Thanks to Cingular, Society Has Finally Reached Its Pinnacle

The wireless unit of AT&T announced today that it will soon be offering World Wrestling Entertainment content, including (WWE) videos, wallpapers, ringtones, graphics and more, to its subscribers. I think we can all breathe a little easier knowing that mankind has hit its zenith. What more could we want out of life but to view wrestling matches on our mobile phones? It's all downhill from here.Okay, okay, I admit it. When I was 10 years old, I thought Hulk Hogan, Randy "The Macho Man" Savage, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Andre the Giant were pretty cool. (God, it scares me that I remembered all those names.) While I won't begrudge the 15 million WWE fans their taste in entertainment (because we all like weird stuff), I have to question the continuing rush to put everything onto mobile devices. What's next, NASCAR?

Oh, wait, Cingular also announced The Burton Blog yesterday. NASCAR's 18-time Cup Series winner will share his views on this year's season in a new blog available through Cingular's the MEdia Net Racing Portal. My engine is revving already.

As much as I believe mobility is an important pathway to the future, does absolutely everything have to be monetized, reformatted, squished and pushed to our phones? Aside from teenagers driving their parents up the wall with nickel and dime charges on the family's wireless bill, what's the real uptake on all these mobile services?

Are they succeeding, are they breaking even, are they failing miserably? Just last month we saw a study touting the drop-off rates of mobile TV subscribers over in Europe. The results were not promising. You'd think if the ventures were smashing success stories, we'd be hearing about it.

Either way you look at it, there's a market for everything. It's up to each market to decide how it will best make its money. I just find it curious that every market seems to be taking advantage of mobile phones to one end or another.

And if there's one dude who knows his market, it's Shane McMahon, WWE's executive president. Concerning the deal with Cingular, he said, "It's all about the WWE fans. Imagine something happens at RAW, SmackDown, or WrestleMania 23, and moments later, that moment in time is available on your AT&T handset. Because we own our intellectual property, we have the unparalleled ability to create this must-have content for our fans."