10:45 AM - Noon
Track III:
Mobile Music & Video Make-Over – As Mobile and Entertainment Industry Merge – TV, Music and Movies
Who would have suspected that the world of mobile – that cell phone phenomena of a few years ago would emerge as the most powerful force in the entertainment industry, rivaling TV and DVD as the front runner in consumer choice. Mobile as a communications device has now been superceded by mobile as a fully functional entertainment provider, emerging as a primary source of music, sports, music, news and video. And video is now only beginning to take shape, from the mobile device as a video phone player to distributor of video clips, sporting events and TV shows specifically designed for mobile delivery. In this session, we will bring together a group of executives from the TV, music and mobile industry who are on the front line of investment and development in the key mobile and entertainment projects in the world. Video, music and mobile are our future – in this session we will get a glimpse of what that future will look like.
Bruce Gersh, Senior Vice President Business Development, ABC Entertainment Group
Lucy Hood, President, Fox Mobile Entertainment, and Senior Vice President, Content and Marketing for News Corporation
Rob Chandhok, Vice President Engineering, QUALCOMM, MediaFLO
George Linardos, Sr. Business Development Manager, Branded Content, Nokia
David Bluhm, Chief Executive Officer, GoTV Networks
Ralph Simon, Co-founder Zomba/Jive & Chairman, The Mobilium Group, Los Angeles & Chairman, Mobile Entertainment Forum, Americas, Moderator
Lucy Hood is President, Fox Mobile Entertainment, and Senior Vice
President, Content and Marketing for News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media companies. She currently oversees wireless strategy and licensing for Fox Entertainment worldwide, structuring partnerships with Vodafone, Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and Nokia. Hood guides Fox’s creative, digital and marketing councils, and has built international alliances for divisions including 20th Century Fox Film and Fox Television. Lucy Hood has held leadership positions across Fox companies in television channels and distribution, new media, and publishing. Lucy Hood has overseen a number of new media industry firsts, including the successful ATTWS-Fox partnership for American Idol that introduced text messaging widely in the US. Setting an industry record in May, the program generated over 40 million SMS messages. Most recently, Hood invented the program format of video "mobisodes," short-form 3G mobile content, which have rolled out on wireless carriers worldwide in 2005. The Fox Mobile unit has four mobisode series playing, including 24: Conspiracy, based on the hit TV series; The Simple Life, Sunset Hotel and Love and Hate. Hood is a regular keynote speaker at industry conferences, including 3G, Milia, CTIA, Mobile Entertainment, iWireless, Mobile Marketing, Digital Media, NATPE, CTAM and Digital Hollywood. She is a member of the GSM and US CTIA wireless trade association’s advisory boards, as well as a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Lucy Hood is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and Yale University.Rob Chandhok is vice president of engineering and market develop
ment. In this role, he is responsible for the technical architecture and development of the MediaFLO System. He also oversees marketing and international business development. Chandhok joined QUALCOMM in 2000 as director of engineering in QUALCOMM’s Eudora Products group, where he was responsible for supporting strategic development for a variety of Eudora products. He then served as senior director of business development for the QUALCOMM Internet Services (QIS) division, followed by his role as vice president of technology for QChat, a push-to-talk VoIP technology for 3G CDMA networks. Before joining QUALCOMM, Chandhok served as president of Within Technology for seven years after founding the company in 1993. He worked as a research computer scientist at the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science for more than 10 years, before leaving to found Within Technology. While at Carnegie Mellon, Chandhok was published in the research areas of programming systems and computer-supported collaborative work. Chandhok holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.Bruce Gersh was named Senior Vice President Business Developme
nt, ABC Entertainment Group, in April 2004. In this position, Mr. Gersh has responsibility for all traditional and online business development programs across ABC Daytime/Primetime, Touchstone Television. Since joining ABC in 2000, Mr. Gersh has been involved in several groundbreaking business development initiatives for the online and traditional business units of the Network. Mr. Gersh developed the nation's first "premium-rate" Short Messaging Service campaign for ABC Daytime. Mr. Gersh also devised and manages, "Shop the Soaps" on ABC Daytime, which is considered to be the first fully integrated cross-media shopping program on network television. Finally, Mr. Gersh oversees several new business initiatives including, merchandise licensing, book publishing, music soundtracks, home video, e-commerce, and product placement. Before joining ABC, Mr. Gersh was a business development consultant for NBC Enterprises, where he identified and created new revenue generating programs. Mr. Gersh was instrumental in the creation and expansion of the NBC direct response business, which was measured as revolutionary in the network television world. Prior to joining ABC, Mr. Gersh was a business development consultant for NBC Enterprises, where he identified and created new revenue generating programs. He began his career at Arthur Andersen, and was recently selected by the Hollywood Reporter in the Next Generation issue as one of the young executives poised to become an industry leader. Mr. Gersh holds a degree in Accounting Theory and Practice from California State University, Northridge. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Sharon, and their three children, Casey, Nicki and Hailey.George Linardos, Sr. Business Development Manager, Branded Content, Nokia
As Sr. Business Development Manager, Branded Content for Nokia, George Linardos is charged with driving content deals and partnerships for Preminet and Forum Nokia with major media and entertainment companies. Mr. Linardos came to Nokia from a similar position at Macromedia as Director of Programming. Prior to joining Macromedia, George formed and ran the New Media division of HSI Productions Inc., one of the largest television commercial and music video production companies in the world. At HSI, he oversaw a diverse slate of forward thinking ventures in the areas of Internet content, videogames, and branded entertainment. George was originally a feature film executive and producer for Academy Award winning filmmaker Oliver Stone and then in partnership with actor-filmmaker Ben Stiller. Some of the projects he helped develop and produce include "The People vs. Larry Flynt," "Zoolander," and the Emmy and Golden Globe winning HBO film "Indictment: The McMartin Trial."
David Bluhm, Chief Executive Officer, GoTV Networks: David Bluhm h
as been at the helm of technology companies for the last 20 years. Bluhm has been involved in more than 20 start-ups that have achieved a combined "high water" equity value of over 36 billion dollars. Prior to joining GoTV, Bluhm was the CEO at WUF Networks, which allowed mobile users to access and stream rich media to their mobile phones. WUF helped pioneer mobile music and was acquired by Yahoo! to power their Yahoo! Music Mobile service. Prior to WUF, Bluhm co-founded MFORMA, serving as President of Americas and Executive Vice President, Corporate Development. Before this, Bluhm was CEO of NearMe where he guided the development and initial licensing of a suite of location technologies used by AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS and U.S. Cellular to deliver Directory Assistance and other localized information to mobile phone users. Bluhm also founded 2WAY Corporation and served as President and CEO. Additionally, Bluhm has held executive positions at Motorola, Mosaix International, Davox Corporation, Realtor.com, BondHub.com, and Mammoth Micro Productions. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington.Ralph Simon, Co-founder Zomba/Jive & Chairman, The Mobilium Grou
p, Los Angeles & Chairman, Mobile Entertainment Forum, Americas: Ralph Simon is recognized as one of the global mobile entertainment industry’s leading authorities on mobile entertainment, content, rights and the super-distribution of copyrighted content across mobile platforms, devices and networks. Simon is Chairman of the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) - Americas, and is on the global executive board of the MEF. He plays a leading role in the mobile entertainment industry in the USA and internationally, representing companies and helping MEF member companies grow and create revenues from the usage and distribution of mobile entertainment content, mobile music, messaging, technology and applications. He is a pioneer of the mobile entertainment industry having been the first to introduce ring tones in the USA, Canada, UK and Australasia in 1999, when he co-founded, funded and became Chairman of Yourmobile/Moviso (now known as Infospace Mobile – the current US market leader) specializing in the development, distribution and application of mobile music, entertainment content, intellectual property and publishing rights for mobile phones and devices. (Vivendi-Universal acquired Yourmobile from Simon and his co-founders in 2003 and sold it on to Infospace). Prior to entering the mobile entertainment industry in 1998, Simon had a very distinguished career in the record and music publishing business. He co-founded and developed the Zomba Group of record labels and music publishing companies, including Jive Records, growing it to become the world’s leading independent music publishing and recording company. Simon was the Executive Vice President of Capitol Records and Blue Note Records in the mid 90’s, where he was instrumental in launching EMI’s global New Technology & New Media division, and bringing Capitol Records to record profitability. He has over two decades of successful entrepreneurial and leadership experience in the recording, music publishing and entertainment business, and in the past 5 years has concentrated his efforts in mobile entertainment. He has various business interests in mobile entertainment and acts as a senior strategic adviser and mobile consigliore to entertainment companies in the mobile arena. He advises and guides the mobile interests of some of the world’s leading recording artists and personalities, including U2. He serves on the advisory board of leading Finnish mobile channel and platform specialists, Starcut, and acts as a strategic mobile advisor to mobile phone companies, handset manufacturers and entertainment companies in North America Europe and Asia-Pacific. He has an extensive knowledge on the complex issues of mobile content copyright usage, revenue generation from content & data services and the conditional access syndication of proprietary music and mobile content, as well as the creative construction and development of specialized mobile entertainment "channels". He recently was responsible for organizing the global mobile layer for the global Live 8 series of international concert events. Live 8 was a spectacular success attracting over 26m messagers. Simon was also responsible for bringing in the major sponsor to the Live 8 project. He played a key role on the global organizing committee of Live 8. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the UK and a member of the Academy of Recorded Arts & Sciences in the USA. Simon is based in Los Angeles.