Watch the Oscars Red Carpet on Your Mobile Phone
In a move by Associated Press (AP) and their technology partner Livestream, AP Live Entertainment is debuting this Sunday at 
the Oscars Red Carpet. This new video widget will enable viewers to watch celebrities parade down the Red Carpet live on the iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, or Android.
Mobile users can access the feed via their mobile browsers at this site. [NOTE: Because this will be a live feed, the browser will only be active during that feed!] What you’ll see is AP Global Entertainment Editor Alicia Quarles on camera and on the red carpet, from 6 to 8 p.m. ET. AP reporters will also post updates during the awards show and throughout the after-parties, via the interactive chats on Twitter and Facebook. The live feed will also serve computers and be carried on Facebook and AT&T Entertainment.
Post-Oscars, AP Live Entertainment will stay live with celebrity interviews as well as non-live packaged content such as movie trailers and photos.
MobilizedTV spoke with AP Global Director of Entertainment Products Michael Dutton about AP Live Entertainment and future plans.
MobilizedTV: Is this the first time AP has partnered with Livestream?
Dutton: Yes, it’s the first time that we’ve partnered with them on an event like this. We’ve been developing the project with them over the last few months and done a few early projects, such as live interviews and so on. But this is the official launch. The product is a multi-format widget that builds around live coverage, live content.
MobilizedTV: What are the other features of AP Live Entertainment?
Dutton: Anything we can do live–from the Red Carpet to our studios, we will do so. The full, immersive version will include on-demand clips, photo galleries and a text news feed. And in addition to the planner that gives people an idea of what we’ll be covering next, we’ll have social connectivity through Twitter and Facebook. That is the all bells & whistles of the product, AP Live Entertainment allows us to provide a persistently available channel that not only features smaller day-to-day celebrity interviews in our studios but allows us to ramp up to bigger events such as the Oscars.
MobilizedTV: Why did you choose to launch at the Oscars? You could have picked the Olympics!
Dutton: The Oscars are the Super Bowl of entertainment. Our relationship with Livestream allowed us to focus squarely on the entertainment arena. But this is an agnostic product and can be leveraged for any type of content set or genre. Ultimately I hope to see this go into those areas.
MobilizedTV: What will we see on AP Live after the Oscars?
Dutton: After the Oscars, AP Live will continue to feature daily and weekly celebrity interviews and packaged content, for example, movie previews and a look at upcoming summer blockbusters.
MobilizedTV: Where does this fit in what AP is already doing in the mobile space?
Dutton: Actually the AP Mobile product will also carry AP Entertainment content, under its regular entertainment coverage, but not the live feed. Jeff Litvack [who created AP Mobile] is a colleague of mine. I not only help develop new products like this but manage the legacy products as well. This effort dovetails nicely with what Jeff has going on.
AP Live Entertainment is a multi-platform offering available on web and mobile. It’s not a downloadable application at this point. This is obviously something that we’re going to do. This is focused on live events and entertainment but, as I said, it will eventually be expanded to include all kinds of events, including politics, sports.
[For more info on AP Mobile, as covered in MobilizedTV, click here.]
MobilizedTV: Since the content from AP Live Entertainment is intended for small screens–not just mobile devices but also netbooks, laptops and so on–how much will that figure into how you produced the Oscars Red Carpet live event.?
Dutton: I can tell you that having produced content for the mobile platform, I’m sensitive to the optimization and thinking around making content viable for that platform. At this point, we were looking to the web as the main go-to out of the gate for the product. I wouldn’t say we’re producing anything expressly for the mobile platform in terms of camera moves and graphics but the experience will be good on these phones because of screen size and overall capability of the smartphone devices.
Tags: AP, AP Live Entertainment, AP Mobile, Associated Press, downloadable application, Livestream, MobilizedTV, optimizing content for mobile, Red Carpet on mobile, video widget
This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Content, Devices, Events, Home Feature.
Work on the iPhone? Site keeps calling for the installation of a Flash player…
Livestream appears to use flash for the video delivery. Apple still does not support Flash so how is this site viewable on iPhone or iPod touch devices? A quick check did not seen to work at the linked site, am I missing something?
You’re right – I am checking into this right away and will post the correction as soon as I hear back from AP Live – I should have caught this, apologies…Debra K
It should work as long as you’re logging in from your phone. If you log in from a computer, it’ll want you to have a Flash player. Debra K
The site is http://www.mobile.livestream.com
NOTE TO USERS: Because this is a LIVE feed, the link will only work when the event goes live. Try back on Sunday and it will work for all devices listed.
Looking forward to trying it.
However – saying that people can watch Oscars on their mobile phone is I think irresponsible. First – you can only stream WMV or 3G2 files to phones (and there are many), but NOT to VCast phones, Berrys, and many feature phones. As far as the iPhone, would be valuable but – then there is the reality that the data connectivity on AT&T gets worse every day. There are so many other pitfalls.
Finally (as if all this wasn’t enough), what is the contingency when someone gets the link and it doesn’t work? How many people will get annoyed? Is there a texting strategy in place? Are people opting in?
This sounds like a proof of concept that should be done on the “down-low” first not during a high profile event like this.
http://www.mobile.livesteam.com isn’t really a valid url because it has two subdomains (www and mobile). It ends up taking you to http://www.livestream.com, a desktop Flash site.
Livestream mobile is at http://mobile.livestream.com It uses mpeg4 not Flash and does work on the iPhone. However, there is nothing on Livestream mobile even mentioning the existence of AP Live Entertainment or the upcoming Red Carpet show. I’m starting to wonder if this is real. I guess we will find out tomorrow.
It asks for a station name. Will it be obvious this afternoon?