Make no mistake – there is no chance Aereo will survive longer than two or three years. That’s a best-case scenario.
Broadcast Networks are dying (it’s true) and will be dead in their current form within five years.
In five years, who is going to pay $8 a month for nothing?
Where are all those little antennas going to go once Broadcast Networks cease to exist?
What sort of business launches with this sort of insane hype that, at most, will only exist for five years?
A Barry Diller company, of course.
The only useful purpose Aereo has is that it will play a part in hastening the inevitable demise of Broadcast Networks.
That’s something, I guess.
I wrote a couple of years ago that Broadcast Networks were in denial (BROADCAST NETWORKS: ON DEATH AND DYING – April 1, 2011). That the executives were longing for the old days of The Big Five.
Now they’re just trying to survive at any cost.
New shows aren’t working. The upfronts next month will be terrible (regardless of what the networks will actually say in their trumped up press releases and over-the-top presentations).
But things aren’t completely dire.
Chase Carey has the right idea but he shouldn’t say that he’ll make FOX a cable channel as a threat to Aereo. He should make FOX a cable channel because it would be a good business decision. It’s really the ONLY business decision.
It is time for Broadcast Networks to accept that the world has changed. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” is no longer the number one show. And new shows like “How To Live With Your Parents (For The Rest Of Your Life)” will not save you now.
Basic cable and becoming just another button on the infinite media grid of the future is the only chance ABC, CBS, MBS, NBC and FOX have to survive.
Love him or hate him (most hate him), Barry Diller has, once again, disrupted an industry in desperate need of change.
If he wasn’t so gooey I would be cheering him on.
For $20 million dollars, he is forcing a $50 billion industry to join the 21st century. Now that’s getting a bang for your buck.
Jill Kennedy – OnMedea
P.S. – Who knew Barry Diller enjoyed fishing so much? Here’s a great story of a recent fishing trip.
Absolutely, Jill! What a ridiculous idea. Barry Diller has completely lost his faculties.
Broadcast dying in 5 years? Ant that was said 2 years ago.
Fox should convert to 100% cable? Isn’t cable dying?
Fox (and all cable) should convert to on demand internet and be done with it. We could pay for the content we watch, not these bundles that include HSN & the golf channel.
Not happening. Sports will always differentiate the networks from just being another click on the dial. ESPN is a huge cash cow for Disney, but not as huge as the NFL is for CBS AND NBC. If I bought into this, Les Moonves would become the Walter Yentnicoff of Broadcast TV.
But here is an idea…let’s swap in Jill Kennedy for Anne Coulter. Younger, prettier, smarter blond who isn’t filled with hate and doesn’t annoy the hell out of us…maybe it could be a reality show…call Mooves…It’s a hit! Broadcast will be saved.
High-profile (and high-cost) sports programming such as the NFL and the Olympics is, at best, break-even for the networks. In fact, the Super Bowl was a money-loser earlier this year. The spillover promotional effect that sustained this business model is collapsing as audience levels for broadcast television continue to decline precipitously across the board. The future for such sporting events is either subscription television along the lines of an ESPN or via PPV.
As for Diller’s Folly, the early rulings in favor of Aereo will not be upheld on appeal as the stated technological underpinnings of the service have been shown to be completely fraudulent. There is, in fact, no such thing as “one antenna per user;” if such a thing existed, Aereo would make billions selling these tiny hunks of metal that receive flawless signals on every channel to individual consumers. The whole notion violates the laws of physics. What Aereo is in fact doing is serving out the same shared video signal to every subscriber, the pretense of changing channels accomplished by computer code that induces a slight delay between streams. Furthermore, it is very easy to circumvent the territorial restrictions put in place by spoofing your IP address or GPS location information, which exposes Aereo to further lawsuits by syndicators in addition to the stations and the networks. Once the courts are done with Aereo, Barry’s investors will be just as broke as the ones that invested in his “revolutionary” USA Broadcasting in the 1990s.
I just moved into a new apartment, and signed up for Time Warner, UNTIL it took 3 weeks to try to get the equipment right, which it never did. At which point, a friend told me about Aereo, which was a blessing, and basically it is BRILLIANT! I am hoping it won’t fail, as it is better than ANY cable station I have ever had, and for only $8.!
Great article. Aereo absolutely makes no sense. Would of been great say 20-30 years ago but what market need does it fill today?
The reserve power of broadcast TV is greatly underestimated, and the Aereo business model is more flexible than most could imagine. I would not advise writing off either at this juncture.
You have probably never heard of a little trend going on called “cord cutting”? I watch ONLY broadcast TV (DVRed through my media center), streamed tv, Netflix (streamed and DVD. i will NEVER go back to cable or satellite. i would love this to have setup in my hometown, to see my hometown sports and would pay for it.
I never hear by Aereo.
And in about a year, you won’t hear about it ever again.
Sorry Jill cable is dying and is no where close to being the future. 90% of broadcast network revenue comes from advertising. As people “cut the cord” stations that are cable only are going to reach less and less people every year in turn advertising revenues will decline. None of the major networks will go cable only. The music industry wanted to fight MP3’s how did that go? Using your discman?
You may be right, Mike. But, then again, I may be right.
That’s a real unsatisfying response to a thoughtful post.
Do you really want to do this blog or interact with people online?
I’m afraid responses like this will see this website mothballed long before network tv starts shutting down their on air broadcast facilities, or your AM radio is just filled with static.
Look, john, I don’t mean to be flip about it, I just really believe the the powerful big media lobby and all the lawyers that are trying to quash Aereo will win the decision. It doesn’t mean it’s right. Broadcast will die on its own. It’s not profitable without retrans – and that was just a made up thing to try to stop the bleeding. I truly believe that everything is going to be accessible from one big pipe that pushes all this data into our homes. ABC, CBS will be no different than Netflix or any other web service that’s out there.
Your both right, The big networks will move to cable only and cable will be dead also in 5-10 years. Cable companies will not be completely gone, they will be just Internet Service Providers instead. Just think if they used the entire cable bandwidge for Internet than sharing it with video content as they do now.
Well Jill… Looking like your…. Wrong
Update 2014 – 100 million in VC just announced and the Supreme Court has agreed to listen to arguments.
It’s a short sighted view in a country with set in economic disparity, free to air will be available for a ling time, based simply on market inequity…. Not everyone will pay for cable, streaming and downloads.
Very short sighted article
I hear that now that television is here that radio is dead…
and yet 60 years later, the radio format is still alive and kicking. I believe that the networks will be around for quite some time.
That only because you cannot watch TV while driving. Radio is still around only because there isn’t a reliable Wifi type network to allow Internet based Radio content to your car everywhere.
Jill do you even watch TV? Have you seen what’s on cable? Are you one of those who’s willing to pay $$$ for cable because you can afford it and don’t care whether you watch stuff on it or not? All these are valid questions because if you did watch cable you’d know that there’s almost nothing good on it save for a few channel/shows. If I could receive over the air broadcasts I would have cut cable long time ago and gone with netflix and hulu.
Amen!
Everything on my Verizon Fios seems oriented to getting you to order the premium rung of service and number of channels.
If you get the lower number of channels, you don’t even save that much money, but you’re treated to a ton of shopping networks/religious programs/ and college sports channels. There’s also local municipal channels, which MIGHT be interesting, but in my location they’re all just labeled “Local Programming”, and it’s up to you to figure out which one is Trenton, Princeton, Lawrenceville, etc.
People are cutting these cables anyway, but the Local Broadcasts of abc/nbc/cbs/pbs are keeping a lot of people in the sheep pen.
I’ve played with some indoor antennas, and you’d be amazed at the 1080 HD over the air broadcasting available for free. (yeah…like it was for 50 years). Most of the channels have 2 or 3 programs, so channel 10 from Philadelphia is actually 10.1 , 10.2, and 10.3 running 3 different shows at the same time.
Yes, I think all the people who think Aereo is “crazy” and bound to fail are just people who happily pay their cable bill and don’t care, so of course they don’t recognize the value. Mine is bundled with Internet/TV/and land line phone, which is another thing I want to get rid of, and maybe just get a Magic Jack etc. I don’t want to use all cell phone all the time.
Missing the point that broadcasters will have to give up their antenna spectrum – a huge asset
Under the National Broadcasting laws information broadcasted is free- we have been overpaying by paying
Aereo to me is no different than a VHS, DVR and a TIVO. People should be able to record a program to watch at a later time. PERIOD.
Aereo only covers basic antenna channels so what is the problem.
Exactly.
What if 60% of the cable users went out and put antennas on their roofs, accomplishing the same thing, and really causing the same “damages” to the broadcasters. Who would they take to court??
Really, the big networks have now become dependent on the payouts from cable for their signal (the same one they broadcast over the air for free), so in a sense, they are now colluding with cable, by requiring you to log into their streaming internet broadcasts, but now needing the name of your cable provider, and “the antenna on my roof” is not going to cut it as a valid answer.
So really, US Citizens should be taking the broadcasters and cable companies to court for using their oligopoly to price fix/collude and set up unfair trade practices.
Broadcast TV isn’t going anywhere soon. You seem to think that there are no people out there in fly-over country? There are millions I will bet that do not have access to cable, and like me do not want sat TV. Local TV, local newspaper, local radio — did you see the word “local” somewhere?
Yes, you’re right.
I just bought a car a few months ago. You know what it still has, after all these years?
Crackly AM radio!
AM radio, packed with stations. Just one of the things that were supposed to be gone with the wind, like live theater, movie theaters, vinyl records, etc.
AM is still around because of Talk-Radio, don’t need stereo for that.