I am a fan of the Denver Broncos. We lived in Denver for about a year and had a chance to attend a number of games at Mile High Stadium. My son wanted us to invite John Elway over for a family dinner.
For the past 16 years, we have had a Super Bowl party, a tradition that was started by the Broncos back to back Super Bowl victories in January 1998 and 1999.
This year has been a great year for Broncos fans, but Denver games don’t seem to be available on the Toronto stations often enough. Fortunately, I have had a chance to test drive Bell Mobility’s Mobile TV service, which includes access to a number of NFL channels, including Red Zone.
I have often wondered why someone would watch TV on a 4 or 5 inch screen, when so many of us are getting spoiled with enormous high definition pictures at home. Last Sunday, I became a believer in Mobile TV. I was at the airport, waiting for a flight to spend New Year’s in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl. I really wanted to know if Denver would win their division and follow Adrian Peterson’s quest to break the rushing record. Thanks to Bell’s demo device loaner, I was able to watch the action in amazing high definition. Yes, it is only a 5 inch screen, but it was only 9 inches from my eyes.
As an aside, NFL Red Zone is a channel that was clearly designed for an attention deficit generation, but it is perfect for mobile TV.
A little over a year ago, I wrote that I disagreed with the CRTC’s decision to forbid mobile content exclusives. The CRTC said at the time:
Canadians shouldn’t be forced to subscribe to a wireless service from a specific company to access their favourite content. Healthy and fair competition between service providers will promote greater choice for Canadians.
I continue to believe the Commission got that decision wrong. I am not talking about vertical integration issues; if TELUS (as a mobile services provider with no affiliated broadcasters) had been the carrier that won the bidding for the NFL content, would the CRTC decision still be seen as correct?
I think that exclusives can drive more innovation, which promotes increased choice for Canadians. If a given type of content is so compelling that Canadians switch service providers, won’t this force the other service providers to respond? Either they have to find some other content or feature to offer, or drop their prices. Isn’t that in the consumer interest? Did the CRTC’s decision reduce the incentives for innovation?
If service providers all offer the same flavours of features and content, how does this promote greater choice?
Mobile TV isn’t going to replace my basement big screen, but I have new appreciation of its role on Sunday afternoons. There are a lot more channels beyond football, including new mobile access to Bloomberg TV business news. I’ll have to try out some of the other channels – but not on Sunday afternoons.