A forum held in Cannes, France, last month of key decision-makers in the television and audio-visual content industry could help Perth company Storyteller Media Group access the new billion dollar ‘mobisode’ market.
A Forum held in Cannes, France, last month of key decision-makers in the television and audio-visual content industry could help Perth company Storyteller Media Group access the new billion dollar ‘mobisode’ market.
Storyteller Media Group director Mike Searle says the forum, called Mipcom, is a market where people buy and sell completed programs.
This year, Mipcom attracted 10,000 audiovisual and 1,000 mobile, broadband and interactive professionals from 95 countries. The five-day event enabled broadcasters, producers and distributors to meet with mobile, broadband and interactive television executives, in addition to key advertisers and character licensors.
“I had back-to-back meetings for four days with broadcasters, co-producers, telcos and telco providers.” Mr Searle said.
“The main focus was selling our completed programs and looking for deals for new programs including ‘mobisodes’.”
Mobisodes are very short video content episodes aimed at portable devices such as mobile phones.
Mr Searle, who is in London on post-forum business, said his company was in an “amazing position” because of its huge library of content – close to 5,000 hours.
“This content can be reversioned into five- and 10-second clips or one- to two-minute mobisodes for mobiles – something telcos from Turkey, Scandinavia, the US and UK want to know more about,” he said.
“It is predicted that downloads and streaming to mobile phones in Europe alone will top $US7 billion in five years.
“We want a bit of that.
“It’s a whole new market where telcos don’t know what they want, so they are willing to try almost anything at the right price.
“Of course, finance is always a problem, so while in London I’m meeting with financiers and bankers with the view to finding investors and or partners to help Storyteller move into this extremely lucrative and highly profitable market.”
In some cases there was 700 per cent profit to be made, Mr Searle told WA Business News.
“We have been trying over the past 12 months to raise money in Perth but for some reason unless it comes out of the ground or grows on trees or vines, WA entrepreneurs we’ve spoken to just don’t seem interested,” he said.
While in London, Mr Searle visited a licensing fair where he met with several licensing agents about merchandising (books, board games, computer games, collecting cards) the company’s latest series Animal X Natural Mystery Unit, which is being screened internationally.
There are three series of AXNMU. The program includes a team of investigators that travels the world hunting down and examining bizarre riddles of the animal kingdom.
Animal X investigates strange, unexplained and often unconfirmed sightings of creatures and critters, many of which are yet to be recognised by the scientific world. The program also reports strange and unusual animal behaviour and phenomena from around the globe.
Storyteller Media Group has won more than 30 national and international awards for its programming during its 16 years in operation. The company primarily creates wildlife-based documentaries and entertainment television.
Included in the 30 are four of the state’s export award for arts and entertainment (including one for 2005). Also this year, Storyteller was awarded for its outstanding achievement at the WA Screen Awards.
