Press finds its mojo

Gannett, the world’s biggest newspaper group, has invested in “mojos” - mobile journalists, according to a special report on the newspaper industry in The Economist (August 26-September 1 edition). The idea is to make its journalism more local.

Instead of being based in an office, the mojos will use laptops and stay “permanently encamped in community hubs”.

More on: www.economist.com

Technorati tags: mojos, mobile journalists

ITV to broadcast on 3

From this autumn, ITV1 - a UK terrestrial TV channel - and ITV Play, ITV’s participation channel, will be streamed live to mobiles on 3’s UK network. Broadcaster ITV has signed an exclusive third generation (3G) mobile licence with 3 for six months.

Charles Allen, chief executive of ITV, said: “We are delighted that we are teaming up with 3 to be the first terrestrial broadcaster in the UK to launch this kind of service. This is a bold new service from ITV and 3 which makes the ambition of fully streamed mobile TV a reality.”

The 3 network has been an early adopter of TV over mobile in the UK. The deal also makes sense for ITV, which has seen its advertising revenues plummet and audience share drop as viewers and advertisers are lured away by the internet and new digital channels. The 3 network has 3.5 million customers in the UK, so the deal could boost ITV's audience reach.

ITV has already partnered with 3 and rivals Orange and O2 to enable subscribers to access some ITV content direct from their operator portals.

More on: www.itv.com

Technorati tags: mobile services, 3G, mobile TV

Mobishows gain ground

Covers: mobile phones, mobisodes, mobishows, TV

Sports intellectual property company Player One and the mobile TV arm of UK production company TwoFour are getting together to make sports content for mobiles, they announced last week.

They are looking at two areas:

*Mobisodes - mobile video clips linked to existing TV shows or that involve repurposing existing TV content, for example to produce boxing highlights.

*Mobishows – made for mobile shows, including specially-shot footage as well as some archive TV footage.

Pete Russell, managing director of Player One, took the realistic view that subscriptions for mobile content are hard to sell, except around relatively short events, such as The Ashes cricket series. His company and TwoFour Mobile will produce a cricket mobishow before and during the series.

Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, head of TwoFour Mobile, said: “All the big three UK production companies - RDF, Endemol and TwoFour - have set up convergence TV divisions looking at content specifically for mobile and broadband.

“Ad revenue is going away from TV [and towards the internet] and, at the same time, viewers don’t want to watch so much advertising and are using Tivo [hard-disk recorders] to avoid it."

But he believes, mobile users will accept an advert at the beginning of a mobishow they want to watch.

“It’s all about capturing the camera phone demographic,” pointed out Russell.