The cable news subsidiary of Microsoft and NBC has announced it plans on testing a news feed service for mobile phone subscribers. The news will also feature related advertising in an attempt at targeting the growing mobile consumer market. MSNBC also hopes to bring in a wider audience, as well as broaden thier revenue stream apparently.

“The whole point of bringing multimedia and photos is to attract the mainstream viewer,” said Catherine Captain, a marketing executive at MSNBC. “We didn’t want to add one more charge,” she remarked. “We think the mainstream public will move to an ad supported model.”

There is still however speculation on how mobile users will accept the ad-integrated video streams. MSNBC is currently working on a business model with mobile providers for possibly sharing the ad revenue.

Initially MSNBC’s service will only work on Microsoft powered cell phones while Microsoft’s mobile unit will be the target advertiser. However there are plans to expand the service to more phones, and partner with more advertisers.

Reference: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12166677/