When the market for mobile video takes off – or continues to take off, rather – it will not, observers insist, go the fizzled-out, cash-poor way of the Internet.

A quick look at the numbers: currently, only 3.1% of the 16 million cell phones in Canada can play video, and only 10% of those users ever tune in, according to mobile shop QuickPlay Media. But, by 2008, roughly 90% of the projected 18 million cell phones will be video capable.

‘Now think about it,’ says QuickPlay cofounder and chief creative officer Raja Khanna. ‘If just 10% of [those] subscribers watch mobile TV on their handsets, that’s 1.8 million viewers. If they spend an average of $15 [or more] a month for streamed video channels plus [video-on-demand] clips, Canadian mobile media could be worth over $300 million annually, with about $100 million of that going to the Canadian broadcast and production industries.’

And that’s assuming the viewership stays at 10% of video-capable users. The number is more likely to head north, putting Canadians in the same league as the mobile-crazed Europeans and Asians.

Khanna might have a rosy view of the future, but it’s backed up by his recent sales. The Toronto-based shop – which among other things provides footage to the cell phone wings of Bell, Rogers and Telus from broadcasters including ESPN, CBC and CHUM – says it sold 50,000 pay-per-view clips in December, up from some 35,000 in November.

The clips go for $2 a pop – aimed mainly at an audience of a) teens and twentysomethings, especially males, b) technology gee… er… ‘enthusiasts’ and c) on-the-go business types. The most popular content includes news, weather, sports highlights, women in bikinis and music videos.

But not scripted content. Fox’s 24 Conspiracy, a spin-off of the TV series, and the one-minute eps of its ‘mobi-soaps’ The Sunset Hotel and Love and Hate aren’t as popular, Khanna says, because what might work on the small screen doesn’t necessarily translate to the smaller screen.

‘Great writing is not enough on mobile platforms, because people are not watching passively. They’re actively looking for something,’ he says.

The young market is already very picky, agrees Debbie Nightingale, head of Toronto prodco The Nightingale Company and mobile content distributor Big Bang Pictures. ‘We’re not so much interested in repurposing… We want stuff that works organically,’ she says. ‘I know that sounds old-fashioned, but it’s very important.’

Nightingale hopes that an English-language version of the interactive teen soap Sophia’s Diary – a mobile, TV, net and print sensation in its native Portugal – will play well here, and is shopping for partners, with hopes of a launch in 2007. The mobile version follows a young girl’s day-to-day life, each ep ending with a ‘What should I do?’ sort of question. If you think Sophia should ask Emlio to the dance, press one. If she should ask Francis, press two. Tune in next time…

Big Bang also distributes Campus Cram, an Ali G-esque comedy by Ottawa’s Let It Out Entertainment, sex advice and extreme sports shows, and Avery Ant, a series of one-minute rants by an angry, animated insect from Babble On Communications in Toronto. All four debuted this month on Rogers and Telus phones.

The demand for mobile content puts some broadcasters in an awkward position, however, if they don’t own the necessary rights for their hottest, often U.S.-made, shows. It is no accident that the mobile content pushed most vigorously by CTV and Global is in-house news and sports, for which rights are less of an issue. If you want to download Desperate Housewives, you need to talk to iTunes.com. (Except that you can’t in Canada.)

Mobile rights are more important now, agrees CTV president Rick Brace, but what to do with them is ‘still in a state of evolution.’

‘There’s been a lot of buzz about mobile TV, and I think what will happen over the next couple of years is we’ll figure out what applications actually work,’ he says.

There are also some valid technical reasons to hold off on mobi-casting higher-end content – not the least of which is the eye-aching seven to 15 frames-per-second rate of most cell phones.

Brace is looking to CTV’s sister TSN and its new seven-year deal to air Hockey Canada junior games as a way to test mobile’s potential.

‘One of the biggest challenges we have is sorting through the maze of rights,’ agrees Greg Treffry, VP of business development and specialty television at CanWest, adding that, for now, the caster, known for its ample U.S. content, is putting its mobile chips into news. ‘We’re being very strategic about what we’re doing.’

And yet, Global also has a new and heavily hyped drama, aimed partly at teens, who of course can’t tear themselves away from their cell phones. Is there any chance that Falcon Beach could be mobilized in some way?

‘It’s something we’ll definitely look at,’ he says. ‘The target audience is definitely the mobile generation.’

Meanwhile, other casters such as CHUM and CBC are already comfortably falling back on their more robust libraries of in-house content, such as CHUM’s many teen-friendly music and fashion shows and the Ceeb’s effort to repackage its archives, Retro Bites.

‘With all the performance and interview footage and shows we’ve created over the years, we do have a very deep library of content we can mine,’ says CHUM exec Maria Hale. ‘And we’re just beginning to chip away at that mountain.’

With files from James Careless