A panel discussing consumer electronics in San Francisco doesn’t think anyone would watch the big Roman numeral game on the small screen.
A TechWeb report discussing the Texas Instruments “Toy Tour,” a consumer electronics traveling demonstration, mentioned a panel talk on videos and the small screen.
That panel sees ten minutes as the optimal length of video content that people will tolerate watching on a typical cell phone screen. “Nobody’s going to watch the entire Super Bowl on a cell phone,” Jeremy Toeman, VP of product development at Sling Media, was quoted as saying in the article.
I think Mr. Toeman underestimates the dedication of the hardcore sports fan. A lot of people have cell phones, and more than a few work jobs that have them at the office or stuck in a cubicle at nights or on weekends. Those schedules tend to be very inconvenient for the typical follower of sporting events.
I’m going to guess that Mr. Toeman has never been to the South during college football season. Even the worst teams in the SEC fill stadiums each weekend, and not all fans who would attend can get to the games. There would be some interest in being able to flip open one’s phone just to see if the quarterback is reading the blitz any better this week.
(For readers at the University of Kentucky, Vanderbilt University, and Mississippi State University, the answer will probably be no. Again.)
Interest would definitely expand beyond the South in March, when the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, better known at March Madness, begins. I have an ancient Sony Watchman TV, one of the first models ever made. It sports a tiny black and white screen, smaller than the ones on many mobile handsets. And it was in demand from co-workers during those first Thursday and Friday games.
Quite a few hurdles exist to getting sports content to the little screen. Licensing broadcasts, broadband delivery, and battery life would have to be addressed. And maybe most people wouldn’t watch the Super Bowl on one anyway.
But a lot of them may do so, especially if they’re stuck in a cubicle on Super Sunday whiling away the minutes between callers asking them to help find the Any key on their computer.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
