Fox, Univision May Go Subscription To Stop Aereo 306
GTRacer writes "In response to Aereo's recent win allowing per-user over-the-air antenna feeds to remote devices, Fox COO Chase Carey said, 'We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content. This is not an ideal path we look to pursue [...],' that path being a switch to a subscription model. Spanish-language stalwart Univison may join Fox, per CEO Haim Saban. Aereo replied, in part, 'When broadcasters asked Congress for a free license to digitally broadcast on the public's airwaves, they did so with the promise that they would broadcast in the public interest and convenience, and that they would remain free-to-air. Having a television antenna is every American's right.' A switch to a pay-TV subscription model would stymie Aereo but could hurt affiliate stations."
While you are at it (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we switch ALL channels to a subscription model? I only watch 5 channels, and I would gladly pay $5 each for those channels and save myself hundreds of dollars per year.
Re:While you are at it (Score:5, Insightful)
On cable that would be fine, but not over the air channels. If they try that, they should indeed lose their broadcast license.
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No, they should lose their license, we have MUCH better things we can do with that bandwidth than prop up a subscription business. The VHF band alone is 162MHz, enough for 8 LTE providers (maybe only 7 with guard bands) and penetrates buildings well.
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CW ought to cut through the digital mess quite nicely...
Re:While you are at it (Score:5, Insightful)
The clock is ticking for local over the air affiliates anyway. In a few years expect all the big players like Viacom, NBCUniversal, Fox, Disney, etc... to focus on becoming "apps" with content stores or subscriber libraries. There are constant rumors of HBO GO waiving the cable subscriber requirement and becoming a Netflix or Hulu. Premium channels are not going to standby much longer and watch Amazon Prime and other services steal "their audience". They will get in the game and it will by the end of the status quo for cable tv.
Smaller local news affiliates will become an afterthought. They will need to figure out how to survive as the business model continues to shift to streaming.
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footnote: Before anyone says it I know NBC and Fox are partners on Hulu. I'm just saying expect more of that.
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And yet there are a lot of great shows on TV nowadays, and the mid to late 20 somethings in my office are up on all of them. Very few watch reality shows. They watch Justified, Walking Dead, Game Of Thrones, etc.
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What makes you think that they watch these on TV, and not on Netflix, AIV etc?
(or download from TPB where that's not an option)
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Re:While you are at it (Score:4, Informative)
And what will REALLY make them shit their pants is when they all switch...and nobody shows up.
The process of them shitting their pants has already begun [time.com].
The sad part of it is that they still don't get it - they think that they can solve it by bringing it to iDevices and such, without changing the basic subscription model of cable.
Re:While you are at it (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, television always had a lot of crap.. but it wasn't always so loaded up with cheap crap aka "reality television."
How many channels have names that lie about their content now? The learning channel? National geographic channel? The history channel?
Its cheap to pay 4 or 5 guys with cameras to follow around a bunch of douche bags.. its crap so they only get 10% of the viewers that they used to, but it only costs them 1% of what their old programming had cost to produce, and sometimes the cast of douche bags they are following are so extraordinarily douchy that they have a "hit" and get twice as many viewers as their old programming did...
I'm not sure that I wouldn't make the same decisions as they are if I was in their place.. profits are up all the way down the death spiral...
Re:So what is this mythical new business model? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know who that "everything must be free" crowd are. Personally, I would gladly pay for quality content if that content is made available to me in a convenient way. This boils down to two things: 1) I must be able to pay for it once and stream it when I want it (i.e. no subscription), and 2) it must not be bundled with some other crap. I'm fine with time-limited rentals, DRM etc. Just make it all easy and convenient and get rid of all the bullshit.
Oh, and forget the word "cable". And the general idea that I need to subscribe to a load of crap to get a few things that I actually care about. I want to pay only for what I actually want, and no more than that.
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Well, you didn't also say it had to be available at the same *time* as it was via other means. Since you were amenable to time limited DRM-encumbered rentals, if you just "wait a year", it will be available.
I figured I didn't need to expand on that, as it is kinda common sense. I don't demand content to be available on the same exact day (though then again, why not?), but a year later is obviously unacceptable. I'll just go to TPB instead to see it now, and then buy it once it is available for sale after a year (this is precisely what I did with GoT season 2), so the end result is that they get my money a year later than they otherwise would have. Their loss.
I mean if you *really* wanted it at the time, you could just get HBO for the months the show was on, then cancel (like tons of people used to do for The Sopranos).
I don't want HBO. I want specifically Game of Throne
Re:So what is this mythical new business model? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm more than willing to pay a dime (or several hundred dimes) if I can actually get easily accessible things that I want to see.
For example, I have a Netflix and Hulu subscription. Why? Because streaming content, my choice of what I see or don't see, no advertisements, and no contract. I'm happy to pay for it, because it gives me what I want, when I want it, and doesn't get in my way.
Conversely, I'll never pay for a cable subscription again. Cable requires (at least in my area) a 2 year contract, gives me 100+ channels of crap with only 3-5 that show something that I'd like to see (but only shows what I want to see at certain times of day), and forces me to watch advertisements. Why would I pay to watch advertisements? I'd be 100% ok with ad supported free channels, but if I'm paying for it, it had better not have ads.
Here's a suggestion for the cable companies out there. Turn your network into the Netflix of TV. Basic premise is that you can watch the last 3, or 5, or maybe the entire season of a specific show. For news, show the last week. Give it to me searchable, and let me pick up from where I was watching last time. Make it available for a reasonable, tiered price (eg, it's ok to charge extra for premium channels like HBO or Starz), and don't force me to sign a contract. Finally, get rid of the advertisements. Or, maybe give people the option to pay 75% the normal subscription price if they'll watch an advertisement at the beginning of the content.
Re:While you are at it (Score:5, Insightful)
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Life-Line by Robert A. Heinlein, 1939
/If they want to take their ball and go home, I would encourage them to do so.
//NBC/CBS/ABC as well. Someone will fill your shoes, if for no other reason than the lucrative sports broadcast.
Fox Corporate Asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
This Fox COO is making dumb threats. As one with an inside-view of how broadcast TV is made available to viewers, I can tell you that this action if taken will result in no good for Fox.
Basically, there is in many areas at most a 15-20% marketshare for OTA broadcast TV, and the rest get their TV from cable or satellite. For Fox to be able to charge the "freeloaders" viewing by broadcast, they would have to implement some kind of scrambling of the broadcast signal.
Scrambling the signal would require hardware on both ends: 1 scrambler at the broadcast transmitter, and 1 descrambler at each viewer's house (many).
How many currently free viewers do you reckon are going to start paying Fox for hardware/subscription to view their 1 broadcast channel that they used to get for free? My bet is nearly none. So their 15-20% share would drop to ~ 2-5% costing them 10+% of their viewers. Look at that number, then think of the nation-wide ad revenue for the corporation it could represent, and plop that figure onto the table of the shareholders' meeting....
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We have had subscription Broadcast TV before. When I was a kid, my neighbors had "IT TV" that ran a scrambled channel, that was in the 1980's.
Maybe If Fox sold off stations, Google could launch a YouTube Network. They could use all 4 Digital channels for maximum effect. They would have to clean up some shows for swearing and such, but they try to do that already. They have mastered short ads every few clips so DVR wouldn't really hurt them.. In fact they could work with TiVo and the built in program guide D
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You forgot one important thing.
I'm pretty sure most broadcast licenses from the require that the content to not be encrypted.
Given just how much money companies are willing to pay the FCC for a slice of spectrum, the government wouldn't waste time "repossessing" their spectrum license.
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You forgot one important thing.
I'm pretty sure most broadcast licenses from the require that the content to not be encrypted.
Mostly. The regs basically say that a 480i unencrypted signal would suffice for keeping the license. This could be done in about 3Mbps, leaving nearly 16Mbps for encrypted content.
The OTA stations that are affliated with ION do this right now. Although they do have 720p as their main signal, the bitrate is about 6Mbps, which looks like crap. They have two other unencrypted sub-channels (both 480i), and 5-6 encrypted streams, including things like Starz and NFL Sunday Ticket.
Re:Fox Corporate Asshole (Score:5, Informative)
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Why should less popular channels by subsidized? Why should anything ever be subsidized (as far as entertainment)? The more direct the funding for content, the less "why would anyone watch this" content there will be, and the more rational discussions of piracy will become.
I'd much rather see a model where I watched all TV by buying downloads of shows - of course they'd ruin it all with some DRM nonsense, but a man can dream.
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Spread around the costs, maximize profits.
Cable companies are against bundling because there's channels that only a small subset of viewers wants. They're not going to pay for those individually, so the strategy is to bundle, and if you want something that only comes in a bundle, you help pay for the other channels you don't want.
The cable companies want to make sure that the money losing stuff
Re:While you are at it (Score:5, Insightful)
Because mass-market pablum will be the only thing produced?
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Re:While you are at it (Score:4, Interesting)
History, SyFy and TLC would all be fine:
Prime-time Average Viewers (Live+SD) Week Ending April 7, 2013:
Network (000s)
It would be the rest of the filler station that wouldn't make it.
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Can we switch ALL channels to a subscription model? I only watch 5 channels, and I would gladly pay $5 each for those channels and save myself hundreds of dollars per year.
The subscription model they talk about is not the à la carte model that you are talking about. When they say "subscription model", they mean convert to the current pay-TV system where they would receive a monthly affiliate fee from your cable provider on your behalf. Hence, you automatically become a subscriber and some of your cable bill will get diverted to them.
What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they already provide a free over-the-air signal, in order to be available to the most viewers (and therefore to the most advertising targets), isn't another company extending that viewer base at no expense to Fox, Univision, CBS, NBC, ABC a *benefit* to them?
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It's a benefit to the affiliate stations, however Fox wants your to watch your LA affiliate when in LA, not the NY affiliate. Especially for their "talent" shows.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Funny)
SSssshh! They're going to take Fox off the air and we don't have to do anything
Re:What am I missing? (Score:4, Informative)
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SSssshh! They're going to take Fox off the air and we don't have to do anything
But Fox had some good shows.. oh, wait, they kill those before finishing even one season.
FTFY
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Only if that extended viewer base is measured and reported in a manner that advertisers trust, and then only if increased viewer base means increased ad views.
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Sounds like they could buy that information from Aereo.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea I have no idea what they're complaining about. Instead of fighting Aereo maybe they could work with them instead? When you're broadcasting you have no idea who's watching what and what kind of exposure paying advertisers are getting. Aereo likely knows what channel you're watching and at what time, this seems like ENORMOUSLY valuable information to a broadcaster. If everybody setup a TV tuner in their apartment and streamed it to their device of choice then the broadcaster has no clue what kind of market penetration they're getting.
It's like cutting off your nose to spite the face.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are 2 downsides with that from the TV perspective –
First, time-shifted /place-shifted advertisements are worth less. People pay less attention to them. (Live sports, for example, can charge a premium because people don’t time-shifting watching those vents.)
Secondly, and more importantly, the TV stations would have to share their revenue with Aereo – and more importantly – Aereo would be in the driving seat in terms of negotiations. I think the TV stations would want to go into negotiations in a stronger position.
So I don’t think they are inherently against it – they just want a larger slice of the pie. (Not saying that we should give it them.).
Re:What am I missing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Aereo is not time shifting or place shifting. They are providing the 'signal' only to people nominally in the broadcast area who simply have bad reception. The signal is provided live.
The people using Aereo would otherwise have to subscribe to cable or just not watch TV at all.
They're already getting a fair piece of their pie. Aereo baked a brand new pie and Fox wants to steal it off of the window sill.
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So, do the many rent-to-own places somehow owe Fox money? They rent equipment that can be used to legally timeshift programming. So does Aereo apparently.
If I go on vacation and tell the house sitter to hit record when "The Following" comes on, does HE owe Fox money?
If I rent a slingbox, who (if anyone) owes Fox money?
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Re:What am I missing? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I suspect that this is the same resistance to a third party pushing content that nearly every IP owner has shown over the years. It has nothing to do with being compensated. It is likely easy to grab viewer metrics from Aereo and renegotiate the value of those viewer impressions with advertisers. I'm guessing that Fox just wants that control - they want to roll their own service, the same way that all of the music publishers wanted to roll their own streaming/subscription service, the same way that the c
Two Reasons (Score:2)
There's two things you're missing:
1) OTA networks get paid fees by cable & satellite providers for their content (disputes over these fees sometimes result in certain networks being dropped temporarily by cable & satellite providers). I'm su
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You act as if that's difficult. It was done with ease prior to the advent of the internet. Now its simple. The question isn't how to get an NYC street address, but would anyone want to who isn't there already? If Bloomberg were running anyone other place outside the US, there would be UN sanctions against him already.
"“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance." This was said by him on 11/29 20
Re:What am I missing? (Score:4, Informative)
On facebook, I did a basic outline as to why this was ruled legal:
Why Aereo is legal in an easy side-by-side comparison between traditional and digital:
1) Just as you had a TV antenna on your roof that only you can access, you have your own antenna that only you can access. Each customer has their OWN antenna. Your service fee pays for maintenance of the array your specific antenna is powered by.
2) Just as you could split your roof antenna signal as many times as you wanted throughout your house to send the signal to all your TVs, you can access your Aereo antenna with any device you own via the Aereo app. Your service fee helps maintenance of the Aereo app and keeps it updated. To clarify...keep in mind you are not so much accessing CONTENT, as you are an ANTENNA! That's the key point of this right there. You're accessing an ANTENNA that is exclusively YOURS, and sending its signal to your video device. The internet is simply playing the role of the coaxial cable.
3) Just as you could use a VCR to record any signal that comes off your roof antenna to watch for later, your personal Aereo cloud storage can store recorded programs to access at a later date on any of your devices that run the Aereo app. Until 2008, this could have been illegal, but Cablevision won a decision that said they could store programs in the cloud for their customers' personal viewing. What Aereo does in this case is no different. Like the Cablevision situation, each customer has their OWN cloud storage. Your service fee helps the maintenance of the cloud storage.
4) The one limitation: Just as your roof antenna could only receive local stations that you had to live in the area to access, you need to prove you are in the right market for the service. This is why right now, only the NYC market is eligible for Aereo, despite its user being able to watch their programs over the internet. You have to live in the area to get its channels. This is due to FCC rules of exclusivity. Aereo is planning rollouts in numerous other cities (including my home area of Minneapolis) before the end of the year. Your service fees help Aereo to grow.
Hilarious misinterpretation of their license (Score:2, Interesting)
What part of "broadcast in the public interest and convenience" are they failing to understand? A significant portion of the country no longer owns televisions nor are interested in non-time-shifted content.
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A significant portion of the country no longer owns televisions nor are interested in non-time-shifted content.
Source, please? Your claim is rather extrordinary. Pretty much every person I know owns at least one television, and almost all of them have cable (as much as they complain about the cost).
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Pretty much every person I know owns at least one television, and almost all of them have cable (as much as they complain about the cost).
Pretty much every person I know has at least one big display/monitor, and almost none of them have cable, instead streaming or torrenting or whatever. I think it's the sports fans (which admittedly is most of the male public) who are still tied to "broadcast" - it's an expensive and awkward way to watch anything that's not realtime.
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Source, please? Your claim is rather extrordinary.
Not so extraordinary, when it's fact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03television.html
Even scarier for the TV networks is the reason that TV ownership has dropped - more and more YOUNG PEOPLE don't want and/or need them. As more old folks die off, and those without TV's get older, expect the overall percentage to drop further.
As for the "who you know without a TV" anecdote - I don't really socialize too much with kids in their 20's (I'm old) but I do know personally of three households wit
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Well, like Mark Twain pointed out, it's all in how you look at the stats. The numbers of households without a TV was 1.1% - now it's 3.3%, or triple the number. The trend is clearly towards less households with TVs, and again, it's young people leading that charge, so it would seem that 3.3% is going to increase.
I don't care much one way or the other - I have only 1 TV, which probably puts me in the minority of households with multiple children (most families I know have multiple sets) but there's no den
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Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of seeing it as a way to increase their viewing area to their advertisers they're alienating their customer base. I quit watching normal TV years ago, if enough stations do this we could reallocate all that useful TV bandwidth to something useful.
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Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's hope all the like companies do this, it would be great for the American public. Once they do this we can then take the considerable bandwidth that is being allocated on TV and use it for more useful things like next generation wireless devices. I for one must encourage this behavior and the removal of public TV from public airwaves. We also gain the benefit of removing decades old indecency standards from the days of the Model T.
How many people would sign a petition in support of this measure?
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
And I would rather have my indecency standards set by a monolithic, slow-as-molasses bureaucracy than by the whims of a media company.
Until net neutrality is settled, I would ask that you not sign any petition doing away with public TV.
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Broadcast TV allows me to watch programming I enjoy, for free, without my stream lagging to hell whenever my ISP arbitrarily decides to throttle me.
And I would rather have my indecency standards set by a monolithic, slow-as-molasses bureaucracy than by the whims of a media company.
Until net neutrality is settled, I would ask that you not sign any petition doing away with public TV.
I've been visiting US a few times per year for many years (business travel) and each and every time I'm amazed how you can endure watching anything with the amount of advertising intruding on the shows.
Hmm, business travel in the United States. Large amounts of television commercials. Business travel in the United States. Large amounts of television commercials.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
-Upton Sinclair
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If you find the program indecent, turn it off.
Except it isn't about them not seeing it, it's about them making sure that others cannot see it, conveniently wrapped up in the guise of making sure their precious little Bobby and Suzie cannot see it.
Unfortunately for them, technology has advanced to the point that they no longer require the government's assistance to block Bobby and Suzie from accessing certain channels/shows. Though now we have to wait for the slow-as-molasses bureaucracy to catch up.
Cancel it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox is so good at canceling good shows that they thought they'd cancel themselves!
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Cut off the node to spite the face (Score:2)
I fail to see why these companies don't have a problem blasting their signal free out into the ether for anyone to receive, but the instant you try to blast it free into the int
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Going subsciption only would turn them from one of the 'Big 4' networks to just another cable channel, like TNT or Discovery.
Fox's network channel would get stomped in a cable lineup.
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Well, Aereo isn't really quite doing that...they're giving you an antenna (that is exclusively YOURS) that you can log in to and watch whatever that antenna is receiving. No one else can log into your antenna. This is why it was ruled legal, it's not a publicly-available centralized broadcast.
And by "May"... (Score:3, Insightful)
And, of course, by "may go subscription" you really mean "are spouting entirely hollow threats because everyone knows they're not going to throw away their broadcast money just to spite one company."
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And, of course, by "may go subscription" you really mean "are spouting entirely hollow threats because everyone knows they're not going to throw away their broadcast money just to spite one company."
Not that this would ever happen, of course; but if somebody at the FCC had actual nerve they'd do a little perspective inversion at this point:
"Oh, so you now think that the economics of your use of some prime RF spectrum allocations are unsustainable? Good to know, we've got people who are substantially more optimistic about their ideas and would love to have access to it(any of the 'whitespace' networking technologies, for instance, would work substantially better, and be much easier to set up, if there w
Aren't OTA TV stations compensated by ads? (Score:4, Insightful)
"We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content. " - Don't you sell advertisements to get paid? I never recall getting a bill for OTA TV .
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These are the same people who compared VCRs to the Boston Strangler. Why be surprised that they don't like TiVo?
As everyone knows, skipping commercials is un-American and no different from terrorism.
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And the whole cable watching world said (Score:2)
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And the whole youtube watching world said, "What's broadcast?"
And nothing of value was lost... (Score:2)
As title...
You can't protect rights you don't have (Score:3)
They're complaining that the courts and government are not protecting their rights. Their copyrights.
But copyrights exist at the discretion of the government. If 17 USC 107 provides a fair use exception to copyright. And if time shifting is fair use. Then there are no rights to protect.
It's not the government's job to protect your IP rights. The government grants you a monopoly covering certain aspects of a work. If the government decides that time shifting is not a violation of copyrights, you don't have that right. Deal with it.
Cry me a fucking river... (Score:3)
Broadcast TV sits right in the middle of some pretty nice spectrum. Any broadcaster who doesn't like the economics of broadcasting is more than welcome to step aside and let us find some more productive use of that spectrum. Not that I think Fox is serious; but I'd be delighted if they were.
Wait. What? (Score:2)
A switch to a pay-TV subscription model would stymie Aereo but could hurt affiliate stations
Can they even do this? Don't affiliates have multi-year contracts, with exclusive territory agreements ? Who would agree to be a network affiliate if they could just pull the plug from you at any time?
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No, this is just an empty threat because they did not get their way. You see this behavior a lot in toddlers and people of that level of development.
Inevitable step (Score:4, Insightful)
This was an inevitable step once we went down the path of allowing OTA broadcasters to start demanding payments for retransmission on cable (originally "Community Antenna TV"). That was a stupid step to begin with... you're sending an unencrypted signal into my house... why do you care how I get it or if I let a middleman bring it to me? It is also inevitable once the broadcasters started getting bought by pay-TV companies (Disney, Comcast, etc).
For FOX, though, I don't think their #1 TV property (a little thing called the NFL) is going to be real happy at all with them becoming 'yet another cable station'.
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It wasn't a stupid step. it was an example of that your Civic leaders are greedy asshats that will happily take a bribe to throw your rights under the bus. Blame your town mayor, and every elected representative you have. Your city or town has a "franchise" agreement with cable companies. It's a legal kickback of money for allowing them to strongarm customers and keep competition out.
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Retransmission fees? (Score:2)
I'm not so sure that the cable carriers would be heartbroken to see this happen. Right now I suspect they're mostly having to pay Fox for the "privilege" of carrying the over-the-air content, but a change like this might well mean that the network was paying to be carried instead.
Yes, it is a desperate attempt (Score:3)
It seems to me that Aereo is a centralized equivalent of a Slingbox, just, well, centralized.
So of that's the case, the complaint by broadcasters would be, what?
- Infinging on sales of any mobile app they have to enable place-shifting their programming?
- The age-old argument that time-shifting is wrong? We fought that fight and won I think.
- Opposing Aereo because they mess with various ratings and data collection? This, BTW, I believe would be enough to justify the fight by itself.
- Opposing Aereo because they don't want to have to buy the data *again*? See above.
Same fight going on with Dish and the Hopper. Lack of 'control', which in the current environment is really failing to reocgnize that fight is already lost. We can place-shift, time-shift, do both at once. We have multiple ways. If these channels expect to be able to get me to pay for content with my eyeballs (commercials), or a mobile app for convenience, and get more and more revenue for the same content, they have a challenge. I'm not far from focusing my interests on programming that is given to me cheaply, be it Neflix or YouTube, or something else. The dinosaurs are fighting it out, but they will lose.
And I can't see this fast enough. Adapt or die, losers.
I dare them (Score:2)
I Dare Fox to pull from OTA and go subscription only. They really as a network have only about 6 hours of programming a day. all the rest is created by the local stations.
Go ahead Fox... pull out and go Subscription only. I DARE YOU.
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They only have 1 show that I watch anyway. I wouldn't miss it. The rest is garbage (and arguably, so is that one show).
But.... (Score:2)
FOX actually puts on some very interesting and good shows. Without FOX, we wouldn't have X-Files, Fringe, Firefly (yes they did cancel it), Simpsons (Season 1-10, the rest don't exist), and Futurama (Season 1-5). They're about the only one crazy enough to try shows like X-Files, Terra Nova or Fringe. You knew going in that Fringe was going to have a limited audience but FOX still gave them enough time to completely the main story arc.
Please do it (Score:2)
The NFL will have something to say about this. (Score:3)
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Is there some maximum cable length law between one's TV and an antenna? Isn't this essentially a business that has a good location for reception and a long cable to TVs where the rabbit ears would get squat. People in rural areas have long used towers, long cables, and remote antenna rotators to get better signals (I can personally remember this from the late 70s and it surely predates my childhood memories) -- why can't city folk do the same thing by essentially renting an antenna with desireable placeme
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But they can.
To boost range the signal has to be digitized first. That's what Aero does. If you read how Aero works, it's crazy from a technical perspective to stay legal.
When you subscribe to Aero you're renting your very own antenna hooked up to your own rented (virtual) dvr.
Think about how stupid that is. They have thousands of antennas hooked up to thousands of TV tuners to record the same show thousands of times.
They are legally prevented from preforming file-level deduplication. (This was a key is
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Well, given that they just finished losing a lawsuit denying exactly that, they apparently do quibble with that part, they just didn't get their way...
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Please?
That spectrum can then be taken back by the FCC, right?
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[Fox and Univision] just don't have to grant you access through that antenna since they're the ones who have paid for access to the programs and then redistribute them to those who pay.
Of course, they are free to not air their content over the public airwaves. They can choose not to distribute their content to their OTA affiliates and become (one of very many) cable-/satellite-only channels. And then what will their OTA affiliates air? Will they stop affiliating with local stations and lose that local presence? What happens when a local news story of national significance breaks and they no longer have affiliation with a local news source?
Broadcasters use the public airwaves for fr
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VOTE Ron Paul 2016 to END this bullshit once and for all.
He isn't any better really. He just wants everything to be up to the highest bidder, i.e. to be private. Which, in the end, is pretty much exactly what we got now, minus a layer of government.
We need actual public property, which is held, by the government (it is part of their job, after all) for all of us, with all of us having the exact same rights over it regardless of our monetary worth or political clout.
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It's not about Fox News. That already is a cable channel. It's about the Fox Network that plays on affiliated local over-the-air stations. They seem to claim they want to abandon that and turn it into a cable channel, too. I say good riddance, as it is all junk TV, anyway. Maybe the station owner will put on some better programming. Or go dark and let someone else have the license.