Despite mobile TV’s many uncertainties, Bernard Gershon, SVP of digital media at Disney/ABC Television Group, talked up ‘big opportunities’ at the Playback Mobile Forum on Thursday.

‘This time last year it was revolutionary to stream episodes of shows online. Today we make TV shows such as Lost available on iTunes, and just this week, on Sprint mobile phones,’ said Gershon during the morning keynote address.

‘None of these emerging platforms like online or mobile have eroded our primary platform of television… in fact, it’s brought us closer to our viewers.’

Some 160 broadcasters and producers attended the day-long conference in Toronto.

During one session, panelists discussed the barriers facing mobile content production in Canada.

‘It’s difficult for the cell phone carrier to deal with pitches from hundreds of content producers… they would rather go to the broadcasters,’ said Steven Comeau, president of Collideascope Digital Productions.

Bell Mobility’s director of content acquisition Andrew Wright said he understood Comeau’s concerns.

‘As our interface becomes more customer-friendly, we’ll reach out to more content producers,’ said Wright, citing resource constraints and technology issues as some of the challenges that the telcos face.

During another talk, digital content creators offered a glimpse of some of the business models they’re applying to their brands.

Keith Ritter, president of the NHL’s interactive ventures, noted that mobile is just an extension of the NHL’s general strategy in making its content available to tech-savvy sports supporters.

‘There’s great interest in learning about hockey players off the ice… people can meet and greet them in a virtual way,’ he said, noting that website traffic to NHL.com was up 62% last month, according to Nielsen.

‘Everything sits on the back of content — you either use content to aggregate eyeballs or you sell content to the user… we try to be platform-agnostic. That’s our business model,’ he said.