China company debuts TV show for small screen
By Stephanie Hoo (Associated Press)
Updated: 2005-08-09 09:08

It's a super-modern love story made for the small screen — the very small screen. Two motorcycle racers vie for the same woman in Appointment, a romance squeezed into five-minute episodes made to be shown on mobile phone screens half the size of a credit card.

An episode of the mobile phone drama Appointment is filmed in Shanghai. The show was made to be shown on mobile phone screens. [AP]

Its makers hope the 25-minute series will capture attention in China's crowded mobile phone market, where entrepreneurs are competing furiously to come up with the latest gimmick.

"Chinese people, especially, like new things," said Gang Wei, a 20-year-old student actress who is making her professional debut in the series. "They want what's next."

The competition is intense, but with 400 million customers in the world's biggest mobile phone market, China offers a potential jackpot to the company that invents a new craze.

Last year, one company debuted a mobile phone-based novel written to be transmitted in 70-word chapters.

In June, Chinese online service Tom Online Inc. announced a deal with U.S. movie studio Warner Bros. to offer games and animation to 60 million wireless customers.

The latest innovation comes from Beijing's Le-TV Media Group Corp., which says Appointment is China's first TV show made just for mobile phones.

Few will be able to see it, though.

The series can be viewed only on sophisticated phones with Internet connections made by South Korea's LG Electronics Inc., one of the sponsors of Appointment.

The LG phones cost about $850 — a lavish sum in a country where the average person makes less than $1,000 a year. The price of the average Chinese mobile phone is closer to $150 and the most bare-bones model can cost as little as $36.

"It will show what the latest phone technology can do," said Le-TV Media general manager Liu Hong.

Appointment is just one early example of what's being pegged as the next boom in mobile entertainment after music, though some industry observers have doubts about whether users will pay very much to watch TV on a phone's tiny screen.

This year, Twentieth Television introduced in the U.S. and elsewhere a cellular spinoff of its Fox network suspense serial, 24. Called "24: Conspiracy, this series of 24 original one-minute "mobisodes" (short for mobile episodes) was produced complete with opening titles and cliffhangers. But 24: Conspiracy could play to only a select U.S. audience: Verizon customers with phones equipped for this premium service and located in the limited number of markets that offer it.

A new form of storytelling, Cell TV means new challenges for actors, who must tell their story quickly in tight shots.

"The gestures I make are very limited," said Luo Ji, who plays one of Gang's suitors. "Your emotions should only come from facial expressions. It's quite difficult acting."

"A mobile phone screen is only so big, so it doesn't make sense to have shots that are very wide." said Yu Enyuan, general manager of Le-TV's sister company XBell Technology Group.

Yu originated the idea of filming a mobile phone drama.

"There's very little dialogue — just a lot of close-ups and gestures, with a soundtrack that'll be added in editing," he said. "We're pursuing a dreamlike beauty."

The series was filmed on a budget of $360,000.

Le-TV Media hopes to pay for this production entirely through company sponsorships. But if the technology proves popular, viewers would pay to watch future programs.

Such services, however, are competing for a small group of customers at the top end of the Chinese mobile phone market.

The vast majority of customers sign up for cut-rate services that offer only the features they need, with no premium text-messaging or roaming.

Such low-cost accessibility has made mobile phones universal. No small-town taxi driver's business card is complete without a mobile phone number. Women switch phone covers to color coordinate with their outfits. During the morning commute, subway cars are filled with the trilling of ring tones based on tunes ranging from Greensleeves to the theme from the TV series Dallas.

A mobile phone TV drama is perfect for a viewer waiting to catch a plane, riding a bus or relaxing after a big meal, Liu said.

"Just as computers changed our lives completely," he said, "so will mobile phones."

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