[by Rafat Ali] Last week, I spoke to Cyriac Roeding, the VP heading CBS’s mobile content efforts. It seems as if CBS has suddenly come out of the left field, and has turned up the volume on its own mobile content and video efforts. It has announced a slew of on and off deck mobile content initiatives: original mobisodes; CBS News video alerts; content/video deals with Verizon and Amp’d Mobile; ringtone product placement for Coldplay’s single “Talk” into the script of CSI: NY; cross-carrier premium text message voting on the Emmy Primetime Award Show and on Big Brother.
Cyriac joined CBS in May last year, after his previous stints as an entrepreneur. In 199, he co-founded 12snap, when he was in Germany...the mobile marketing company was recently sold to NeoMedia.
I spoke to Cyriac at 17th Street Cafe in Santa Monica, over the clickity-clackity of lunch silverware...so there is background chatter in the audio interview, but easily listenable. And yes, there’s the waitress making a guest appearance on the audio interview. (Point being, I would suggest listening over speakers, not over headphones)
Some of the points he discussed:
-- Off deck is the biggest opportunity in U.S....everyone wins: operators, distributors, content provider and producers.
-- Peer to peer will be the largest chunk of mobile content.
-- Mobile is not a constrained TV platform...it is completely new medium. If we look at it as the former, we are missing the point.
-- We need a different type of creativity...the stories have to be told in a different way.
-- The opportunity is upstream, not just downstream. Peer to peer plays into this.
-- On hype in mobile content industry: Most people are overestimating what will happen in two years, but are underestimating what will happen in ten years.
You can download the audio of the interview here (39 mins., 8.9 MB).