MDS is in Bristol for an ESPN Media Workshop. Here's his latest dispatch from behind the cameras of the Worldwide Leader.ESPN's head of research gave a presentation Thursday about how people get their sports, with lots of bar graphs showing the amount of time viewers spend watching high definition vs. standard definition, how much time they spend looking at sports scores on the internet, and so on.
But what I was most interested in is what ESPN expects the numbers to look like in five or 10 years. And when I asked that, the answer I got was mobile devices. The future isn't ESPN providing you with your cell phone or your plan, any more than ESPN sells you your TV or your cable subscription. It's having a phone that allows you to watch ESPN, live, with a clear picture on a three-inch screen. Last year Dan Shanoff explained this perfectly:
ESPN *ON* a phone is hot.
ESPN *AS* a phone is not.
We're all familiar with the horror that is selfish uncles dying during the football season and forcing us to miss games with their funerals. Some day, we won't have to miss a thing.
