CBS and News Corp launch US mobile services

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 28 February 2006 at 11:06
Tags: Journalism, Mobile Phones, Sun, Television, United States

As if websites and bloggers were not enough to contend with these days, American newspapers and magazines face some new competition: news and features on cell phones.

The American television network CBS has launched a new service that will broadcast features and news clips directly to subscribers’ cell phones.

For a fee of one dollar (just over 60p) a week, subscribers will get at least five news clips a day, plus the latest gossip on top celebrities and even clips from the CBS show Entertainment Tonight. Still in the works: a sports news channel.

This comes on top of a similar news and entertainment service launched by News Corp. Called Mobizzo, it even includes gossip items from such Murdoch papers as the London Sun.

There is a prediction that within five years the number of mobile phones around the world will double to at least 4 billion. CBS and News Corp. are both bent, it’s said, on getting in on this new development on the ground floor. Within a year or two it’s predicted providing news and features on mobile phones will be a crowded field. In fact one of the other predictions is that cell-phone users on their mini-screens will be able to virtually watch news as it happens – for example a bomb going off in Baghdad within minutes of the actual explosion.

Tags: Journalism, Mobile Phones, Sun, Television, United States