Jennifer Wilson has been in the content industry for about 20 years, almost all of it on telephones of some sort or another (20 years in IVR and speech recognition services). She says mobile is the most fun she’s had in a long time and that she’s really enjoying the potential of this incredibly disruptive industry.

mo:life
Can you give us an introduction to HWW and myTV, and tell us a little about they came about?

Jennifer Wilson
HWW has been around for over 30 years, producing content in the movies, TV, gigs and restaurants areas. Our first client was 2JJ and we will have 2JJJ as a client. We do the Foxtel Electronic Program Guide on the Digital IQ box, and our content is syndicated to media clients, provided through the yourTime.com.au suite of web sites (yourMovies, your TV etc) and available on every mobile network in Australia.

myTV was a concept we had when we stared to think about what Mobile+TV might be. There is a good deal of talk about TV (passive, channel based, cross genre etc) and Video on Demand type TV (active, clip based, genre based clips etc). We thought there had to be a way to combine these into a single service which was:

a) relatively passive (you can turn it on and just watch)
b) channel based (you get a different experience at different times of the day, just like TV)
c) cross genre (we mix news and information in the morning with lifestyle, comedy and entertainment news being added later in the day)
d) active (ideally, myTV lets you create and program your own TV experience)
e) clip based (each myTV stream starts from the top and you can chose to repeat a clip or program if you miss it)

So - that’s what myTV is! Right now, the experience is limited by the technology. So, for example, while the idea is that you only see content you haven’t seen before and we skip content you’ve viewed - right now we can’t achieve that.

mo:life
Your website mentions that “content should be ‘mobile suitable’ - and therefore short in duration and suitable for the small screen”. Can you cite any other peculiarities of mobile content production, such as minimal camera movement, close-ups etc?

Jennifer Wilson
There are things like captions and titles on the bottom of the screen, especially in news programs, which cannot be read on the mobile screen and which end up looking like fluff; you need to consider the closeness of the headshot - we did a whole weeks run with an expressive presenter and you kept seeing their hands enter the bottom of the shot as they gestured, so we went for a wider shot which showed their hands and it worked much better; sports shots need to be handled carefully - especially if there is a small ball involved which is difficult to see; and “atmospheric shots” of the grounds are a complete waste of time.

Also, interestingly, while we think of mobile as more “snack” sized content, stories made up of lots of different images jumping from scene to scene are really hard to follow on mobile. Finally, the sound is, I’d say, easily as important as the image. A slow tracked shot with a good voice over works really well on mobile. Flicking images with loud background music with words and graphs on the screen are about the worst!

mo:life
You also seem to place emphasis on the importance of diverse content. How would the diverse, independent producers making content best go about getting their product out-there with companies like HWW?

Jennifer Wilson
I think the one of the most exciting things about mobile is that the experience can be really uniquely tailored for each viewer - and that means as niche as the service provider chooses to make it. The biggest problem for creators of diverse content is making money out of the still small take up and ‘revenue share only’ deals on the table. It is hard to get enough consumers to pay even small amounts to make it possible to make really cutting edge content, so, in the end, carriers and the bigger providers fall back on either “branded content” (aka Desperate Housewives) which has a pre-built audience; or they go for mass produced content (aka international) which works on volumes bigger than our tiny market and where a 5c revenue share works fine for them. I really would like to see more initiatives to support content producers.

Now, in terms of getting it out there, we are still very dependant on the support of the carriers and in them giving us access to their portal than thus their platform. Until we have cheaper data pricing, off-portal will be hard to justify in Australia and that impacts on the ability to get content into the hands or onto the phones of consumers without needing a carrier involved.

mo:life
Can you walk us through a typical delivery and billing process for myTV content?

Jennifer Wilson
Typically, a myTV customer will be on a bus, or in a taxi, or waiting for a friend. They can access myTV straight from the Telstra 3G portal (both Active/Bigpond and i-mode). The content is designed to suit the time of day, with news and information focus in the morning; gossip and entertainment at “coffee break”; a review of tonight’s TV and maybe what movies are showing later in the day - with comedy, animation and lifestyle (aka: cooking shows) scattered throughout. There is also a Chinese Language program also (JadeWorld).

Once you click to start, the content is streamed to your handset either as Packed Switched Data (on Active/BigPond) or Circuit Switched (where your phone actually dials into the program) on i-mode. Some handsets let you fast forward or rewind, but this is handset dependant.

Watching myTV costs about $1 and you can view and review the same stream (they run between 6 -18 mins long) for that price. You can also watch individual clips for 50c. There is no charge for the data, just the viewing charge (it is $5 a month on i-mode, which is fabulous value) and you are billed on your mobile bill at the end of the month.

mo:life
The mobile sector is rife with technical and commercial challenges - can you tell us about some major challenges you’ve faced in setting up myTV?

Jennifer Wilson
First was getting someone to understand what the concept was! We think myTV covers a unique spot between mobile TV and mobile Video on Demand.

Secondly, the right content at the right price was an issue. In the case of myTV, Telstra contracted most of the content directly, with HWW also providing some in our areas of expertise (movies, gigs, tv etc).

The technical challenges remain: we would ideally like each individual consumer to be able to program their own “myTV” - but in order to deliver this without pre-building hundreds of unique programs, the streaming content server needs to have a level of interaction with the handset to ‘push’ content to the handset to play, based on what our subscriber management system says the playlist for that subscriber should be. Unfortunately, this element is not yet available, so we can’t yet provide only unseen content based on your own personally programmed myTV.

Additionally, actually getting the content to the telco’s streaming server was an issue. We started used Secure FTP (even though our racks were almost side-by-side in a data centre), and it took about 55 minutes to send over a 15 minutes stream - which is really ineffective.

Finally, getting in the content on schedule, transcoding this, adding interstitials, packaging this up and shipping it to the streaming server is all done automatically; while the content is programmed through an Electronic Program Guide by Mark, the myTV Content Manager. Getting these systems working smoothly and easily was definitely a challenge!

mo:life
Everyone is keen to hear some numbers - can you give us an estimate on the number of screens your most popular content reaches?

Jennifer Wilson
Well, we know that Telstra has low numbers in 3G (estimates out this week were 25,000) and our figures show that about 30% of these have gone to the myTV sites at some point, but only bout 10% have watched a myTV stream.

Interestingly, the repeat visits are high, with more than 50% of people coming back for more, and an average of over four “viewings” of myTV each - so it looks like people like this snack-form content.

mo:life
To expand on the last question, do you think consumers are starting to embrace mobile video content? Can you give us some numbers? (video/net enabled phones, mobile tv subscriptions, download numbers, etc)

Jennifer Wilson
I think consumers do like video content on mobile - there has been a real increase in this. The biggest issue is the number of really good video capable handsets - where the content can be streamed - requiring either a 3G phone or a special (eg DVB-H, MediaFLO) handset capable of receiving broadcast signals. The figures from overseas are encouraging - 55% of Spaniards would like to watch mobile TV on their phones and would pay Euro5 for this. Let’s hope Australian’s are like their Mediterranean counterparts!

mo:life
In your experience, are you seeing the film and television industries looking to mobiles as new screens that have the potential to compliment and add to television content, and cinema and dvd released films?

Jennifer Wilson
It is really early days on this, but there are signs they are starting to think this way (as are advertising agencies - scary!). The important thing to bear in mind is that the attention span of a viewer is severely reduced when the screen is so small. This means that just pushing content onto “another screen” won’t work - we need to change the content to make it work on that screen by cropping it, focusing the image, removing abstractions and shortening it. A 3 minute update on what you missed last night on Desperate Housewives is compelling mobile viewing. A 60 minute episode with ads is just not going to fly. Bloopers and out-takes and cut scenes are fabulous mobile content which can supplement a mainstream film release (without needing to wait for the DVD). And we already know from their success on yourMovies that film and DVD trailers are very popular - both to get an idea of a film and as sheer entertainment.

mo:life
Do you have any thoughts on the emergence of Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld or DVB-H? What will it mean for HWW?

Jennifer Wilson
We’ve actually had portable TVs (in various forms) since 1976! (Mind you, portable in 1976 was not that mobile!) They’ve just never been a compelling experience for most people, unlike the rapid adoption first of Walkmans then iPods and MP3 players. I think that watching actual broadcast TV on a small screen is something you do when you really need to, possibly the cricket or a program you really want to see live. However, for most of us, highlights (the updated cricket scores with 2 minutes of video highlights) will give us all we need in terms of TV.

I think mobile TV is a “boredom killer” experience, in the same way that we use TV for just ‘vegging’ in front of. That means that yes, we’ll just watch 5 minutes of whatever’s on because it is a choice between our mobile and a two year old magazine in a Doctor’s waiting room.

I think that the war brewing between MSMS, DAB, DMB, TDTv, DVB-H and MediaFLO (and I’m sure there will be others) will likely be dominated by DVB-H in the same way that GSM has dominated the mobile spectrum. But that said, I am still not convinced that mobile TV (as in a streaming, broadcast product) is the killer app. I think that made for mobile content in snack-sized pieces will still be the dominant and preferred viewing experience - that this is when HWW will be concentrating our efforts.

mo:life
Can you give us your vision of the mobile tv market in five years?

Jennifer Wilson
See above answer! I think that given the huge rise in consumer created content, the other thing we will start to see is TV-4-U, where we all make, program or select video viewing experiences which we want to share with people. If we can be our own content programmers, and if we can make podcasts for people to listen to, why aren’t we TV producers?

But that said, there will always be a market for well made video content and compelling series - whether news, sport, sitcoms, drama, animations or comedy.

I do think in 5 years time we’ll almost all be carrying around handsets that can probably pick up broadcast signals (if we can be bothered), will be able to store several Gb of music or videos which we can dip into. And we’ll all still be using it to talk and send messages to each other on. The mobile is a communication tool, everything else is bells and whistles! (but my goodness they are fun bells and whistles!)