I saw this article yesterday, about a reality TV show Shattered being "broadcast" to mobile phones over GPRS.

Skipping over the question of whether there is demand for postage-stamp sized video of incoherent conversation, this struck me as a good example of something lots of companies get wrong: confusing point-to-point networks with broadcast.

Some media are absolutely perfect for broadcasting to a large audience: radio, terrestrial and satellite TV. They're great for reaching lots of people at once in a one-size-fits-all way: everyone gets the same message at the same time. Typically, there's little or no additional cost for a broadcaster as they add an individual to their audience.

Some media are great for communicating directly between two people. Think of the telephone, text messaging. These media are great for exchanging very personal messages, and usually (but not always) involve transactional charges: you pay (in the UK at least) for a phone call or for sending a text message.

There are blurred edges where these two meet, and where the infrastructure that enables each sort of medium has been heavily invested in: direct mail works because we've put a lot of effort into getting a decent postal service working, over hundreds of years. The Internet is a part of everyday life for many in our society because a massive number of point-to-point links have been put down over the years (initially for other purposes - e.g. telephone lines).

But confusing the two can lead to difficulties, both technical and commercial. The telephone is a poor way of getting the same message out to thousands of people, because for every person you contact, there's an additional charge. Running a TV station using streaming video over the Internet is fine for really niche audiences, but it gets expensive (in bandwidth, hardware and software) when you try and reach the sort of audiences that traditional TV aspires to.

Spam works because the cost of sending out each additional message is negligible. Mobile spam doesn't work (for anyone other than operators) because this cost isn't negligible.

The broadcast of a soap opera over mobiles is a perfect example of an awful fit. It'll reach a tiny audience - how many people have a suitable phone, network connection, and the knowledge of how to access the programme? It won't scale to a large audience even if there's demand for it. And the quality of the broadcast will, I think it's fair to say, be significantly below what you can expect from a regular TV programme. If it was done for any reason other than publicity, I'd like to know what that reason is.

Other examples of bad fits which spring to mind include SMS alerts sent out to a geographical area in the event of children gone missing (broadcast is cheaper and more appropriate), or making automated telephone calls to deliver political messages (as this company seem to offer to).