Chernin: News Corp. To Bring New Simpsons Shows Exclusively On Mobile

Authored by Jay Baage on September 13, 2006 - 9:59am.

CTIA 2006, Los Angeles - Homer Simpson is key to News Corp.’s strategy to conquer mobile entertainment, a market that is “one step away from exploding”, according to News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, in his keynote at CTIA IT and Wireless Expo in Los Angeles Convention Center this morning. Chernin also talked about the urgent need for media companies in general to better market and produce content for cell phones and how News Corp., in particular, will leverage the company’s two major new media acquisitions, MySpace and Jamba, to do this. In fact, Jamba will offer exclusive mobile content derived from the Simpsons.
News Corp. recently announced that it has bought a controlling stake in the mobile ringtone and entertainment company, Jamba, for $188 million and Chernin’s keynote could not have been more optimistic on the possibilities of this space.

“This is a massive opportunity”, Chernin said. “We have just begun to scratch the surface (of mobile entertainment)”.

Chernin mentioned that, for example, only 4% of cell phone subscribers in the U. S. are users of mobile TV services. If that share can be increased to 20% and those subscribers pay $10 on average for this extra service, it would be a $5 billion business per year.

The reason that mobile entertainment has been slow to take off in the U. S., as compared to other parts of the world, is partly a marketing problem, according to Chernin. He says that that the carriers and media companies have not been able to get the message across that mobile entertainment is a fun and great experience.

“There is a need to be much more imaginary in marketing these services. Much of the marketing that has been done has been confusing, cheesy and just bad”, he said.

Chernin also mentioned correcting the mistake of not thinking enough about mobile as its own medium, but just a sales channel for repurposed content.

Peter Chernin - News Corp.

News Corp. plans to produce a lot of original content for cell phones in the near future. Central to this strategy is “The Simpsons”, the vastly popular animated Fox series, where new episodes will be produced exclusively for cell phones.

“We will do a lot of Simpsons stuff exclusively for mobile and we will market the hell out of it, trust me”, Chernin said.

On the creative side, News Corp. will take a more experimental approach to programming for cell phones.

“We need to be bolder and more experimental with our content to bring a greater and more interactive experience”, Chernin said. “We need to try everything, no matter how unorthodox. We must ban the word ‘failure’ from our vocabulary”.

News Corp. is currently in talks with all the major carriers about a MySpace deal in which mobile subscribers can access MySpace on-the-go. But so far, no deal is signed.

News Corp. estimates that 60-70 percent of all traffic to competing web TV site Youtube comes from MySpace. Chernin has recently talked to investors about the that it is time to cut out the middle man and to ramp up MySpace video offerings so that users will have no reason to go elsewhere for video content. For those who were interested in how MySpace Video fits into the mobile strategy, Chernin did not give much new information.

However, Chernin did make it very clear that mobile will be the next big thing for News Corp. The company aims to be the world’s number one content provider for this lucrative new medium and that he will spare no resources to get there.

Related Links:
http://www.thesimpsons.com
http://www.wirelessit.com