End of free TV? Web start-up vs. networks
Chris Taylor, Mashable: “It isn’t every day that a major national TV network threatens to become a cable-only subscription channel — but that’s exactly what happened Monday. News Corp. President Chase Carey (said) his company was considering ‘converting the Fox broadcast network to a pay channel’ — that is, going over to basic cable, and denying cable-free Americans (all 50 million of them) their weekly fixes of American Idol, Glee or The Simpsons. Why on earth would Fox do that? Because of the threat posed by Barry Diller’s start-up Aereo, which won a legal battle last week allowing it to continue doing what it does. And what it does is rebroadcast regular TV ... to tablets, smartphones and the Web. ... Carey’s threat was clearly aimed at the courts and Congress.” Ryan W. Neal, International Business Times: “The real problem lies with ‘retransmission fees,’ which the networks charge cable and satellite systems for the right to broadcast content to paying subscribers. These fees add up to an estimated $3 billion across the industry. ... The networks claim that Aereo is stealing the signal to rebroadcast it, but the court ruled that Aereo is simply enabling consumers to do what they could already do on their own with an antenna. ... Networks’ fear is that this court ruling will encourage other cable and satellite companies to develop similar technologies that avoid retransmission fees. ... Unfortunately for audiences, these options may spell the end of free television.” Rick Moran, American Thinker: “The billions they spend to generate content ... is being rendered valueless by those who recognize the worth is not in the content per se but in the means of sharing that content. ... As our current copyright law stands, it is a gray area that needs to be clarified. On the one hand, you don’t want to stifle technological changes. On the other, you want to protect ... the investments made by broadcasters to generate content.” Peter Kafka, All Things D: “Moving programming to cable ... would theoretically protect the value of that programming. But it would presumably come at a cost to Fox, as it would lose access to the 10% or so of American TV viewers who don’t have a pay TV subscription. Given that Aereo and the broadcasters are still duking this out in court, and that Aereo has a small subscriber base ... you can probably file this under ‘sword-rattling aimed at regulators’ more than ‘things Fox actually intends to do.’ ” Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt: “If you look at Nielsen’s latest rankings for last week, the top 10 network shows all scored higher ratings than the top cable show. ... No network with any business sense at all is going to give up that prime position for getting viewers, and shunt themselves off into the hinterlands of cable TV.”