A dozen major television broadcasters including Fox and NBC have started a joint venture to develop a nationwide mobile television service.
The service will cover 150 million U.S. residents and will be aggregating existing broadcast spectrum from partners in the joint venture, which is comprised of Fox, NBC, ION, Belo, Cox, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Media General, Meredith, Post Newsweek and Raycom.
"This is a critically important initiative that holds great promise for our audiences and the television industry," said Hearst Television President and CEO David Barrett in a statement. "This is truly the next generation of local television service."
The joint venture will use the ATSC mobile television standard to deploy the technology. Qualcomm's mobile television subsidiary FLO TV uses a proprietary standard. Both the ATSC and FLO standard require specialized receiver chips to display television broadcasts on mobile devices.
"Mobile digital television places each of our companies at the center of a consumer transformation, putting us on cell phones, netbooks, DVD players and even in-vehicle entertainment systems," said Gannett Broadcasting President David Lougee in a statement. "... Virtually all U.S. consumers will soon be able to bring their most valuable content with them wherever they go."
Going forward, the joint venture plans to secure additional spectrum and land additional distribution partnerships for the service.