Rupert Murdoch, watch your step. I am coming to get you. I have just launched my own global TV station from my mobile phone and laptop. So far the total audience at any one moment hasn't risen above eight, but everyone has to start somewhere now that the creative revolution is offering everyone the opportunity to be a producer as well as a consumer.
My experience was courtesy of Kyte.tv, the latest of a series of start-ups (with high-octane financial backing) trying to claim this new space as their own. I was very impressed with the ease with which it can be done and the cost (nothing so far, at least not until my mobile phone bill comes in). I started by taking a video of a fairground carousel at the South Bank in London at the weekend. At home, after sending it to my desktop using the Bluetooth wireless function, I opened up the Kyte.tv homepage, pressed My Channels and Produce. I then dragged a "video player" icon to the middle of the screen and then clicked to upload my video.
At a stroke it was out on Kyte's network for anyone who happened to be tuned in to watch, and make comments in the Chat window. By the end of the day it had been seen over 60 times - not bad for a service that is still on a limited audience test run. It is being launched next Monday but readers can taste it now using the invite code kyte4guardian as a login on Kyte.tv's website.
Later in the day I linked up with a friend in California to upload photos of paintings, which we were able to discuss live, and two or three other people from goodness knows where joined in the conversation. Each picture can have a polling function, inviting viewers to vote on what they think about it. At present you can upload photographs and videos on multiple channels but eventually there will be live streaming - and revenue shares - so you could run a real TV station from your living room - with everything archived so people who missed it can catch up.
And that's only part of it. This whole process can be done from your mobile phone once you have put your mobile number on Kyte's website (which then sends you a text message with the necessary software, which worked first time for me). I switched my mobile on while we were discussing the paintings and it was quite eerie how the phone replicated everything that was happening on my laptop without any noticeable lag. I could chat from either the mobile or the laptop without any bother. I then copied a provided link, pasted it into my MySpace site and found the whole operation could be hosted from there, or other blogs, rather than from Kyte.
I don't know whether this or one of the other competitors - such as Zannel.com, Brightcove, YouTube or SeeMeTV - will win this race. It will depend on which users can generate interesting programmes, but it is quite amazing that anyone can now operate a global TV station from a mobile phone for no extra cost - as long as they are on an "all you can eat" data tariff as provided by enlightened operators such as 3 and T-Mobile.
This is definitely not for people whose service providers charge open endedly for data. At the moment it only works on a number of smart phones including the admirable Nokia N73 (but less well on the N80's smaller screen) plus some others. There isn't actually much new in it. It just packages existing technologies in a way that is simple to use.
Predictions about the future of internet television have concentrated on those likely to be watching it (around 1.5m households by 2011, according to the Centre for Telecoms Research) but it will be more interesting to see how many will be creating it. It could be very large numbers as long as the mobile operators don't smother it at birth with open-ended pricing policies for data. I wouldn't put it past them.
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