Conclusion: Vapor to vapor (part six of “From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and ‘the Future of Television’”)
May 27, 2011 1 Comment
The following post contains the sixth and final installment of my essay-in-progress From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television.” For part one, as well as an introduction to this project, click here. For part two, which lays out the essay’s theoretical and historical contexts, click here. For part three, which looks at the circumstances surrounding the American broadcasting industry’s involvement with mobile television, click here. For part four, which outlines some of the mobile communications industry’s various mobile multimedia initiatives, click here. And for part five, which discusses the mobile communications industry’s promotion of mobile multicasting, click here.
Conclusion: Vapor to vapor
The American broadcast industry’s 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 event 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 standard’s “killer app,” and predicted that the organization’s 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. “That’s the future,” Smith informed the reception’s attendees, “and it includes broadcasters” (Dickson, 2010).
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