Making you laugh in two minutes isn’t hard for Chris Rock if you go to one of his concerts. But if you have to watch him on a 2 1/2-inch screen while sitting in the airport waiting for your overdue flight to take off, then the comedian really has his work cut out for him.
That’s the challenge facing production companies that want Verizon Wireless, Cingular and Sprint-Nextel to carry their TV shows over cell phones.
The funnier these two-minute shows are, the more consumers will watch, and the more they watch, the more they’re using the high-speed data networks the wireless companies are rolling out. In other words, funny equals money.
While creating realistic characters with believable and funny stories in two minutes is difficult, writers do have certain advantages.
“The generation that’s 20 years old doesn’t need the subtext of a sitcom,” explains Matt Thompson, one of the creators of “Sealab 2021,” part of Cartoon Network’s popular Adult Swim block of 10-minute cartoons. “They already have 10,000 sitcom plots in the back of their heads, even though they don’t realize it.
“You know all the rules, and we’re going to betray all those rules.”
While “Sealab 2021” isn’t being reformatted for cell phones yet, there are producers spending $15,000 to $30,000 an episode taping and editing not just “Seinfeld”-esque comedy but reality shows, soap operas for teens, travelogues and cooking shows.
Their work is available on newer phones, the Motorola E815 and the LG VX8100, for instance, that tap into Verizon Wireless’ V Cast collection of video shorts.
Sprint Nextel has phones that show Major League Baseball highlights.
It’s hard to know if cell phone TV is here to stay. Since not all phones are capable of showing crisp, clear video, some viewers might be initially soured on the experience. But their expectations aren’t unreasonably high, says Paul Scanlon, of video provider MobiTV.
“They’re already preconditioned to know that `Tetris’ on the phone is not like `Tetris’ on the PlayStation,” he said. “Subscribers are not comparing [mobile video] to TV; they’re comparing it to what they can do on their phone. When doing that, [the idea of watching video on a phone] is still the coolest thing they’ve found to do with it.”
Others remain unconvinced.
“Watching something on your cell phone seems like crazy talk to me,” says Thompson, 36. But he acknowledges the value of entertaining video that can be viewed in short bursts no matter where viewers are.
“You can’t keep `War in Peace’ on the back of your toilet,” he says, “but you can keep a book with three-page chapters. We’re more like the three-page chapter on the back of your toilet, where we belong.”
———-
egwinn@tribune.com
