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Hans Spielthenner • OHM: TV (Spagna)

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The Murcia Cartoon Master (March 2007) was also an opportunity to discover the latest developments on consumption of audiovisual and animation content on mobiles phones. Hans Spielthenner from Ohm:tv, presented an interesting case study of a series specifically produced for mobile phones, “Petey and Jaydee”. The series has been created in 2001 by Momentum Animation Studios in Melbourne. Over the years the series has grown to 92 episodes. Ohm:tv holds the international distribution rights of the series. Two “wicked aliens” use their spaceship to go exploring in various locations. Follow along as they encounter all the fun bits of human tools and tricks. Over the years the property has been developed into one of the biggest mobile content brands with more than 1 Million downloads worldwide over the last years. Hans Spielthenner explained the distribution models and tendencies: 90 % of all operators are now working with Content Aggregators, who take out a big share of revenue from producers! The content for mobile must be short, the key issue is “tell your story in a minute”.

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What home TV has been doing on mobile space ?
We are working a lot with a number of studios, most of them located not in Europe but in New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Uruguay.
Our programs that we normally prefer to call brands, because wee see our animation characters like stars. We are managing characters like other types of agencies are managing their actors, talents, which means that we license these characters outside of their usual environment, the TV series. Our characters can be rented or licensed to mobile operators for the next marketing campaign, for all types of commercials. This means that we need a lot of flexibility, and for that we work very closely with the studios.
All our characters/brands can be described by the high quality of animation, the fact that they're exploitable in all different media. They are almost all of the time quite itchy, full of black humour, politically incorrect and they are able to travel which means that nearly all of our series have little or no dialogue. I'll show you an overview of characters and properties we are working with. Some of them are owned and some of them are licensed.

What is mobile content?
It's a new type of content, which exists only for the last 7 years.
It initially started to be simple text information. These days, you've clips, images, ring tones, games, all types of application like calories counters and your daily horoscope and the latest thing is mobile TV channel.
In 1998, some of the operators started with text messages that you were able to subscribe to like horoscopes, traffic news, sport results and it was simple SMS messages, no images.
In 1999, we saw the first types of very simple animations and logos, no comics. There was no colour.
In 2000, some mobile phone producers came up with colour display and we saw the first wall papers and logos in colour.
Only two years later, the handsets were ready to display moving images and we saw more and more established brands coming up the mobile phone market. The videos were up to 30 sec by then.
In 2003, some territories in Europe started with new handsets and new transmission channels UMTS allowing people to download videos up to 90 sec.
In 2005, Archie was the 1st operator who started full streaming services on mobile phones and together with them we also launched 2 mobile TV channels. The videos offered for download were up to 3 min long. It takes about 10 sec to download a 3 min video on UMTS.
In 2006, a lot of very known brands like National Geographic, MTV came up with mobile TV channels. The reason for that is that they had to decide whether they wanted to use the existing programmes or new channels, especially produced for mobile phones. There were 2 reasons for that. One was simply that there was a rights issue with the existing TV programme, the second was that the existing TV programmes were not really suitable for mobile phone. The programmes were too long or there were too many details, so you couldn't see any details on the screen.
2007 is quite an important year for mobile contents because we are facing a number of crucial questions. The main question is will mobile content become free. I personally think yes, it will become free and the operators and we as producers and distributors have to find a way to attract advertisement. There is already a couple of models in place. None of the advertising agencies so far have yet integrated them in their marketing plans and budgets. So it'll be interesting to see what is happening this year.
Concerning VOD and internet, as everyone knows it's quite hard to generate revenues on the internet.

What's the difference between internet and the mobile phone exploitation?
We're in a lucky situation that there is less faults and almost no illegal downloads on mobile phones at this stage. This might change as well. But the reason for that is that it's a lot more complex to download something on your mobile phone, which doesn't come from an official download website. And hardly anybody knows how to install a ring tone or a video on his phone. There is also a smaller community on the mobile phone market, which means this is very easy to send messages by email and tell people of videos that are very popular on Utube and any other platforms but on mobile phone it just doesn't happen at this stage.
And one the biggest difference is that all of us have always been used to pay for content or any kind of services that we use on mobile phones. While on internet there is a mentality that everything should be free. And this is something that still helps us sell or content on mobile phones.
One of our properties called Petey & Jaydee is among the top three mobile's properties in the world. Angry Kid and Happy Tree Friends are the three top properties of the mobile industry.

So more concretely about Petey & Jaydee :
The producers of Petey & Jaydee have recouped all their investments in the series just by mobile phones entertainment.
It's a story about two aliens who come down to earth and they're exploring the world. The series has been created by Momentum Animation Studio from Melbourne in 2001. And 92 episodes are on air in more than 50 countries on TV, mobile operators, internet, portals. We did a couple of specials for this series: a world cup special, a Christmas' special, an Olympic special. We're now working on a music special. The entire series is a 3D animation, produced with animation master. The fact that it's all based on 3D models helps us keep down the production budget because at present, we're producing one episode for 8000 AU$ (4800€) and the episode is 45 sec long including ending and beginning types and credits. The package include 92 videos, 200 wall papers and screensavers. We have four types of games that we coproduced with a Danish company, called KILO. They found a very effective way to produce new games, based on the same codec, but on different graphics. A game still costs around 15000 to 20000 € but it brought down the cost by around 35 %.
It's very important if you sell mobile content that you offer operators complete content package, because only if they get an attractive package, they will dedicate money to advertising and if they don't promote your content you can on Vodafone or on Telefonica, nobody knows that you're there. And the only one that can actually really promote your content and make it popular because they have to place it is the operator himself, that's one of the big issue.
It's also very important that the series is not only available on mobile phone, but you also need to cooperate with TV channels. The target group for the series is teenagers and young adults, although it's very obvious that younger kids like the characters. The same public watching The Simpsons, South Park and Happy Tree friends.
Most mobile operators are working with content aggregrators. Content aggregrators are considered as bad people because they take practically all your revenues, but it's actually not true because what they do is that they encode the content, this means that they make it available and suitable for all different of handsets. When we started 5 years ago, it was very easy to deliver clips to Vodaphone or to O2. They were fine with a DVD with the clips in any kind of format. Nowadays, when you sign a contract with an operator the first thing they do is they send you a 35 pages handling manual on how they want the clips to be delivered. We have to encode them, put them into a HTML context. Content aggregators also take care of the billing. Some of them have their own short codes, which allow them to sell the content. (18 - 1:13) They make sure that the operator is asking the right price for your content. In some countries, content aggregators will edit your content, if it's too long, or not suitable, etc.. They also select the content for the portal.
But of course content aggregators can take a big share of revenues from the producers, sometimes up to 75 %. So, whenever you team up with a content aggregator and sometimes it's the only way to get your way to an operator, make sure you find out what they actually do, make sure they really add value to your product.

What is the business model these days for mobile content?
Almost everyone works with revenue share or with a flat fee for a certain period. Due to their huge amount of content on the market, it's very difficult to get minimum guarantees. However if you come up with a creative package, that allows the operator to do a lot of marketing, they are happy to pay you as well for special productions. Rights on mobile phones are always non exclusive. There is no use for an operator to take exclusive right for property because nobody will ever change from orange to vodaphone because they have Petey & Jaydee. People change because they get a new phone or because it's cheaper, but not for content.

What is the future of mobile content?
As we already a couple of times, we have to think cross-media. It's very important, also from a production point of view. If you limit yourself to Mobile content, you will never recoup the money. You've to keep in mind that the series has to be exploited on TV, on the internet, merchandising. It's very important that you tell your story in a minute. Operators are happy with one minute clip. There is no price difference for a two minutes clip. One minute and two minutes clips are sold for the same price. The content has to be itchy, which means that some people feel offended when they watch the clip, but that's the target group actually wants. Now when I say offended, that's one of the series, launched in Cannes, very British, politically incorrect "my Teddy Bear is trying to Kill me". Another very important means is co-creation: our animation studio is working very closely with operators and content aggregators. We ask the operators right from the beginning how they want us to develop the content. This also give them the opportunity to become part of the content
Mobile TV channels are basically the same as any normal TV channels, with two big differences. There are made for use on mobile phones, which means that all of our programs are not longer then 10 min, while the average program is about 4 min. The rights are especially created for mobile phones, the program is aired as loop between one and three hours, depending on the operator's budget. The programs are aired 50% without dialogues or in the local language of the territory where the channel is on air and 50% in English.

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