ESPN pulls plug on cell phone operation
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ESPN is closing down its cell phone company for sports fans after less than a year, planning instead to forge deals with other wireless operators to offer Mobile ESPN's multimedia content, the majority-owned subsidiary of Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday.
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NEW YORK -- An outage has disconnected BlackBerry smart phones across North America.
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Cingular Wireless on Tuesday closed  its $41 billion cash purchase of AT&T Wireless Services Inc.  AWE.N, creating the biggest U.S. mobile service with more  than 46 million customers.
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NEW YORK  &#151; Dan Patrick is leaving ESPN after 18 years, insisting there is no acrimony but saying he was beginning to take his job for granted.
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Baseball fans will soon be able to use their cell phones to take them out to the ballgame.
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It's all over but the official announcement. The National Hockey League will formally pull the plug on the 2004-05 season tomorrow at 1 p.m. when commissioner Gary Bettman holds a news conference at a Manhattan hotel.
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Questions filled the air Monday as the mobile industry geared up for one of its biggest U.S. trade shows on Monday by focusing on entertainment.AT&amp;T got a head start on the CTIA Wireless IT &amp; Entertainment show in San Francisco by unveiling an upcoming music service with Napster. But even AT&amp;T said the best business model for mobile entertainment is still being worked out.The market for mobile entertainment still pales in comparison to messaging, which more than half of AT&amp;T&#39;s customers use, said Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data at the nation&#39;s biggest carrier, which has about 63 million subscribers. Collins thinks mobile entertainment will catch on to that degree, but the jury is out on the best business model for getting there, he told a large crowd at a pre-show entertainment conference.On Monday, AT&amp;T announced it will let consumers download songs over the air from a Napster catalog of more than 5 million songs. The Napster Mobile service, due to become available in mid-November, will offer single songs for $1.99 each and a monthly subscription for $7.49. The subscription will let customers download five songs each month. Features for discovering new music and keeping up with favorite artists will also be included.The service is meant to complement song downloads to PCs for later &quot;sideloading&quot; to a phone, said Gregg Brown, who handles strategic marketing and business development for music at AT&amp;T. The carrier already offers that type of service but believes some consumers want to be able to buy songs immediately, he said. A copy of each song bought over the air can also be automatically delivered to the customer&#39;s PC.It&#39;s an example of the try-anything approach carriers and content makers are taking to mobile entertainment. Also at the pre-show conference, ESPN Senior Vice President for Digital Media John Zehr said the sports media company closed down its MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) business last year because it had a harder time than expected selling handsets in retail stores. It also was unfair to sports fans to make them switch service providers and phones just to get ESPN&#39;s mobile content, Zehr said.Now ESPN&#39;s content is offered through Verizon&#39;s portal. Soon the company will add social networking to help fans of certain teams keep in touch, Zehr added.ESPN&#39;s goal is to make it as easy as possible for consumers to find its content -- preferably on the &quot;idle&quot; screen of the phone whenever they look at it, Zehr said. Carriers should find a way to determine what each subscriber would want to see on that screen, or ask them, rather than making them take the initiative, he said.But ESPN has another thing coming if they hope to dictate placement, according to IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi.&quot;The content provider never controls the environment of consumption,&quot; Bakhshi said.Clashes happen partly because the market is so young and demand is still little known, AT&amp;T&#39;s Collins said. It&#39;s hard to work out business models that satisfy carriers, content providers and advertisers, he said. Everyone wants to get into the mobile world because cell phones are ubiquitous, but carriers can&#39;t pay top dollar for content when the customer base isn&#39;t that big yet. Device makers add another layer of complexity.&quot;We can&#39;t just take the cable television or the broadcast model and superimpose it on this business,&quot; Collins said. The right model will be some mix of advertising, subscribers paying for content, and makers of programming selling it to carriers, he said.
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Sports fans rejoice. ESPN announced today that next year it will become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) and launch ESPN Mobile, a mobile phone service specifically targeted to hardcore sports fans.
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Walt Disney Co.'s DIS.N ESPN  sports television network is launching its own brand of mobile  phone service in a deal with Sprint Corp. FON.N intended to  lure new users with sports news sent over a next-generation  network, the companies said on Wednesday.
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ESPN will launch its own branded wireless phone service next year, the first in a series of branded cell-phone services planned by Walt Disney (DIS), which owns the cable sports channel.
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SAN FRANCISCO - The sports media company ESPN will introduce a branded mobile service and cell phones next year in the U.S., becoming the latest in a growing number of companies entering the mobile market on the strength of established audiences.
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ESPN, the sports television network that offers viewers shows like ''Around the Horn&quot; and ''Pardon the Interruption,&quot; soon will be letting fans get on the horn and interrupt someone.
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The Walt Disney Company said Thursday that it would cease operating its family-oriented mobile phone service at the end of the year.
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By Aman Batheja, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas  Sep. 15--Time Warner customers will no longer have the NFL Channel, effective today, after the cable company and network were unable to reach an agreement.
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After having mounted what appeared to have been a serious legal challenge to the US Federal Communications Commission's right to impose rules for bidders in the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction without legislative authority, Verizon yesterday formally withdrew its FCC complaint from the D.C. District Court of Appeals.
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By David Ranii, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  Sep. 9--Sports talk radio station WDNC 620 AM, which bills itself as "the Bull," has cut a deal with ESPN Radio to broadcast the network's sports programs beginning Friday.
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NEW YORK -- The planned shutdown of the Mobile ESPN cell phone service marks the first major bust in a rush of specialized wireless ventures targeting niche audiences they contend are underserved by the Cingulars and Verizons of the world.