ESPN Pulls Plug on Cell Phone Operation
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NEW YORK -- 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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Cingular Wireless on Tuesday closed its $41 billion cash purchase of AT&amp;T Wireless Services Inc. (AWE), creating the biggest US mobile service with more than 46 million customers.
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Company pulls MyMo phone off the market after health concerns are raised.
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The mobile developer disbands the unit that developed the short-range wireless technology used in some cell phones and notebook PCs.
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NEW YORK  -  Major League Baseball has limited ESPN's access to Tuesday night's All-Star Game after the network broke an embargo and broadcast news of the players' selections a few minutes after an exclusive, rain-delayed telecast on TBS.
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Walt Disney Co.'s DIS.N ESPN   cable sports channel said on Thursday it will shut down its   Mobile ESPN wireless telephone business operations later this   year and aims to license the brand to existing mobile   providers.
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How and when All-Star Game rosters should be released are concerns that led M.L.B. to tell ESPN that they could not use a studio set at AT&T Park for âBaseball Tonightâ and âSportsCenter.â
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ESPN Mobile plans to announce today that it will broadcast full-length college football games on its wireless phones.
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League pulls the plug on big-screen church parties for Super Bowl, citing violation of copyright.
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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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NEW YORK  - Dan Patrick, one half of the duo that helped bring "SportsCenter" to its snarky fame in the 1990s, will leave ESPN next month.
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LOS ANGELES  - Mobile ESPN is back on  the line. After hanging up its branded cellular phone package  in September, the Walt Disney Co. is re-entering the wireless  business with a pair of deals announced Thursday with Verizon  Wireless and MediaFlo USA.
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Outspoken receiver Keyshawn Johnson retires Wednesday, and will join ESPN as a sportscaster.
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ABC has pulled out of negotiations to continue airing college football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS).
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Steve Bornstein, the man that invented much of ESPN in its first 20 years, has created a haven away from the yelling of the Worldwide Leader at his new location -- the NFL Network.
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Barely a year after an internal investigation into ESPN's boxing program led to the dismissal of its long-time boxing coordinator and a shakeup in its approach that left many small-time promoters losing money just to put a show on the network, ESPN has decided to fight for a niche in the sport long the property of HBO and Showtime.
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The jockeying to bring the most popular names from TV and the Web to cell phones produced another exclusive deal yesterday with Verizon Wireless nabbing a multiyear agreement to offer ESPN's flashy feed of sports scores, newscasts, and video highlights on the tiny screen.