Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps stumbling around Sundance drunk) you must have heard all the hype about 2005 being the year of the cell phone. The BBC has a cute piece on yet another video-on-cellphone project: Fox’s “24.” Noting how people don’t really have the patience to watch video on a tiny handset for a long period of time, Fox is splitting episodes into 60 second bites. The BBC shivers with excitement in claiming:

So a new form of video is being devised. Just as radio and then television spawned new genres of drama so will video phones.

Let’s not get too excited folks, perhaps our British friends have forgotten Edison’s ”Kinetoscope” that played short films lasting mere seconds on index cards in the 1890’s? Frankly, I know that there is only one form of video that will succeed on cellphones: those short videos of suicide bombers driving shiny new VWs. Or maybe you can use the video recording feature on your shiny new cellphone to get yourself and your high-school girlfriend in some real trouble.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. The BBC pauses for a moment to note that there is a tiny little snag in its “new medium” hyperbole:

Television companies usually own the dramas they’ve made, so simply putting them on new broadcasting outlets like mobile phones causes legal difficulties.

Contracts have to be renegotiated. Accordingly, the phone version of “24” will be re-shot with a new cast.

That’s right folks, they’re turning your cellphone into a display for re-runs that are so low-budget that they can’t afford the original material. I’m sure you can hardly wait.