My 15 seconds of Fame TV.....look out YouTube?

Fame TV started up yesterday - it allows users to upload 100MB of media (from a mobile 'phone as MMS) and then rate it by sms text when it is shown over satellite. It makes money from (i) uploading from mobile phones at £1.50 a shot, and (ii) from the sms texts rating the content - 50p for a vote, £1 for a vote text which is put on screen. It is also not clear how the transport costs of 100MB of upload are paid for - in the £1.50 or extra.

So, is this one of the early attempts at blending Trad. Media and elements of Web 2.0, or is it just a straight development of the "reality TV game" models that are monetised via sms and mms?.

It still seems more like a Reality TV/ Gameshow derivative now, but could evolve to be both. In essence Fame TV is using mobile User Generated Content, and the upload approach is similar to the YouTube model. SMS voting is just another form of the Web 2.0 rating / review/ recommend feature. What is not clear is how much more will be done via the website, it is still very rudimentary - no social networking, no profiles, no community, no upload even yet - and whether there is any possibility to add social networking on a mobile basis.

The interesting question to me is - will this approach be a "Good Enough" for broadcasters and cable channels to stave off the wave of IPTV and other interactive IP video media plays? In the "scramble for attention", will it allow traditional media to fight back by offering semi interactive hybrid services like this?.

And, are enough people really going to pay these prices when YouTube et al is nearly free?

Mobile customers do seem to have a strange habit of paying (handsomely) for what the Web gives for free, but in this case (given the competing options emerging) I suspect it will grow rapidly initially, but at current pricing will not be sustainable in the medium term as the novelty wears off.

It will be interesting to see if advertising is used to subsidise the service eventually.

In the battle against Internet TV, seeing broadcast media enrolling mobile to come to their aid to give some interactivity is a very interesting play. I do believe there is quite a lot of mileage in these sort of hybrid services, but I think they will have to be far more inclusive of the Web side and its economics to be succesful in the longer term. The US based Current TV seems to have a more multi-media model with a lot more user involvement via the website, for example.