Windfall in the mobile/handheld TV future?

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NAB is citing a study from BIA Financial Network and the Law and Economics Consulting Group which posits that rapid adoption of a mobile DTV standard could bring 2B in new annual revenue to the industry as soon as 2012. The split it expects to see is 1.1B for local stations and 900M for networks and syndicators. However, access to this kind of cash hinges on adoption of a standardized protocol. Several competing technologies are vying to be the one.


TVBR/RBR observation: Call us curmudgeons, but we tend to see TV phones as a potential 2B windfall for the automobile repair industry, and expect we will be spending much of our time on the road dodging our fellow citizens who can’t drag their attention away from a "Gilligan’s Island" rerun long enough to maintain their lane position on I-95. Laugh if you want, but we’ve already had to dodge people driving while working on their laptop.
Nevertheless, if the money is out there, broadcasters should certainly go after it. NAB’s FASTROAD program (Flexible Advanced Services for Television and Radio On All Devices) was the force behind the study, and we should expect the NAB to play a major role in getting its membership to the 2B promised land.