Twelve big-name broadcasters announced a joint venture on Wednesday to develop a new national mobile content service.
The announcement -- made by Belo, Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Fox, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, ION Television, Media General Inc., Meredith Corp., NBC, Post-Newsweek Stations Inc. and Raycom Media -- comes a day after FCC chairman Julius Genachowski urged attendees at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas to support its own mobile broadband initiative.
According to a release, the service “will allow member companies to provide content to mobile devices, including live and on-demand video, local and national news from print and electronic sources, as well as sports and entertainment programming” using the “existing broadcast spectrum.”
By aggregating existing broadcast spectrum, the new venture “will have the capacity to offer a breadth of mobile video and print content to nearly 150 million U.S. residents.”
The venture is designed to complement the FCC broadband plan, which asks broadcasters to share via auction their unused broadcast spectrum.
The new mobile service will utilize spectrum primarily from three owner-operator broadcasters -- Fox, NBC & Telemundo and ION -- and the nine remaining local broadcast groups.
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