The End of Free TV? - Comments Page 1

If they end free broadcast TV, they're in big trouble. Most of the programming isn't worth the money.

I hope Aereo wins this. The broadcasters at one time were happy to just have people see their ads and predicted ruin back in '83 when the Sony decision came down allowing people to record their broadcasts with VCRs and skip commercials. Disaster never happened.

For a long time they were happy to have cable companies carry their broadcasts for free so that more consumers could view their commercials.

The networks have gotten greedy and complacent over time. Skipping commercials with Aereeo would not be easier than with a VCR.

I wonder how this would affect TIVO?

There hasn't been any free TV since cable came to town in the eighties.

Hi,although I live in the UK and I am not familiar with your tv network I am uneasy with a company piggy-backing on TV companie's work.It must cost a fortune to develope and produce a TV program,so if someone intercepts the revenue chain without any contribution to costs then I think it is morally wrong.

In order to move forward, I suspect that Aereo will have to change their business model to a consumer-initiated recording option or remove it altogether.

To compete against “pirates” like Aereo? How about the consumer having to compete with thieves like cable companies? The broadcasters cannot have it both ways nor should the cable companies. Who's bright idea was it to remove analog TV anyway? Perhaps the almighty dollar reared its ugly head those few years ago.

It seems to me that, in its current form, the service does violate copyright. With some small changes it could be made legitimate, though it would no longer be quite the same service they're trying to provide. At this point, however, regardless of how they construe it, all they are doing is recording free television broadcasts and then selling them to people.

If Aereo is recording an over the air broadcast,it seems to me that would also include the commercials. That would broaden the number of viewers who are seeing the commercials which is the whole point of free over the air broadcasts. I would say that half of the people who watch a recording do not fast forward through the commercials.

EDITOR'S NOTE: True, but this would allow people to skip over the commercials on free OTA TV, something they couldn't do before (at least not very easily).

Maybe I'm missing something but the only ones I see that would really be affected by this would be satellite and cable companies. How many antennas do you see on houses anymore to receive the "FREE TV". The networks would still benefit from the billions of advertizing they receive so they would still have the incentive to produce shows. I presently have Directv and am very happy with it other than the extremely high price If I were able to get the same network programming for a small $8.00 fee I'd drop the Directv and be happy with that and my Roku. Let's put it in perspective: Roku and Aereo for less than $20.00 a month or Satellite at a little over $100.00 a month for one step above the bare minimum. Doesn't take a MIT graduate to figure out who's going to win that battle.

I don't understand why over-the-air broadcasters are complaining. They are being paid by advertisers. If nobody is home at the time to watch a TV program that they freely broadcasted, then there's absolutely no chance that a potential customer can see the advertisements that they run during the program either. If the broadcasters were to allow that program (as well as all of it's accompanying ads) to be temporarily stored for viewing at a later time which is more convenient for the viewer, then there's actually more of a chance that the ads will also be seen.

I already do this at home with a DVD recorder. It's perfectly legal to do so as long as I'm not using the program for public viewing or selling copies. After I watch my favorite shows, I delete them from the disk. Instead of paying a monthly fee for the use of antennas that I don't own, I paid for a DVD recorder with a built-in tuner and a digital antenna. Instead of paying a monthly fee for cloud-based storage, I paid for a set of re-writable DVD's. It's not recorded in hi-definition, but I don't really care. The best part about this is that it is available in every city and every state, and I can record from cable as well. All I am doing, is delaying the time that I watch the show. If I really wanted to, I could rip the shows from the DVD and store them on my own server and view them on any device, anywhere in the world with internet access, and it would be perfectly legal to do so. (wouldn't it?)

The solution to the complaint of the broadcasters should be that the data be encrypted in the cloud with the viewer having the only access with their own username/password and as the program is viewed, it should be deleted incrementally from the cloud database. Perhaps as the person is watching, the program can be paused and tracked back a little bit, (let's say a maximum amount of 5 minutes, for instance) just in case you were watching Walking Dead when Fido pee'd on the rug and your wife wouldn't clean it up causing you to miss Daryl's confession that he was in prison for being a pedophile, or you wanted to show another family member that new Geico commercial. This would eliminate the possibility of any program being copied directly from the cloud server by a third party. Sort of a delay-decrypt-watch-and-delete idea.

Mike (above) was right: the big losers are the Cable & Satellite companies. But there are others. For too long well connected businesses like sport franchises have reached deep into our pockets to pay themselves hundreds of millions. If they need more money for their "friends" they merely raise my monthly cable fees.

A product like this cuts off the automatic revenue stream and would force cable companies to become more respectful of their customers and stop the run away price increases.

Advertisers would be more than happy to reach more local customers and national corporations could better tailor their ads geographically.

I am too little to influence any change. All I can do is observe. I am one of those few who don't have cable or such. Part of my entertainment is watching cable people riding up in their bucket, to check, that the cable hook up left by prior people at my address, is not in use. Sometimes they arrive in the dead of night. Pure fun. Also pure illustration how greed, paranoia and lack of common sense are killing entertainment business. Long ago we had creators create and make great money of it. Then small people picked up the ball and ran with it. They repeated songs and jokes from small stages (who's on first?) popularizing them, so everyone could say them from memory. The creators then moved on to create some more, to finance their rich lifestyles. Now the creators want everyone to pay for everything and then some. Big money and obligation to MAKE more is no longer enough. Now the money has to be obscene and has to flow constantly. CREATING more is optional. The rules that were supposed to protect the creative juices are slowly draining them. Unfortunately it truly has to be much worse before it gets better. In the meantime I'll do a lot of reading free classics on my Kindle. What will do the kids whose spelling teachers aren't to correct in red, in order to protect their fragile self-esteem, I don't have a clue. One thing for sure, they won't create "who's on first?". Nor memorize it.

I agree with Brian S. when he said "I don't understand why over-the-air broadcasters are complaining."

"They are being paid by advertisers. If nobody is home at the time to watch a TV program that they freely broadcasted, then there's absolutely no chance that a potential customer can see the advertisements that they run during the program either."

"If the broadcasters were to allow that program (as well as all of it's accompanying ads) to be temporarily stored for viewing at a later time which is more convenient for the viewer, then there's actually more of a chance that the ads will also be seen."

The only reason there is any "free TV" is that it is being broadcast over publicly owned airwaves. The producers are supposed to devote some of their content to the public good. Yet we are being bombarded with ads so that they can make money for themselves and their advertisers. I believe AEREO has it right. The airwaves are publicy owned and therefore they have a right to intercept the signal. If the networks pull that signal, there will be plenty of takers for the open frequencies. The problem will no longer be a problem!

Recording Over-The-Air programming (TV or radio, for personal, non-commercial use, has long ago been declared a "non-infringing", by the courts. People do it all the time, in various ways (tape, DVD, TiVo, computers). If I record something, then put it "in the cloud" for safekeeping (DropBox, Carbonite, etc.) I am still perfectly legal. What makes Aereo different?
The issue is the interpretation of their business model: 1) Are they selling a service that makes it easier for me to exercise my right to record OTA programming? or 2) Are they "re-broadcasting" (albeit time-delayed and on-demand) OTA programming for commercial use?
The first interpretation would be legal. The second is illegal. It is as simple as that.
The fact that I do not do anything to initiate a recording, coupled with the fact that the recording is not solely my property, for my personal use, makes me believe the business model should be interpreted as the second (above). This makes it illegal and Aereo should be stopped.

This is part of the reason why I don't, and haven't for the past 8 years, pay for cable TV. I get all of the local channels in crisp HD for free with an OTA antenna and record them on my TiVo.

Let's start back at the beginning..."network" (free) broadcasting was encouraged by the U.S. government, who GAVE AWAY access to the original bandwidth for TV. In return, the national and local broadcasters were supposed to provide a certain amount of "public service" time. This was all part of the massive civil defense (duck and cover) initiative in the 1950's. So, the original US broadcasters (NBC, ABC, and CBS) received a massively valuable resource for nothing. They generated revenue by producing or buying programs to air and selling commercials. And the "public service" part was always a joke.

Cable TV's original premise was "why endure commercials?" They marketed alternative programming, but the main selling point was "you pay for the content and don't have to see commercials." They transmitted via cable, not airwaves, hence no government dependency but also no free ride. The "no commercial" part is long gone...and John Q. Public keeps paying higher and higher prices for diminishing quality and MORE and MORE commercials. The customers complain, but they don't unsubscribe.

Digital conversion was driven in part by the desire to split up the original network bandwidths into smaller "free" chunks, with the remainder being sold for a large amount of money, and being used for cell phones, etc. Have you noticed how awful your reception is if you actually rely on a "free" antenna?

So, the broadcasters and cable companies have all reaped a lot of money over the years. They face a lot of new challenges in keeping revenue flowing, so of course they will fight vigorously to maintain control of their content. However, I believe Aereo's model is copyright infringement, since the company is the one actually creating the copies (infringing). If they provided a process to allow the consumer to select what to copy and store (with each consumer's copy stored separately), then the infringement would not exist. But that probably wouldn't work as a business model, given the cost of building and maintaining the necessary amount of storage.

The TV station owners have it made. Everyone blames the cable company for the high prices. Yet it is the big media companies forcing cable/satellite providers to buy their bundled services for more and more channels of garbage TV. ESPN forces cable/satellite providers to put their channels on the expanded basic tier which adds roughly $15 per month to each customer’s bill, whether they watch sports or not, forcing all customers to pay a premium subsidy. And lately, the over-the-air broadcasters have jumped on the band wagon and are forcing the cable/satellite providers to pay for programming that their customers could receive over-the-air for free. Gee, think about it, that’s how cable started. It was a way to help communities receive a better, more reliable signal from their local broadcasters. Now these same broadcasters want to be paid twice, just like the cable channels, once by airing their services, twice with 15 minutes of commercial per hour, and heck, let’s add a third - with all night infomercials. And, they’re doing the complaining?

Aereo is doing basically a service that the television networks have failed to provide, even though it’s mandated by the FCC - the ability to receive a local TV signal over-the -air. Local over-the-air broadcast service is underpowered where I live [MQT, MI]. I should be able to receive five channels, yet the only channel that I receive is PBS. It’s a shame, because when it’s good, the over-the-air digital TV signal has a great HD picture, much better than analog ever was. But the broadcasters in my area don’t even try to make their signal available. Our local NBC/FOX station broadcast signal is 40+ miles away from the population of Marquette. ABC is 25 miles west, while the CBS tower is 40 miles south, all technologically limiting due to the mountainous terrain in between. I would love to have Aereo service in our area. To me I see Aereo as just like an original 1970’s version of cable with a modern technological twist, so I am hoping the Supreme Court rules in Aereo’s favor.

It seems to me that Aereo has found a loophole but I'm not a lawyer. I think overall that the broadcast stations should be reimbursed for providing the content, but I wouldn't care if their incomes were reduced to cut down on the ridiculous amounts of money Hollywood is making. It's crazy that actors should be getting between 1 and 2 million PER episode of a half hour comedy and that's not even talking about the salaries for the network executives that foist the mostly crap programming on us.