Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 164

Cannes really is an annoying sh*thole. Taxis from to and from the airport can cost 100 Euros a time, the hotels (if you can find one that’s not miles out of town) are pokey and the sidewalks are too small to accommodate any half-decent trade show audience.

At the Mipcom audiovisual show this week, it was even worse. It rained all the time, the extortionate price of umbrellas being sold outside the Palais went up by the hour and it was that time of year when every delegate has Too-Many-Trade-Shows-Not-Enough-New-Comment-Same-Old-Same-Old-Syndrome.

But it wasn’t quite like that at the inaugural mobile TV awards. The scrum outside the screenings auditorium proved that mobile TV had grabbed the attention of these cynical attendees. There wasn’t a seat to be had as four very handsome, intelligent and gifted judges (did I mention I was one of them? No? Oh, well I was) explained why they had chosen 23 nominees out of more than 230 entries.

The reasons? Just the obvious. Simplicity, understanding of mobile users, knowledge of technology, credits that lasted seconds, and content that had been made for mobile. It was unbelievable how many entries came from TV companies that thought they would waltz the awards because of the strength of the brand (so I didn’t vote for them and that felt very, very good… hahahhahahhahahhaha!!!).

Winning genres ranged from music to science to skateboarding to TV show highlights and it showed what great stuff is out there. Expect next year’s awards to be even more interesting, now that the bandwagon has left the station.

For this jaded newsletterist, the Mobile Games show in Madrid the following day was a step too far. But, as always, always something about making the effort that makes it worthwhile. I met a company that was only specialised in producing mobile TV extreme sports; part of their presentation was DOING extreme sports.

So, last night one of their people base-jumped 300 metres from the building opposite and his mate filmed it. Now, that’s quality and not only did it make the trade event sexy, it was something I'd vote for, and I might even shell out a quid to watch it on a mobile phone.