Will Indian broadcasters make a mobile move?

MUMBAI, INDIA: Amidst the global recession, the last couple of quarters for the media industry including the broadcasters and publishers haven’t been quiet promising. They witnessed a dip in revenues and readership/viewership, and a mounting production costs due to lack of advertiser’s support, all leading to the industry’s dismal state.

However, the situation contradicted the belief that recessions affect demands for media content as, on the other hand, there was an immense rise of Internet users who not only access information but also prefer web-based entertainment in the form of 'infotainment'.

According to TRAI, India has 415 million mobile users of which 101 million access mobile Internet. Today, more and more consumers are switching from traditional mediums to new-age mediums like Internet and mobile. The Indian media industry is finding it difficult to cope with the phenomenal growth of Internet and mobile as a new medium.

In the global context, India’s media industry is still growing, while the US has a well-matured media and even mobile industry. However, it did face the similar situation a few years back as what is recently seen in India.

Interestingly, the US broadcasters, for instance, rather than standing against the new-age mobile and Internet medium, incorporated it in their existing business and leveraged from it.

CBS Corporation, the leading broadcast company in the US had taken key innovative initiatives by setting up mobile and interactive business arm that offers infotainment based rich content including news, sports, business, movies, videos and TV shows via Internet portals and mobile based wapsites and micro-sites.

According to CBS Mobile’s vice president Randy Ahn, the increasing mobile Internet usage is due to network improvements such as 3G, Wi-Fi along with latest Wi-max and 4G technologies.

“More so the development and improvement in the mobile devices and applications is offering greater user experience and easy access, which is why there’s rise in mobile users and mobile Internet.”

From business perspective, Ahn explained that in order to reach to TV as well as mobile audience, CBS Mobile provided updates with each show, combined applications and added game elements.

“We created CBS Sports mobile 2.0 property that was a huge leap forward in terms of design, navigation, in depth content and features. We also built applications or properties for smart devices such as Apple’s iPhone and Blackberry,” added Ahn.

He pointed out that mobile properties offered better prospects for monetization and cross platform advertisement sales but importantly at very low cost. Also, CBS Mobile successfully experimented with mobile TV and broadcast exclusive live shows and events content on the mobile for mobile users.

However, CBS wasn't the only company that embraced new technology and platforms. Turner Broadcasting Systems’ director – Wireless Operations, Ronald Kozoman, said, “We created properties or products for mobiles, which were only 'made for mobile'.”

He said these properties were highly user friendly “The applications had dynamic updates with geo-targeted content and personalized features and local language adaptations. All these with strong analytics across products were incorporated as information on mobile is more than on TV,” said Kozoman.

Overall, the US broadcasters illustrated how to use emerging technologies and leveraged their existing business with greater audience outreach on their preferred medium. It certainly showcased how these broadcasters looked beyond the SMS driven monetization model, which has been the case of their Indian counterparts.

So, will the Indian media industry take more effort in understanding the synergy of Internet and mobile platforms to empower users, rather than flooding them with stereotype VAS based business models?