CTIA: News Corp. buys into Jamba, plans ‘Simpsons’ content

LOS ANGELES--News Corp. today announced it would take a majority stake in VeriSign’s direct-to-consumer mobile portal Jamba for $188 million, giving News Corp. a powerful mobile presence and allowing VeriSign to back away from the consumer market and focus on its core business-to-business services.

Expounding on the deal during his keynote at CTIA, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin said that the Jamba division (known as Jamster in the U.S.) would be folded into its Fox Mobile Entertainment arm, creating a joint venture headed by Fox Mobile CEO Lucy Hood. Chernin also announced that Fox would take one of the single largest global entertainment brands, “The Simpsons,” to mobile using the Jamba assets, offering original video clips and other media through the portal and content delivery engine.

Chernin said the long-running animated TV show is the perfect brand for mobile: the shows are “wildly funny,” the characters are universally recognized and the programming can easily be adapted to short-form formats. What’s more, Chernin said News Corp. plans to heavily market the “Simpsons” mobile service and its other content, going far beyond making customers aware of availability.

“We’ll market the hell out of it,” Chernin said of the “Simpsons” content, saying only through savvy and intensive marketing can the industry convince the public of mobile content’s merit. “Consumers don’t need mobile content, but we need to work together to make them desperately want it.”

With Jamba in its sphere, News Corp. now claims to be the only vertically integrated company with assets in every aspect of mobile entertainment, from the content rights, to production, to delivery, to the final consumer relationship. News Corp., as the largest media company in the world, would automatically have the largest content pool to draw potential content from, but all of its vast media sources aren’t necessarily adaptable to the new format.

Meanwhile VeriSign gets to exit gracefully from a consumer business that conflicts with the one-stop-shop content delivery business model it has been building over the last year through key acquisitions.