I have an antenna on my roof and receive CBS (and 14 other stations) for free. Yet CBS led the fight against Aereo to forbid Aereo from retransmitting their shows.
I don’t understand the conflicting logic? If CBS wants me to pay to watch their commercials, why do they openly transmit to me for free. Why don’t they cease transmissions over-the-air (OTA)? On the other hand, if CBS is happy to give away their signals, why did they care about Aereo?
And on a related note, how much do they charge Comcast et al? How much of your cable bill (not mine) is fees that are passed through to all the common transmitter(s) like CBS, ESPN, Lifetime?
There’s the key word, “retransmit”. Read the decision. Originally, the supreme court had decided that a cable TV setup (or a community antenna) did not constitute a public performance and therefore did not infringe. Congress rewrote the laws a long time ago to say that cable TV was a regulatable service, did copy the transmissions, and therefore must pay a license fee to the broadcasters.
The Supreme Court simply said something like “congress intended this sort of service to be paying license fees. Areo looks, feels, and smells like a cable company, so congress intended for it to be a cable company.” They mention that, like a cable company, they collect transmissions and repeat them to the “public”, a diverse group of people whose only connection is that they all subscribe to the service. Using the internet as the cable doesn’t change the essence of the service.
Once again, Roberts is essentially telling congress that they whine about activist judges, well, he’s not going to make definitions distinctions or decisions that they should be making.
Note that cable companies are not technically forced to pay retransmission fees. The rule is either the broadcaster demands the cable company carry the channel and no fee can be charged or a fee can be charged and the cable company has the option to not carry it. This creates a stare-down situation, the cable company tries to get the station to force it to carry it so it doesn’t pay fees. The cable company tries to keep the fees just below the level where the cable company doesn’t decide to drop it.
I’ve seen estimates in the 40+% range as how much of a TV station’s revenue comes from cable companies. That’s really quite a lot.
So I assume that broadcasters ran the numbers: Sure Aereo customers are watching our channels rather than HBO and ESPN, but OTOH we’re missing out on some sweet revenue.
I think this is just a variation of the above game they play with cable companies. They have the upper hand now and will try to bully Aereo into paying some fees. Maybe not as much regular cable companies (whose customers have other non-OTA channels to watch).
But they may have blown it. If Aereo just folds instead, then it’s a lose to broadcasters.
Why wouldn’t Neilsen include Aereo users in it’s surveys (once they got numerous enough)? They’ve adjusted to cable and satellite and are trying to track on-line viewing some. The classic diary-style methodology would still apply.
Aereo does include a DVR service and Neilsen does exclude people who watch shows more than 7 days after airing but it would seem that an Aereo viewer watching a show within 7 days would be countable. (Note that the overwhelming majority of people still watch shows as they air even when they have a DVR.)