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December 8, 2004
Keitai Soap Opera
Doreen Carvajal describes how books, tv, and movies are making their way into keitai culture in A Library and Cinema in Your Pocket [1, 2]. Among the examples she mentions are:
- Media Republic, an Amsterdam company that is successfully reaching young women with the mobile equivalent of the French "roman photo," a sentimental genre of romantic still photos and text that dates to the postwar period. Dutch users register their mobile phones to follow the adventures of the hormone-driven characters of "Jong Zuid," or "Young South," which is now in production for its fourth season. Customers receive two episodes daily, each with six photographs of well-known Dutch actors and text describing the travails of glamorous young people seeking their fortune in the big city.
- Media Republic and a partner are to produce a similar English-language version, which will start appearing in Australia this month, using local actors and scenes. Called "My Way," it is calculated to appeal to young women, as did the Dutch phone soap, which attracted 78,000 subscribers, 68 percent of them women, with an average age of about 18.
- Germany and France are next.
- The giant British mobile-phone company Vodafone has struck a partnership with 20th Century Fox to create a made-for-cellphone video series, based on the television show "24," which will start appearing next month in the first of 13 countries. (It will eventually appear in the United States through Vodaphone's partner Verizon Wireless.) A British phone manufacturer, I-Mate, has also produced "Cjaq," a 10-part thriller with video about five young people trapped in a futuristic nightclub to which they were drawn by a hoax text-message invitation.
- In Japan, major publishers like Shinchosha and Kadokawa Shoten have created Web sites to offer telephone reading material. Japan is also home to probably the most successful telephone venture. Earlier this year a mobile novel jumped from phone screens to the silver screen, evolving into a feature film, "Deep Love."
American response ? "Are you kidding?" as one veteran put it.
[1] Doreen Carvajal, "A Library and Cinema in Your Pocket," New York Times, December 7, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/books/07cell.html
[2] Doreen Carvajal, "Plot heats up on cellphone as 'mobi-lit' tests a pulse," International Herald Tribune, December 6, 2004. http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/05/business/book06.html
[3] "Chinese try out text msg novel," BBC News, August 9, 2004,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3548388.stm
Posted by sjc at December 8, 2004 6:22 AM
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