| MUMBAI:
The world's audiovisual and digital content market MIPTV featuring MILIA announced
the 24 finalists for the inaugural 'Content 360' international digital commissioning
competition. Of these finalists, the six winning projects chosen on 6 April,
will share €80,000 in development funding.
Sponsored by Vodafone
and organized in partnership with the BBC, the Korean Broadcasting Commission
(KBC) and the National Film Board of Canada, Content 360 is a new initiative to
commission innovative content and interactive applications for mobile and broadband. Launched
on 17 January 2006, the inaugural Content 360 attracted 181 entries from 120 companies
and 23 countries. "The number of entries underlines the need to provide development
funding for projects which are embracing user demand for new kinds of content
and services in a digital, multi-platform world," notes MILIA director Ted
Baracos. "What's been especially welcome has been the extraordinary quality
of the projects, which has made the initial selection of the 24 finalists very
hard." The finalists are competing
in six separate categories : - Long Tail Content: Navigating
the BBC Archive. BBC digital commissioners will choose the project which makes
best use of BBC archives on new platforms. - Animation Projects for Mobile
Platforms: The National Film Board of Canada will select an innovative mobile
animation project for co-production. The judges will also take into consideration
production and distribution business models. - Web 2.0: Next Generation
Collaborative Web Concepts. Blogs, feed readers, social networks, P2P, audio and
video podcasting... In the digital world, everyone is a creator and a distributor.
The BBC will select the most innovative project in this field. - DMB
-Digital Multimedia Broadcasting: Mobile Content and Applications: This category
is designed to reward content innovation specific to mobile TV broadcasting. -
Rich Media-Made for Mobile: The BBC will judge the best proposal for rich
media which pushes the boundaries for mobile content experiences. - Total
Mobile & User-Generated Mobile Content: BBC digital commissioners will
select the best idea which marries user-generated content with interactivity between
the user and the content distributor. In conjunction with the competition,
Content 360 will have a dedicated pavilion within MIPTV featuring MILIA providing
networking opportunities and a showcase for the finalists. | 
