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back to article Presto! After Supreme Court loss, Aereo says it's a cable company now

After months of claiming it had "no Plan B" if it lost its case before the US Supreme Court, TV-streaming outfit Aereo has told a judge that it wants to remain in business – as a cable operator. In a four-page letter to US District Judge Alison Nathan, first revealed by the Hollywood Reporter, Aereo's attorneys make the case …

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  1. Mark 85

    Blew it, they did.

    I'd almost wager that if they had went with the "cable company" gambit from the start, there wouldn't have been huge legal fees. Less profit after the fees but still made some profit. Sounds like they need to seriously think about turning off the lights.

    1 3 Reply
  2. AJames

    Disingenuous

    The broadcast network lawyers are astonished that Aereo would offer a defence that appears to contradict their initial contention that they aren't a cable company? What law school did they attend where they didn't learn about "argument in the alternative"? Even I've seen that routine legal strategy in small claims court, as in "it wasn't me driving that car that hit you, but if it was, then it wasn't my fault".

    10 1 Reply
  3. Captain DaFt

    Can't have it both ways, can they?

    He said, "Am not!"

    They said, "Am too!"

    Judge agreed with them.

    Now he's saying, "Well, if you say I am, let's go that way."

    They say, "NO FAIR!"

    20 1 Reply
  4. unitron
    Headmaster

    Apparently they honestly thought....

    ...that they weren't a cable company.

    Then the Supreme Court told them they were, as they were handing a favorable ruling to the other party.

    So now that they've reconciled themselves to the reality that they're a cable company, the other party, which won because SCOTUS said they're a cable company, wants to argue that they aren't a cable company.

    20 0 Reply
    1. Purple-Stater
      Reply Icon

      Re: Apparently they honestly thought....

      Quite right. Turnabout as fair play is a fair play on both sides of the field. Quite amusing.

      1 0 Reply
    2. Aslan
      Reply Icon

      Re: Apparently they honestly thought....

      Thanks for putting it so succinctly. You'd thing the author didn't appreciate the convenience of Aereo maintaining the TV antenna for you and including a DVR too the way the author dismisses the classification the supreme court put Aereo in.

      It's not that I haven't climbed a 30' tower to do seasonal maintenance on a 65 mile antenna and equipped it with an expensive amplifier, it's that I'd prefer having the option of having somebody else do it. At my current address in the USA I have Time Warner cable and they want $30 a month for the most worthless cable service ever or the world best antenna. Basically it's a collection of all the stuff you'd pick up with an antenna and PBS, plus, TLC (junk) and CNN (tiresome after a point), and they force you to use a set top box to receive it and want an additional $8 for that. I told them to fuck off. Other than Aero I have no other options. Satellite isn't an option here. The fuck is wrong with broadcast television that they're actively hostile to me being able to watch their 20 minutes of commercials an hour?

      0 0 Reply
  5. Mage Silver badge

    I said it

    I got loads of down votes a few days ago for suggesting they are just a Cable Co. Aereo seems to agree with me.

    On that basis if they crawl nicely to TV companies they'll get their licence. The Aereo customers will have to pay a little more, but they are after all getting a Cable DVR service via IP they can use anywhere with good enough broadband rather than physical cable tied to the box outside the house..

    1 3 Reply
    1. Terry Cloth
      Reply Icon

      Re: I said it

      Why should they need to ``crawl ... to TV companies''? It's a compulsory license, after all.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Mage Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: I said it: Crawl?

        To get a better deal vs PVR which is no part of a regular licence

        0 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    tvcatchup.com?

    Isn't this the same basic story as tvcatchup.com in the UK, just delayed a couple of years and in a different jurisdiction?

    Same product offering.

    Same legal challenge#1.

    Same legal response#1.

    Profit (for the lawyers anyway).

    0 0 Reply
    1. dotdavid
      Reply Icon

      Re: tvcatchup.com?

      tvcatchup.com doesn't have Aereo's weird "one physical antenna per customer" business model, which was one of the stated reasons for them not describing themselves as a cable company at the time the lawsuit was launched against them. tvcatchup.com customers presumably share a few antennae rather than have one each.

      They had their own legal troubles when they had a remote PVR feature (hence the "catchup" part of their name) but it all seems to have quietened down now they're basically just an online Freeview stream. Not sure how long that'll last unfortunately.

      0 0 Reply
      1. jonathanb Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: tvcatchup.com?

        TV Catchup has been to court. A lot of the channels have gone. Those that remain are the ones that the law requires them to be allowed to run - all the BBC channels + ITV 1/STV/UTV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, plus a few where the channel owner has agreed to allow them to run it.

        0 0 Reply
  7. The Mole

    As a cable company with a paid for license does that mean they get the rights to start 'regionalized' adverts into their broadcasts (which previously they couldn't do as they would have been infringing the copyright)? If so they may actually be able to recoup at least some of the costs from the advertising

    0 0 Reply
    1. Al Jones
      Reply Icon

      Being allowed to replace the original broadcast ads would be particularly interesting if they replaced the constant 3 minute ad-breaks with 1 second ad-breaks for programs that were recorded to be watched later. Their potential demographic would probably pay more for such a service, if Aereo could pull it off, than they could earn by placing their own ads in the stream.

      $10/month with traditional ads, $15 with "blip" ads!

      0 0 Reply

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