The mantra is to provide a range of content on a variety of platforms, to extend reach, brand and perhaps revenues.

While the current trends show an increasing appetite for short and increasingly long form content on mobile handsets,  and i-pods it remans difficult to extract revenue from these enhancements if you are the content rights owner.

Many of the early forays are to expand brands, build audiences and tease viewers with upcoming episodes.  All legitimate reasons in their own right.

Many media portal and telcos are increasingly using  branded video as an audience tool to compete with the user generated content ( UGC)  phenoms like Youtube.   Some are turning to branded content exclusively available on their portal or network.  This is great for them in building audience but not so good for the content providers, who do not share in the revenue flow of advertising or access subscriptions.    Also if your audience is wider than the network who is offering it, you are restricting your own viewers.

Much of this imbalance stems from the fact that on mobile platforms the telcos typically take in excess of 50% of any transaction fee for access to content, while keeping the monthly access fees and data fees for themselves.  This is to offset the credit risk and possible marketing of the content.  Seems like a pretty high price for distribution especially when the same content is being used to build their audience and customer base,

In traditional media, film and television a distribution margin is typically up to 30% which is reasonable for the type of services provided, mainly sales and marketing.

If you add to this that  telcos traditionally pay no upfront minimum guarantee for the content, a practise that is normal in traditional distribution deals for rights.   It appears the the terms of trade are stacked.  Time will tell how this imbalance is addressed but without content there is not much need for faster networks.