BskyB chief James Murdoch made cautious statements about mobile television this week, telling an online forum the business model was still evolving.
Murdoch told participants in a Financial Times session that the best means of distributing TV content over cell phones had yet to be determined, although the industry was encouraged by early indications of consumer demand.
A primary issue was the type of device that consumers will eventually settle on, which means content companies and mobile operators will have to remain flexible.
"Let's not expect any one device ... to be the Swiss Army knife of mobile content," Murdoch was quoted as saying in the Financial Times. "They all do different things, and they are all changing fast."
Murdoch suggested mobile-television distribution would evolve into a shared enterprise with traditional television broadcasters playing a significant role.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
Related stories:
Explorers find hundreds of undescribed corals, other species on familiar Australian reefs
Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia -- waters long familiar to divers.
Cartilage that repairs itself? New research reveals important clues
A strain of mice with the natural ability to repair damaged cartilage may one day lead to significant improvements in treatment of human knee, shoulder and hip injuries.
Rupert Murdoch, Tom Glocer support Microsoft-Yahoo merger
Two media titans, Rupert Murdoch and Tom Glocer, the head of Thompson Reuters, said they support a partnership between computer giant Microsoft and Internet giant Yahoo, after a deal between the two companies fell apart in April.
Grocery boost
Low-income neighborhoods that lack easy access to grocery stores could lead to a breakdown of food security for hundreds of thousands of people - not in the developing world, but in major urban areas of the U.S. That's the conclusion from a report to be published in the inaugural issue of the
International Journal Behavioural and Healthcare Research produced by Inderscience Publishers.
Even part-time work can have a negative effect on breastfeeding rates, says new study
Part-time and casual work among new mothers has almost as big a negative impact on breastfeeding rates as returning to work full-time, says a new study led by the University of Melbourne.
Conservation strategies must shift with global environmental change, says CU-Boulder study
Sustaining and enhancing altered ecosystems has become the new mantra for conservation and restoration managers as ecosystems continue to change in response to global warming and other environmental changes, says a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Scientists outline novel approach to ecosystem management
Traditional ecosystems in which communities of plants and animals have co-evolved and are interdependent are increasingly rare, due to human-induced ecosystem changes. As a result, historical assessments of ecosystem health are often inaccurate. A team of scientists present a new approach to management efforts in a paper posted this week on Frontiers e-View, the online prepress publication site of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, published by the Ecological Society of America. The researchers suggest that such efforts should focus less on restoring ecosystems to their original state and more on sustaining new, healthy ecosystems that are resilient to further environmental change.
Photo-monitoring whale sharks
Up to 20 meters long and weighing as much as 20 tons, its enormous size gives the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) its name. Known as the ‘gentle giant’ for its non-predatory behavior, this fish, with its broad, flattened head and minute teeth, eats tiny zooplankton, sieving them through a fine mesh of gill-rakers. Listed as a rare species, relatively little is known about whale sharks, which live in tropical and warm seas, including the western Atlantic and southern Pacific.