coverage, with some contemporary commentators identifying these sites were a
harbinger of an entertainment snacking trend that would transform how popular media
was made, distributed, and consumed (Miller, 2007). Mobile network operators were
eager to capitalize on this trend, and in advertisements and other publicity materials
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positioned the mobile phone as the ideal snacking platform. They also pursued
partnerships with video hosting websites: In 2006 Verizon Wireless signed a deal with
YouTube granting it exclusive rights to distribute clips from the site via its V Cast
multimedia service. But in keeping with the mobile industrys walled garden business
model, Verizon only made a curated selection of YouTubes clips available to its
subscribers. Though Verizon Wireless and other mobile network operators dabbled in
the snack marketplace, most stopped well short of allowing their subscribers to venture
outside of their walled gardens to graze at the Internets all-you-can-eat video buffet.
Ultimately, mobile network operators were reluctant to embrace the changes Internet
videos protocols underwent during this period, in part because the openness these
protocols aspired to was so incongruous with the concept of the walled garden.
As YouTubes web 2.0 model achieved hegemonic status online, mobile network
operators found new templates for the protocols of their mobile television services in
old media. From 2007 onward, mobile network operators began phasing out clip-
based mobile television services on-demand protocols in favor of protocols that more
closely resembled those of free-to-air broadcast television. On-demand services
transmitted separate signals to each individual viewer over mobile networks using a
method known as unicasting. By contrast, the second wave of mobile television
technologies employed a multicasting distribution model to simultaneously transmit a
selection of between eight and fourteen pre-programmed linear channels that,
depending on the network, might include NBC, Fox News, Adult Swim, Nickelodeon,
and the Disney Channel. Though the daily schedules these services multicasted were
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adjusted to reflect mobile televisions peak viewing times the morning and afternoon
rush hours the programming lineups they offered were for the most part identical to
those airing on broadcast and cable television.
Technical dilemmas posed by clip-based mobile television were a major
motivating factor behind the development of multicasting technologies. For although
mobile television services subscriber numbers remained well beneath
telecommunications analysts sunny projections, it soon became apparent that 3G
networks were not up to the task of delivering television programming to large
audiences on a unicast basis. Within two years of the launch of unicast mobile
television, analysts were warning that even a modest bump in viewing could overwhelm
the nations mobile networks (Reardon, 2005). The troubles experienced by the South
Korean mobile network operator SK Telecom provided a preview of what might be in
store if these projections panned out. In 2002 SK Telecom had been amongst the first
mobile network operators in the world to offer a mobile television service. But within a
year of the services launch, the stress that it placed on SK Telecoms 3G network had
grown so great that the carrier was required to build a special multicasting network just
to handle its mobile television traffic.
The mobile television bandwidth crunch forecast by telecommunications analysts
never materialized. In fact, in the United States demand for mobile multimedia services
lagged far behind analysts projections, and many services launched between 2003 and
2007 struggled to attract viewers. In 2007, the year of MediaFLOs launch, the clip-
based unicasters Mobile ESPN and Amdd Mobile both suspended their operations due
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to inadequate subscriber numbers. Still, the prospect that mobile television would
sometime in the future overload operators 3G networks continued to exert a powerful
influence over their long-term strategies. American mobile network operators explored a
number of potential multicasting solutions in this period before the nations two largest
networks, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, settled on Qualcomms MediaFLO.
Mobile companies also began acquiring additional spectrum as it became available.
Between 2003 and 2008, Qualcomm spent $683 million to acquire UHF spectrum for
MediaFlo and other unspecified future mobile services. In 2007, AT&T purchased a
nearby band of frequencies for $2.5 billion, prompting rumors that it would launch its
own competing mobile multicasting service in the UHF band. The following year, AT&T
spent an additional $6.64 billion, and Verizon $9.63 billion, to purchase additional UHF
channels that had been cleared by the DTV conversion. Even these acquisitions,
however, did not satisfy mobile network operators hunger for spectrum. Citing forecasts
that demand for mobile television and other data-intensive multimedia services would
eventually rise, the mobile communications industry lobby, the CTIA, warned
policymakers and the general public that the United States was on the cusp of a
spectrum crisis that would cripple mobile networks and derail the nations economy. To
avert this crisis, the CTIA petitioned the FCC to free up at least 800 MHz of spectrum for
use by mobile companies, preferably from the frequencies allocated to television.
In making the case for the transfer of additional spectrum from broadcasters to
mobile network operators, the CTIA repeatedly returned to arguments about the cultural
and economic obsolescence of the local stations that were this spectrums incumbent
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occupants. Together with allies that included the consumer electronics industry lobby,
the CTIA sponsored a massive public relations campaign in the second half of the
2000s to portray broadcasting as an undesirable use of the nations radio spectrum. The
mobile industry lobby aligned itself with proponents of radical spectrum reform in making
the case that broadcasting was a medium without a future, and moreover that it
constituted a roadblock on the nations path to technological and economic progress. By
continuing to grant broadcasters free licenses to use that spectrum as they pleased, the
United States placed itself at risk of falling behind other countries in terms of its
development and adoption of innovative wireless technologies. The CTIA claimed on
mobile network operators behalves the local broadcasting stations traditional mantle as
trustees of the public interest, linking the expansion of wireless networks to larger
national priorities. The reallocation of spectrum from television to wireless
telecommunications would help balance the federal budget, reestablish the United
Statesglobal leadership in the telecommunications and high-tech sectors, and extend
access to broadband Internet to underserved populations and regions.
The tone of the CTIAs campaign for spectrum reform cut a sharp contrast to the
advertising campaigns that the organizations members conducted during this period.
For at the very same time that the mobile industry lobby portrayed broadcasting as
irrelevant and broadcasters as expendable, mobile network operators promoted
Qualcomms multicasting service as a faithful facsimile of broadcasting. Then again,
despite their incongruous tones, mobile network operators determined efforts to
establish multicastings identity with broadcasting were otherwise consonant with the
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mobile industry lobbys claims on broadcast televisions status and spectrum. Mobile
televisions promotional materials endorsed broadcastings protocols, but only within the
context of touting the mobile industrys ability to remediate them. In effect, they invited
American consumers to imagine a future in which something akin to broadcasting would
survive, but broadcasters would most certainly not.
Real TV, now on your phone
Exemplary of mobile network operators efforts to affiliate multicasting with broadcasting
is a succinct slogan that appeared in some of the advertisements for Verizon Wireless
V Cast Mobile TV: Real TV, now on your phone. The press release that announced V
Cast Mobile TVs 2007 launch eliminated any confusion about what Verizon meant by
real TV at its outset:
Were you glued to your couch to watch a great play of the big game, catch
updates on the 2006 midterm elections, or witness one of those spectacular
music award-show eyebrow-raisers? Or worse: how often have you missed those
touchstone moments that affect a whole nation because you were on the move
(Verizon Wireless, 2007)?
The real TV conjured up by this string of questions was television that was watched
and shared with others. It was both the source and the subject of communal
experiences and feelings of togetherness that cemented the bonds of the nuclear and
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the national family.8 Above all, real TV was livetelevision, enjoyed in the moment of its
transmission, as opposed to time shifted, downloaded, or watched on DVD. In this
respect, it was strikingly dissimilar from the on-demand model of television that drew a
large number of converts in this period, especially amongst mobile televisions target
market of tech-savvy early adopters. At a moment when companies such as TiVo,
Apple, and Google were dominating conversations about the future of television with
promises of liberating viewers from the tyranny of broadcastings unforgiving
timetables (Boddy 2004), Verizon presented V Cast as a throwback to televisions high
network era.
It is significant that each of the examples alluded to by the questions that began
Verizons press release were of live media events (Dayan and Katz, 1992), broadcasts
that have historically been central to both the ideology and the political economy of free-
to-air broadcasting. On numerous occasions throughout the twentieth century American
broadcasters defused challenges to the hegemony of the free-to-air network model by
recapitulating the argument that broadcast networks ability to simultaneously address
the entirety of the United States geographically-dispersed population was critical to the
maintenance of national cohesion (Boddy 2004, pp. 101-2). Though decades have
passed since broadcasters were alone amongst media institutions in possessing this
capability, the importance of media events to the broadcast industry has grown as the
national networks cumulative share of the television audience has declined. Broadcast
coverage of major sporting events, national elections, and annual award shows
continues to attract large audiences, generating significant advertising revenues and
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publicity for broadcasters. Equally importantly, these moments generate good will
toward the institution of broadcasting. In explicit and implicit ways, television s live
coverage of media events invites audiences to remember what broadcasting was.
The publicity materials that introduced mobile multicasting to American
consumers in this period in many instances made explicit appeals to consumers
memories of televisions touchstone moments, as well as of televisions former status
as the nations common medium. They did so in tribute to broadcastings history, but
also in order to position the mobile phone as worthy, and in fact superior, substitute for
television. Whereas the moments described by Verizons press release glued
audience members to their couches, mobile multicasting made media events portable.
With an LG VX9400, the togetherness viewers experienced in front of their television
sets could be transported outside and shared with others. A pair of advertisements from
the same Verizon campaign illustrated different versions of this scenario, portraying
encounters between a V Cast Mobile TV subscriber and strangers with whom he happily
shares the experience of watching real TV on his phone.
Other mobile companies advanced similar arguments about mobile multicastings
remediation of the mediated togetherness of live broadcasting. Qualcomm, for instance,
produced a minute-long commercial for MediaFLO that doubled as a tribute to the
history of live television. Appropriately enough, the spot aired during what was at the
time the most-watched live broadcast in American history: the 2010 Super Bowl. The
commercial began with a sequence of black-and-white snapshots of televisions infancy:
an Indian Head test card, a roof-mounted antenna, twisting bobbysoxers, Howdy Doody.
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It then segued into a rapid-fire montage of some of the most iconic moments in the
mediums history. In between brief clips of civil rights marches, the assassination of Lee
Harvey Oswald, Neil Armstrongs moon walk, the toppling of the Berlin wall, and the
wreckage of the World Trade Center a series of on-screen graphics invited the audience
to recall their own experiences of these touchstone moments. Where were you then?
the text asked. Where will you be? The montage climaxed with footage of the
celebrations that followed the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. Superimposed
upon a shot of a waving American flag were the words Dont miss a moment. The
commercial ended on a clever trick shot: the footage on the screen rapidly pulled
backward away from the viewer, revealing that it was in fact a video playing on the
screen of a mobile device (SPOTBOWL, 2010).
Much like the living timeline described at this chapters outset Qualcomms
Super Bowl commercial retraced televisions path from the black and white sets of its
broadcast past to the ultra-portable devices of its digital future. The layout of LGs
television museum had both literally and figuratively positioned the mobile handset at
the culmination of televisions historical trajectory. Qualcomms rendering of television
history went even further toward the conflation of convergence with progress,
establishing a homology between the mediums technological evolution with the
narrative of social progress the commercials iconic footage conveyed. This homology
was underscored by the commercial s montage, which began with images of black and
white television sets, and black-and-white television images of African American civil
rights protestors being attacked with fire hoses, and concluded with images of the
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celebration of the election of the nations first African-American president. It was
furthermore reinforced by its soundtrack, which featured a remix of The Whos My
Generation by the hip-hop star will.i.am. Television and the nation were together
undergoing a remix of sorts, as embodied by a youthful president, innovative
technologies, and a mobile populace. Put another way, both were being remediated by
the mobile phone.
Conclusion: Vapor to vapor
The American broadcast industrys answer to MediaFLO and to the spectrum reform
campaigns that gained momentum in the 2000s made its belated debut in January
2010 at the CES, the annual convention of the global consumer electronics industry.
The 2010 CES featured a special Mobile DTV TechZone where a group of exhibitors
that included the aforementioned LG demonstrated prototypes of mobile devices
capable of receiving signals transmitted using the mobile DTV standard, which had be
finalized in late 2009. In a remarks given at a reception to celebrate mobile DTV s
official debut, Gordon Smith, the chief executive of the NAB, identified local
programming (which remained absent from MediaFLO systems) as the standards killer
app, and predicted that the organizations members would soon use the standard to
establish themselves as the leaders in the delivery of local, live broadcast signals to
all varieties of mobile devices. Thats the future, Smith informed the receptions
attendees, and it includes broadcasters (Dickson, 2010).
Throughout 2010 broadcasting groups geared up for a mobile multicasting
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standard war that would pit mobile DTV against MediaFLO. This war, however, was not
to be: Qualcomm announced in December of that year that it was pulling out of the
mobile television business. The following March, Qualcomm sold the MediaFLO
systems spectrum to AT&T for $1.925 billion. Less than four years after its launch, the
technology LG had once called the future of television had returned to the vapor.
With the demise of mobile companies designated multicasting solution, clashes
between the mobile communications and broadcast industries migrated from mobile
television to other fronts. As the end of the decade approached mobile network
operators shifted their priorities from developing new services capable of driving up their
subscribers data usage to coping with the strain being placed on their 3G networks by
app-equipped smartphones. AT&T, for instance, reported in 2011 that it had
experienced an 8000 per cent increase in data usage in the four years since it acquired
the exclusive rights to distribute the Apple iPhone in the United States (Lieberman,
2011). Contrary to predictions from earlier in the decade, it was not mobile television,
but rather web surfing, emailing, and social networking applications that were mainly
responsible for these massive increases in data traffic. The CTIA and its allies
marshaled statistics such as these to underscore the urgency of transferring spectrum
from broadcasters to mobile network operators. For example, in a 2011 editorial timed
to coincide with NABs annual meeting the president of the Consumer Electronics
Association warned consumers that dropped calls and poor reception signals are just
harbingers of larger problems down the road if we don't start putting the broadcasters
dormant spectrum to good use (Shapiro, 2011).
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Broadcasters gained new ammunition with which to defend themselves against
accusations of irrelevance in this period as the popular press became increasingly
enamored with the practice (or, more accurately, the premise) of cord-cutting, or
replacing costly cable or satellite television subscriptions with a combination of over-the-
air DTV and on-demand Internet video streaming video services. Though studies
suggested that it would be years before cord-cutting had a significant impact on the
American television marketplace (Kafka, 2011), the positive media coverage the
practice received provided free-to-air broadcasters with a badly-needed public relations
boost, which the broadcast lobby capitalized on by touting the benefits of free, local DTV
over mobile companies expensive and unreliable services (Lieberman, 2011).
Clearly, the mobile communications and broadcast industries no longer require
competing mobile television vaporware standards in order to have a reason for a row. In
all likelihood, they never did. To pose this possibility is not to suggest that mobile
television was inconsequential to either of these adversaries. It is instead a way of
emphasizing one last time that the confrontations of the last decade have taken place
within the contexts of much longer institutional histories, and in particular within the
context of the history of the dynamic protocols that have governed transactions between
media and telecommunications companies for more than a century.
Media studies provides a rich vocabulary for describing these institutional
histories. It is thus possible to speak of the convergence of the telecommunications
and broadcast industries infrastructures and business models (Jenkins, 2006); of a
legacy of jurisdictional conflicts between the two industries that stretches back at least
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as far as the confrontations between RCA and AT&T over control of commercial radio
broadcasting in the 1920s (Altman, 2005); or of the ways in which mobile companies
and broadcasters remediate aspects of each others institutional cultures (Bolter and
Grusin, 2000). The theoretical models associated with these terms all display strong
temporal biases, and address in their own ways the relationships between the old and
the new, the residual and the emergent, and the anachronistic and the cutting-edge.
But, as this chapter has argued, the relationships between media are influenced as
much by space as they are by highly relative measures of time. Convergence, conflict,
and remediation occur when the protocols that dictate the arrangements of literal and
metaphoric spaces are altered in ways that place media institutions in close proximity
with one another. An attentiveness to these protocols and the spaces they organize
contributes crucial context to scholarship on media change.
Notes
1 Quoted in Kapko (2007).2 In a web video produced to promote the event LG made this argument even moreexplicitly, declaring the mobile television the future of TV (Fathom4, 2007).3 AT&T Mobility is the post-2007 name of entity formed through the merger of theCingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless networks. In this chapter I refer to this companyas AT&T Mobility, except in those instances in which I refer specifically to one of the twopre-merger companies.4 The source of this quote is media industry analyst Christopher Kent, quoted in
Waldman (2008).5 Amongst the proponents of radical spectrum reforms were George Keyworth of theProgress and Freedom Foundation, legal scholar and FCC advisor Stuart Benjamin,
and Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation.6At the conclusion of these investigations, the FCC recommended transferring 500 MHz
of spectrum immediately, and an additional 300 MHz in the future, from broadcasting tomobile communications (FCC 2010b, pp. 75-9). To clear broadcasters from this
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spectrum, the FCC proposed a number of measures, ranging from repacking televisioninto a different portion of the radio spectrum, reducing the amount of spectrum assignedto each broadcaster, and giving local broadcast stations the option of forfeiting theirchannels in exchange for a portion of the proceeds they generated at auction.7
In addition to RealNetworks, other aggregators that began operating mobile televisionservices in this period included the startups Go TV and MobiTV.8 Though Verizons conception of real TV as a source of communal experiencesresonated deeply with the structuring ideologies of the American model of broadcasting,Orgad (2009, p. 202) identifies a similar trope within international mobile televisionadvertisements.
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