Raymond Snoddy on media: The method in Sky's mobile madness

This is clearly a phenomenon. The initiatives all around the world are
now more than matched in the UK with what looks like a very ambitious
move from BSkyB.

As organisations such as BT continue to talk about launching movie
services 'this year', the satellite company has just got on with it and
launched Sky by broadband and Sky by mobile - not just the latest news
on your mobile, but also the ability to legally download up to 200
movies via broadband.

It must be conceded that it's the future and cannot be refuted.
Broadcasters have to follow the audience wherever it thinks it wants to
go. But there are just a couple of niggling worries. One is that extra
costs are being incurred without much evidence that extra income is
being earned.

It does represent another opportunity for marketers to reach the young,
but at the cost of extra complexity - it's almost willing the audience
to fragment even further.

The latest Sky services must have cost millions to set up and further
millions to run, yet there is no additional charge to top-level existing
subscribers.

Crazy? Not entirely. Just after the Sky press conference unveiling these
services the rationale was spelled out very clearly by programme supremo
Dawn Airey after she stepped across the road to address a Broadcasting
Press Guild lunch.

First she assured the assembled hacks that she had no regrets about
turning down that ITV job in favour of Sky three years ago. Then she
expressed her delight at having received the Christmas present she had
always wanted - joining Express Newspapers' owner Richard Desmond as the
owner of a drum kit - before revealing that her biggest task once she
had taken up her position at Sky had been 'getting rid of all the shit'
on Sky One.

But as to Sky mobile and Sky broadband, the aim could not be more
clear.

It is quite simply to put as much distance as possible between the Sky
offering and that of Freeview.

The free-to-air service is still going gangbusters in terms of adding
numbers, but only Sky has the capacity and the wherewithal to develop
every platform and put ever more distance between itself and its upstart
rival.

The gap is likely to widen in the spring when BSkyB launches its
high-definition channels in time for the World Cup. That really is
something to get excited about, and might have rather more impact than
news on the move.

Meanwhile, on to another sort of move in the real world, with the sad,
premature retirement of Sir Bob Phillis as chief executive of the
Guardian Media Group. He announced last week that because he is being
treated for cancer, from July he is to concentrate on non-executive
roles - including the board of GMG.

Naturally the betting on his successor as chief executive has already
begun, with internal candidates such as Carolyn McCall of The Guardian
and Jerry Fowden of Auto Trader obviously fancied. But Phillis was an
external appointment, and there may be another.

For an entirely plausible candidate you need look no further than
Ofcom.

Its left-leaning chief executive Stephen Carter has made a fair fist of
setting up the communications regulator and would plainly like to be off
sometime this year.

In fact, he recently bemoaned the fact, in a Guardian interview, that
there were so few jobs available in which money was not the primary
objective.

There was, Carter carefully explained, the BBC, the Civil Service - and,
of course, The Guardian.

30 SECONDS ON ... SKY

- Sky One is the latest incarnation of Britain's first satellite
channel. Launched in 1982, it was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News
Corporation in 1984 and renamed the Sky Channel.

- Sky Two was launched in 2002 to give viewers a second chance to see
their favourite Sky One shows later in the same week.

- In November 2005 Sky One had an audience share of 1.8% and the average
weekly viewing time per person was 29 minutes. This compared with 5.2
hours for ITV channels and 5.14 hours for the BBC's channels.

- Sky One's audience profile for the second quarter of the year
2004-2005 showed a bias toward younger viewers: 35% were 16- to
34-year-olds, 27% were 35- to 54-year-olds, while just 10% were
55-plus.

- Former Living TV controller Richard Woolfe was recently appointed head
of Sky One, replacing James Baker, who went to Sky Interactive.