Local content makes good

With the progression from cable to satellite to the Internet, the scope of mass media effectively broadened from local to national to global. By and large mobile content has pursued a similarly universal outlook, but a pair of announcements this week suggests the pendulum may be swinging back as more traditional media barons enter the market. On Monday, Gannett, the largest newspaper publishing firm in the U.S., launched more than 100 local mobile sites promising real-time breaking news, sports, weather and related content drawn from 84 community daily newspapers, 19 broadcast market websites and USA Today. Three days later, Hearst-Argyle Television--the nation's second-largest NBC affiliate owner and largest ABC affiliate group in terms of audience reach, with a total of 26 local affiliate stations in all--touted the debut of High School Playbook, a multi-platform initiative to deliver high school sports content to TV, mobile and PC screens. Add in the growing number of location-based search and navigation services, and it's clear a global industry is thinking local.

More than 200 U.S. television stations now offer local-themed mobile content packages, and the concept's allure is easy to grasp--in a matter of minutes, on-the-go subscribers can catch up on the headline-making information that directly shapes their lives, as well as sign up for text-based alerts that update school closings, traffic delays and other news with a big impact on a small consumer population. But Hearst-Argyle's High School Playbook enterprise adds a particularly intriguing wrinkle to the local content paradigm--what at first seems like a bid to capture the youth demographic is in fact far broader. Not very long ago I was discussing the subject of local broadcast content with Yankee Group senior analyst Vince Vittore, and while Vittore was specifically addressing video's impact on the independent telco market, I'm inclined to believe his basic argument applies to the mobile space as well. "Broadcasting a local high school football game gets as many people subscribing to your service as putting up 75 or 80 HD channels," Vittore said. "You just can't place a value in putting people's kids on TV."

In effect, High School Playbook is a social networking model with multi-generational cachet--equal parts Facebook, ESPN and home movies, it brings to phones the kind of content parents and grandparents, demographics far outside of the traditional mobile entertainment consumer base, can't get enough of. It's one thing to have your kid's photo as your handset wallpaper--it's another thing to download a clip of him scoring the winning touchdown against the cross-town rivals. Local content, sure, but with a basic appeal that's truly universal. - Jason