Aereo

Broadcasters have an alternative to converting over-the-air networks to cable channels to thwart Barry Diller’s Aereo and Charlie Ergen’s AutoHop Dish DVR: the “Dual Stream Strategy.” Each TV station would feed a new, modified visual format of programming to their transmitters for OTA reception. This would consist of a station’s programming lineup in a reduced-size video window, surrounded by continuous weather, news and community information graphics and visual ads. The second stream would consist of the core programming full-screen, just as it is now, for MVPDs with retrans deals.

Noting that “there’s nothing proprietary about [Aereo’s] technology,” Sinclair Broadcasting CEO David Smith says that if it appeared to become a viable business, broadcasters could step up and do it on their own.

In case its name left any doubt, online video startup Aereokiller hopes to offer a service to rival Barry Diller’s Aereo. So it’s somewhat ironic that Aereo is shaping up as Aereokiller’s biggest unwitting booster in court. But whether Aereo is happy about this or not, the company’s recent win in a federal appellate court in New York is providing fodder to Aereokiller in its battle to resume operations in California.

Univision’s Chairman Haim Saban sounds the Aereo alarm after News Corp COO Chase Carey raised the possibility of becoming a subscription cable service earlier on Monday.

News Corp. COO Chase Carey tells an NAB Show audience that, while it will continue with legal action to stop Aereo and other streaming services from distributing its broadcast signals without permission or compensation, it’s prepared to take its broadcast network off the air and convert it into a pay channel, “which we would do in collaboration with both our content partners and affiliates.”

With the NAB Show slotting an “interview” of outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski by NAB Joint Board Chairman Paul Karpowicz next Wednesday, once again I’d like to volunteer some questions guaranteed to liven up the proceedings.

There’s a wide field of players with no shortage of innovative — but often flawed — strategies. Here’s how they stack up.

Dish Network is looking to quash a subpoena. In a court filing, the company says that TV networks aren’t entitled to learn whether it has plans to incorporate Aereo technology.

A federal appeals court in New York today turned down a request by broadcasters for an injunction against Aereo, the Internet service that streams broadcast TV stations without compensation. In a 2-to-1 ruling, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that Aereo’s streams of TV shows to individual subscribers did not constitute “public performances,” and thus the broadcasters’ copyright infringement lawsuits against the service “are not likely to prevail on the merits.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Aereo, the Web TV startup backed by Barry Diller, has discussed partnerships with pay TV distributors and Internet service providers, including AT&T and Dish as it looks to roll out its fledgling service to more markets, people familiar with the matter say. Talks between Aereo and telecom operators haven’t yet yielded any agreements. One big issue is the legal uncertainty surrounding the startup. Aereo is battling a suit by broadcasters, which say it is violating copyright law, in part because it reformats and retransmits their signals without permission — and then charges a fee to its subscribers. WSJ subscribers can read the story here.

Lawyers for Aereo went to court this week seeking sensitive documents from Big Media ranging from carriage deals to NBCUniversal Olympic research to contracts with Netflix. The hearing came as Aereo preps its defense for a likely trial, where broadcast entities have charged it with copyright infringement, leading to irreparable harm. A trial will deal with intricacies of copyright law, but Aereo will also seek to counter arguments that its service hurts networks sizably in their quest to collect retransmission consent payments, advertising dollars and licensing fees from subscription video-on-demand providers.

Aereo uses antenna farms to capture broadcast signals that can then be streamed on the Internet and viewed on a device of the customer’s choosing. Given that the service cuts out the cable television middleman and pays no retransmission fees to the programming producers, it’s a business idea that will sow chaos, disruption and turmoil. Just the way Diller likes it.

After suing Alki David for using “BarryDriller” and “AereoKiller,” Aereo is now suing him for using “Aero.”

The Barry Diller-backed pay service that lets users watch live TV on their iPhones, tablets and computers, has expanded from New York City to parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The company is also kicking off a major billboard campaign in the New York area.

Paying for “free TV” has never been more confusing. Ninety percent of the country has had its behavior changed forever in this regard. You want TV? You really have to pay for it — any of it. Aereo believes that $12 a month for essentially over-the-air TV channels doesn’t amount to much for consumers, and is thus a decent business.

On Thursday, FilmOn claimed rights to “Aero,” and that Aereo has taken a moniker that’s confusingly similar. The new lawsuit comes six months after David was sued after attempting to redub his own service as BarryDriller.com and AereoKiller. The basis for the lawsuit comes from the allegation that months before Bamboon Labs changed its name to Aereo, FilmOn already had a hold on “Aero.”

Upstart Aereo is taking on the TV industry from a single floor in Brooklyn where it has stuffed thousands of tiny antennas and top notch transcoders and servers. Here’s a primer on how it works — plus some pictures from the inside.

The site’s editorial policy after its CES Awards nightmare leads to fancy footwork by the news team.

Aereo’s search marketing tactics could prove that the company infringes copyright, the TV networks argue in recent court papers. A coalition of networks that’s suing Aereo for copyright infringement says in court papers that it needs to examine records from Google about Aereo’s AdWords campaigns.

TV stations might be able to simply overpower Barry Diller’s streaming service with their own mobile TV services, which could be as easy to use and cheaper. Maybe more importantly, the broadcasters have the promotional might that Aereo probably won’t be able to match. There’s one other advantage broadcast groups like Dyle and MyDTV have over Aereo: they aren’t running up huge legal bills fighting the major networks.

I’ve been trying out subscription service Aereo since September to record and watch all sorts of programs on it — both highbrow shows such as Downton Abbey and guilty-pleasure ones such as Revenge. If you can live with just 29 over-the-air channels and service hiccups, enjoy Aereo while you can. It makes cutting cable service tempting. But don’t tell off the cable guy quite yet. You might have to come crawling back if broadcasters win their lawsuit.

The upstart TV digital distributor has raised an additional $38 million and will be expanding into 22 cities. Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia also announces that he’s gotten a new financial commitment from Barry Diller’s IAC.

Sanford Bernstein analyst Todd Junger says that “in a world where Aereo (or equivalent) was thriving and stealing away pay-TV subscribers and the retrans that goes with them, the math would be different. Faced with this prospect, we believe the broadcast networks would be better off converting to cable, preserving their bundled economics and working as hard as possible to minimize the negative impact of losing the local presence.”

Aereo, the Barry Diller and IAC-backed TV streaming company, has reached a deal to add cable network Bloomberg TV to its lineup, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Aereo will pay Bloomberg for its content, the cmpanies said, without diclosing the terms of the deal. The streaming TV service has been defending itself in court against the major broadcast networks, who have sued the company for streaming the broadcast signals of their New York stations without permission. WSJ subscribers can read the full report here.

The IAC and Barry Diller-backed startup’s CEO Chet Kanojia speaking at last week’s VideoSchmooze conference in New York told the audience that Aereo is planning to launch apps for a variety of smart TVs shortly, and for adjunct TV devices, including the Roku, as well as possibly game consoles.

Three judges of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed poised to reverse a lower court judge who in July reluctantly gave a thumbs-up to the online TV streaming service Aereo Inc.

On Friday, the major TV broadcasters made their second attempt to shut down Aereo, the digital TV service that was funded in great part by Barry Diller and launched this past March. Arguing before a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel, the challenge for the broadcasters was clear: They needed to convince the judges that a technology that has already been judicially certified as likely to irreparably harm the broadcasters also ran afoul of copyright laws.

A group of major networks reopened their suit Friday against billionaire Barry Diller’s Aereo, requesting an injunction on the service in a California court.

Late last week, a coalition of public interest groups sided against the broadcast networks in a friend-of-the-court brief in the networks’ suit against the Barry Diller-led streaming service. “By making broadcast programming more accessible, and by creating more choices for private viewing technologies, Aereo improves and does not disrupt the free television industry. Aereo serves the public interest, and its service should not be enjoined,” the groups said.

The legal battle between broadcast networks and TV startup Aereo continues to unwind, as Aereo has filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. According to the 84-page briefing filed on Oct. 19, Aereo’s position in this case is identical to Cablevision’s in the mid-2000s, when the cable provider won a case against broadcast networks after being sued for a cloud-based remote DVR system.

Barry Diller’s online TV station streaming service is still limited to residents of New York City, but it’s now available on additional devices including Windows computers and on a wider selection of Web browsers including Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Before, access was restricted to selected Apple devices such as the iPhone and the iPad, as well as the Roku streaming set-top box.

Cablevision is frequently at odds with broadcasters, but this is a case where they’re on the same side. The cable MSO tells a federal court that Aereo is wrong in claiming that a lawsuit won by Cablevision applies to Aereo’s Internet streaming service as well.

CEO Chet Kanojia says the IAC-backed digital TV company will soon start offering programming that doesn’t come from TV stations, which he’ll sell for an additional fee. “We have done a few deals” with content owners, Kanojia said during an interview at a Goldman Sachs media conference today. “You’ll see us publicize those at some point soon.”

In a unusual legal twist, broadcasters may now have two shots at killing Aereo, the controversial TV streaming service recently launched by media mogul Barry Diller. Alki David, the provocative media entrepreneur who recently launched an Aereo-like streaming TV service called BarryDriller.com, may have unintentionally just done broadcasters a huge favor in their fight to stop both online video services.

The chief executive of FilmOn, an online video site, has started a new service in competition with Aereo, a Barry Diller-backed site which streams broadcast TV networks’ signal over the Web to paying subscribers. FilmOn’s new site is called Barrydriller.com, which Alki David says is “homage to a great guy and at the same time, it’s drilling him a bit.”

As its court case continues, Aereo rolls out a new pricing structure, including daily one-hour free try-outs.

Aereo is shaking up the broadcast TV industry with a service that streams live television through the Internet to smartphones, tablets and other devices for consumers. Broadcasters were so upset that the four largest networks sued Aereo for copyright infringement weeks before its service even launched. Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia talks about the lawsuit, subscription costs, opposition from the competition and the next steps.

Incredibly, Judge Alison Nathan bought into Aereo’s laughable argument that the company was merely “renting antennas” to its subscribers. That would be like a store claiming that, because it pilfers merchandise from a distributor’s warehouse one item at a time, instead of by the truckload, it should be allowed to sell the goods without paying for them.

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker says yesterday’s denial of an injunction against Barry Diller’s Aereo online TV distribution service “was clearly more negative than we had anticipated.” However, she adds, it doesn’t seem to pose a “real risk to retrans dollars,” but could negatively affect broadcast stocks.

A federal judge denies the broadcast networks’ request for a preliminary injunction against the distribution of broadcast signals by the online company in New York. “While we are disappointed, we will continue to fight to protect our copyrights and expect to prevail on appeal,” says Fox in a statement. Aereo, which launched its service in March, is backed by Barry Diller.