A group of executives from MediaFLO USA, MobiTV, MTV, Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Fox sat in on an afternoon panel that addressed the various business models and use types that comprise the mobile TV space today and where they hope to see things going as more models and technologies converge.

Predicting what the customer wants: Greg Clayman, EVP of digital distribution & business development at MTV Networks: “It’s less about predicting what people want, but as we put product out there, we provide more and more of what people are gravitating to.” Two years back MTV was rolling out its first short-form mobile video offerings on carrier decks then it moved onto linear video platforms such as MediaFLO and Sprint (NYSE: S) TV. Earlier this summer the network launched ad-supported WAP video sites. Like many others in this space, MTV believes users want a mix of all three, but don’t want to be bothered with different price packages and user interfaces that diminish the quality of the experience.

Tim Connolly, VP of mobile distribution at Disney/ESPN and ABC: Full episodes are performing particularly well, but live sports are the sweet spot. “I actually think we’re there today… The real issue that we have is awareness… We’re on the doorstep, and it’s not an issue of price and that people aren’t willing to pay for video.”

Jonathan Barzilay, SVP of programming and advertising at MediaFLO USA: “There’s pretty much nothing you can do where you don’t end up learning something.” Under that premise, MediaFLO is doing more short-term event-based programming such as the UEFA EURO 2008, Olympics and XGames channels it programmed over the summer.

Kevin Grant, VP of sales at MobiTV: “It’s actually almost too early to tell… It’s still too hard to find, it might be too expensive depending on the carrier… We’re just so at the early form right now.”

What business models work best? Clayman: Subscriptions have performed best for MTV. “In the U.S. we have found that people know what subscription services are… That seems the easiest. We have done subscriptions for individual channels … and those models have not worked as well in the U.S.” MTV is also excited about single purchases of full-length shows and plans to begin experimenting around that model as well.

Andrew Stalbow, SVP of Fox Mobile Entertainment agreed: “I think the model’s changing pretty much to go subscription based.”

More after the jump…