Warner Bros. hire strikes tone with wireless ringers.

WOULD you answer a phone whose ring sounded like Porky Pig's "Th, th, th, that's all folks?"

Warner Bros., which just formed a wireless division in its online group, is betting that millions of cell phone users around the world will.

The company has named Doug Dyer vice president in charge of the effort. Dyer joins the company from his post as general manager at L.A. videogame producer THQ Inc.'s wireless division, where he recently struck a deal with Twentieth Century Fox to bring "Simpsons" ring tones, screensavers and games exclusively to Vodafone customers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

The deal brought him to the attention of Warner Bros., a Time Warner Inc. company, which is seeking to leverage its vast library of cartoon, TV and movie characters into new revenue streams.

"Warner's brands are natural tie-ins with mobile operators," Dyer said. "It's a source of differentiation for wireless providers who are competing with similar prices and services."

Warner has already made a deal to provide Looney Tunes ring tones and screensavers to Sprint's mobile phone customers in conjunction with the release this month of its feature film "Looney Tunes: Back in Action."

Dyer's road to ring tones and cartoon characters was anything but preordained.

After studying English at Brigham Young University, he worked as a copywriter for software manufacturer WordPerfect Corp. in Orem, Utah.

"I left the company in 1994 and went to the competition at Microsoft as a product manager for their games division," Dyer said.

Dyer, 40, is divorced and has two children. He lives in Calabasas, and in the rare moments he's not traveling between Europe and Japan, he plays videogames.