Fox Mobile Group officially announced that its mobile video streaming service, Bitbop, was available starting Thursday.
The service will offer streaming video of
full-length TV shows for $9.99 a month. Fox said the service will supply programming from "numerous top-notch content partners," including content from rival broadcast networks CBS, NBC in addition
to Fox, as well as cable programmers, such as A&E, Comedy Central, Discovery, FX, MTV and USA. The company plans to offer full-length movies later this year.
While the service has been talked
about for some time, Fox Mobile didn't mention any possible connection with its other big premium streaming video initiative: News Corp's/NBC Universal/Disney's Hulu video service. Nor did Fox mention
anything about one major mobile phone product, the iPhone.
Fox says Bitbop debuts exclusively on BlackBerry smartphones, including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and the upcoming
BlackBerry Tour 9630.
Joe Bilman, executive vice president of Global Products for the Fox Mobile Group, stated: "The potential of the smartphone has barely been tapped. Our goal is to provide
consumers with an exciting new digital entertainment experience on their handheld devices, and what better place to start than with the original and continuously innovative smartphone."
Many
other mobile programming services, and video aggregators already exist in the mobile space, including MobiTV, FLO TV and the phone carriers themselves.