That's MTV to a T

News

Tim Green Mar 7 2006, 5:00pm

MTV has signed a deal to put a number of music, comedy and children's TV channels on T-Mobile's European networks.

It's the first time T-Mobile subscribers will be able to watch live streaming MTV shows on their handsets. The music TV specialist has worked with the operator since 2002 to provide other kinds of content such as ringtones and text services.

From today T-Mobile's 3G subscribers in Germany and Austria can access channels including MTV Music and MTV Shorts. Meanwhile Nickelodeon animations including SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer are available now in Germany and from September in Austria. The channels will roll out in the UK later and Brits will also get access to clips shows such as Becker on Paramount Comedy.

MTV Music plays music video TV while MTV Shorts presents shows optimised for mobile, like Punk’d and Dirty Sanchez.

It also showcases made-for-mobile programming such as Head & Body.

Gideon Bierer, senior vice president, digital media at MTV Networks told ME: “Our experience suggests that, on mobile, short and sharp programming works best - and that's absolutely what MTV is best at. So mobile TV is a priority. And this is a great deal for us because T-Mobile is such a key operator in Europe.”

The deal puts MTV TV services on six operators, namely Sprint, Vodafone, Hutchison 3, T-Mobile, TIM and Orange. It also has 63 operator deals globally for other mobile consummables and a D2C operation.