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Editor's Corner
Canadian operator Telus Mobility this week exited the adult content business as quickly and with as little fanfare as it entered the space just a month ago, pulling the plug following threats of a boycott from consumers and Vancouver-area church leaders. Never mind that Telus seemed to take all the necessary steps to make the service secure and legal, implementing age-verification protocols to keep explicit content out of the hands of minors, and never mind that no reported cases of minors accessing off-limits content ever surfaced--faced with mounting public outcry, the carrier folded faster than Superman on laundry day.
Which begs a simple question: What was Telus doing making such a bold, provocative move in the first place? First the carrier launched its adult content platform with absolutely no publicity, almost as though it was ashamed of its decision to pursue such a market--and then, faced with the inevitable scrutiny and controversy, executives don't even bother to fight back, and simply shut the service down? None of it makes any sense. It seems unimaginable that Telus didn't anticipate some level of protest, and that they didn't have a plan in place to tackle the problem head-on whenever it finally erupted…and yet, the whole debacle seems to have caught the company with its pants down (in the proverbial sense, of course).
Regardless of whether you applaud or decry Telus' decision to abandon adult content, the company looks extremely foolish right about now. But its bumbling does not mean another North American carrier won't succeed where Telus failed, or that edgier, more controversial fare does not have a place on mobile operator decks. It could be a Playboy-branded MVNO, or a "Girls Gone Wild" mobile TV channel, but it will happen--and whatever the format, its essential elements will include the foresight and fortitude Telus decidedly lacked. - Jason
Comments
Posted by Mobile Content For Big Kids | February 23, 2007 - 6:14pm
Indeed!
How lame was that. Go through the expense and time to launch and then pull it w/o a second thought... It's really too bad they didn't have the backbone to at least do some basic PR to fight back a little -- The really sad thing is that now the minority will feel even stronger to demand change to the majority and Telus folding over in a slight breeze will only make the next operator stay away from a market that could be good for everyone.
Telus had the right idea - They correctly said these services are (and will be) available via the web on mobiles phones and that at least an adult offering by the operators was age verified. Otherwise the kids can just access whatever adult content they want and no one in adult, or non-adult, media wants kids looking at inappropriate content. Both sides of the coin at least share that core principal.
If you really want to protect the kids then give the adults a place to play and lock the doors on those who are underage or unwilling to verify, no problem... sadly on the phone we need the operator to play that gatekeeper role and get involved in adult content if for nothing else than TO keep the kids safe.
The church has actually hurt itself here and made the thing they don't want to happen all the more likely. Now kids can get porn w/o having to prove their age...
While the idea of adult content is looked down on upon within the community then the groups of people who want to participate are forced to go underground, pretend it's wrong and do counter productive PR campaigns against the people actually trying to solve the same problem for everyone. Doing nothing is an answer the Church promotes here but it's too bad these particular groups were too short sighted to figure out the big picture and just ran with a platform of fear and threats.
Operators should embrace adult not just for the revenue but for the very fact that we need to protect children from this material until they are responsible enough to handle it -- The Operators and the Church need to step up, embrace the biological imperative at the core of human existence and offer an age verification solution to the issue for mobile phones at least. Then everyone is happy, yes?
Wishful thinking I suppose.
Posted by Moantones.com | February 25, 2007 - 1:27am
Hello,
I am one of the owners of the website Moantones.com and we are a Canadian company who were on the cutting edge of mobile adult delivery several years ago. We coined the phrase Moantones several years ago and have been creating "adult" content here in Canada for a worldwide audience for years.
We have seen the major networks come begging on our doorstep to sell our content and then seen them drop our content like a hot potato...the whole adult mobile business in North America is lighyears behind Europe where our adult original moantones are featured by major networks and make a lot of people a lot of money!!
The mobile adult industry is in transistion and our Canadian company is doing the best we can to maintain our direction throughout the roller coaster ride! While the European networks may want to provide our content we had to dump such well known service providers as Mediaplazza due to their inability to provide a marketing scheme that really pushes the moantones content to where it belongs!
Moantones were designed by us here in Canada and not by Jenna Jameson as was announced 18 months ago when Jenna was being dumped like yesterdays fish wrappings and needed a PR spin to generate some publicity. Now that Playboy has bought what's left of Jenna and the North American market on adult material is still rather soft...we continue to develop our own content and explore the many new means to distribute the moantones content around the world.
If Telus and Rogers and Bell have to follow some code of conduct dictated by shareholders then when the poo hits the fan there will be alot of executives out of work. I agree with the FierceMobileContent writer that there seems to be fear of bringing a rather mainstream form of entertainment onto the cellphones of North America. When MuchMusic and MusiquePlus are regularly full of content that is meant to disguise real meanings and is rather ambiguous and even confusing in nature it seems unfortunate that no-one has the strength to just say that mobile erotica is something that is real and is out there and it's really not as bad as a pop diva named Britney entering rehab and shaving her head...is it?
In the meantime I appreciate your time and if you need more information on the Canadian company who invented moantones then please email me at info(at)moantones.com
Best Regards,
D. B. Miligan
Moantones.com
Montreal, QC Canada
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