Sling Media CEO Blake Krikorian noted in his opening address at the National Association of Broadcasters 2007 mobile super session that but for one Supreme Court vote in 1975, the VCR would be illegal.

Fast forward three decades and we’re still debating technology and formats (think HD-DVD and Blu-Ray), but they’re no longer king. Nor is content, according to Krikorian. In the mobile world of digital delivery, which essentially means accessing content away from conventional TV, it’s time to replace the old adages with a new one: ‘The consumer is king.’

Krikorian, who announced that ‘appointment-based viewing is dead,’ has developed his Slingbox product line that allows viewers to tune in to their home TV service from anywhere in the world on any device – including Macs, PCs, PDAs and a Windows-enabled cell phone. It even allows consumers to control their DVRs and access an HD source.

The old method of top-down pushing out of content has evolved into the ‘bottoms up’ scenario in which the Internet is made up of open roads and public networks. And consumers don’t care how complex it is to change.

Krikorian’s point about the VCR – which is arguably the incarnation of placeshifting (moving content out of the living room) – also suggested that the broadcast industry has not always been open or particularly visionary. But this year’s NAB saw association president and CEO David Rehr proclaim that ‘broadcasting is being reborn.’

He should have said ‘digitally reborn,’ because, as was pointed out at another session, HP’s EVP and chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison said proudly that ‘Today we’re on a path to digitize every step in the production and distribution of digital media. The tire kicking phase is over. Everything is digital.’

Not only does that mean a virtual explosion in the amount of upstream digital content (online content pulled from other sources like TV), but, as Krikorian noted, conventional TV viewing is actually on the rise, having increased from 1,560 hours per person per year in 2002 to 1,660 hours in 2006. It also means that advertisers will have to redefine themselves – up to 92% of commercials are skipped by DVR owners, and 90% use the device for timeshifting.

In a mobile environment, viewers want the three W’s: whenever, whatever and wherever. Krikorian said that 35% to 40% of Slingbox usage is in the home on a laptop. Consumers are multicasting – i.e. watching The Daily Show on their PCs and a ballgame on their flat-screens – and ‘geographic exclusivity doesn’t fly anymore in the Internet days.’

While Krikorian insists that the changes are already a given, the rise of cell phone content – which most people assume is what you’re talking about when you say ‘mobile’ – was still a hot topic of debate.

Some argued that while the infrastructure and technology is strong, there’s a need for the business models to drive it. Some even took issue with the quality. Editor-at-large and session moderator Brian Cooley, from online consumer tech reviewer CNET, called the present state of content delivery to consumers ‘slow and requiring a lot of buffering.’

Moreover, the question was posed whether cell phones should program existing content from conventional TV, or material purpose-built for portable, small-screen viewing.

Comedy ‘bites’ that range from 30 seconds to two minutes ‘seem to be the best way to go,’ said panelist Maureen Fitzpatrick, VP, mobile development at Atomic Wedgie in L.A., which currently provides content to subscribers through Sprint in the U.S.

But Krikorian was quick to remind everyone that in the new ‘consumer is king’ era of mobile content, it’s not a question of one type of programming over the other – it’s ‘whatever, whenever and wherever.’

Larry Gerbrandt, SVP and GM, Nielsen Analytics, which is currently tracking how consumers are adopting technology, added that based on his research, traditional thinking works as ‘a hit is a hit on every technology and device.’

Both mobile evangelists like Krikorian and skeptics like Cooley stress that content needs to evolve to give consumers choice, while ethnic programming and global access will be part of the long tail. At the same time, Fitzpatrick’s experience suggests that content should be focused on the mass market in order to break through.

Webcasters like JumpTV, which broadcasts live networks from around the world, and CurrentTV, which depends on user-generated content for its programming, were examples cited as alternative TV models, and which conform to the 3 W’s paradigm shift.

However, Krikorian ‘s message to those in attendance was clear. The ‘smash and grab’ mentality of the past, whereby content is determined and force fed to viewers by the broadcasters, has to change.

‘The alternative is a bad thing. People are going to be [choosing what they watch], or stealing it [online] – and no one’s going to make any money.’