from broadcasting to multi-casting: the mobile phone and 'the future of television

8/6/2019 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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from broadcasting to multi-casting: the mobile phone and 'the future of television

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