Beaming Up Extra Tony Coverage

Watch out, Oscars. The Tony Awards are going wireless.The 60th Annual Tony Awards show will be broadcast live from Radio City Hall on CBS this Sunday night. But for theater maniacs who just can’t get enough – and for those with otherwise pressing television engagements – Sprint Nextel will stream video clips containing exclusive red carpet footage to Sprint cell phones.That’s right. The watchers of this perennially ratings-challenged award show have a way to catch action not available anywhere else. What juicy coverage will those lucky Sprint users see? Former Miss America Kate Shindle – star of “Cabaret” and the upcoming “Legally Blonde: The Musical” – in a Joan Rivers role, reporting live from the red carpet and snagging interviews with Broadway babies.The pre-show bonanza was created with the Broadway Channel, a multimedia company that produces and distributes theater programming to Manhattan hotel rooms.“In addition to the live broadcast on Sunday night, Sprint customers can use their wireless phones during commercial breaks to get their non-stop Tonys fix,” vice-president of the Broadway Channel, Mike Hege, said.Hey, at least that fix is free – for Sprint customers who have signed up for the multimedia add-on service, that is.Through that service, Sprint provides their users with access to special content from various events – like the 2006 college basketball championship – on their cell phones. And Sprint is looking to offer more in the near future.“The idea is to add mobility to our customers’ lives,” Sprint’s communications manager, Mark Elliot, said. “We are hoping to deliver more exclusive content that our customers can access from anywhere without the use of televisions or computers.”Sprint is an established sponsor of the Tonys. Which is pretty great if you’re a nominee.According to a press release, the company has “gifted all 2006 nominees with a new Sprint Phone MMA920 by Samsung with three free months of nationwide wireless service. All the evening’s winners will receive a full year of free service.” Sprint phones will also be available for winners afterward so that they can “call loved ones with the good news.”How does the theater world like the idea of special Tony coverage beamed into cell phones? “For an industry so obsessed with telling people to turn off their cell phones … it’s interesting,” theater publicist, Richard Kornberg, of Kornberg and Associates, said.

Beaming Up Extra Tony Coverage

Beaming Up Extra Tony Coverage

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