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Fox, Univision May Go Subscription To Stop Aereo

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-bluffing dept.

GTRacer writes "In response to Aereo's recent win allowing per-user over-the-air antenna feeds to remote devices, Fox COO Chase Carey said, 'We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content. This is not an ideal path we look to pursue [...],' that path being a switch to a subscription model. Spanish-language stalwart Univison may join Fox, per CEO Haim Saban. Aereo replied, in part, 'When broadcasters asked Congress for a free license to digitally broadcast on the public's airwaves, they did so with the promise that they would broadcast in the public interest and convenience, and that they would remain free-to-air. Having a television antenna is every American's right.' A switch to a pay-TV subscription model would stymie Aereo but could hurt affiliate stations."

16 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Re:While you are at it by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On cable that would be fine, but not over the air channels. If they try that, they should indeed lose their broadcast license.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. What am I missing? by therealkevinkretz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they already provide a free over-the-air signal, in order to be available to the most viewers (and therefore to the most advertising targets), isn't another company extending that viewer base at no expense to Fox, Univision, CBS, NBC, ABC a *benefit* to them?

    1. Re:What am I missing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's a benefit to the affiliate stations, however Fox wants your to watch your LA affiliate when in LA, not the NY affiliate. Especially for their "talent" shows.

    2. Re:What am I missing? by SirDrinksAlot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yea I have no idea what they're complaining about. Instead of fighting Aereo maybe they could work with them instead? When you're broadcasting you have no idea who's watching what and what kind of exposure paying advertisers are getting. Aereo likely knows what channel you're watching and at what time, this seems like ENORMOUSLY valuable information to a broadcaster. If everybody setup a TV tuner in their apartment and streamed it to their device of choice then the broadcaster has no clue what kind of market penetration they're getting.

      It's like cutting off your nose to spite the face.

    3. Re:What am I missing? by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Didn't you read "We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content."? Translation: "Someone else is getting some profit off of our stuff. That means we aren't extracting all the value out of it we can. That can't be tolerated." Witness Rupert Murdoch and his battles with google. Losing two dollars to claim a dollar in someone else's pocket seems to be an all-too-common approach to the internet. It will take a while before people realize it's counterproductive to do shit like this. When they see profits going up, they'll attribute it to that, without realizing that it's due to other factors. When their profits go down, they'll use that to further justify this.

    4. Re:What am I missing? by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Aereo is not time shifting or place shifting. They are providing the 'signal' only to people nominally in the broadcast area who simply have bad reception. The signal is provided live.

      The people using Aereo would otherwise have to subscribe to cable or just not watch TV at all.

      They're already getting a fair piece of their pie. Aereo baked a brand new pie and Fox wants to steal it off of the window sill.

  3. Cancel it! by simonbp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fox is so good at canceling good shows that they thought they'd cancel themselves!

  4. And by "May"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And, of course, by "may go subscription" you really mean "are spouting entirely hollow threats because everyone knows they're not going to throw away their broadcast money just to spite one company."

  5. Aren't OTA TV stations compensated by ads? by NevarMore · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content. " - Don't you sell advertisements to get paid? I never recall getting a bill for OTA TV .

  6. Re:While you are at it by Picass0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The clock is ticking for local over the air affiliates anyway. In a few years expect all the big players like Viacom, NBCUniversal, Fox, Disney, etc... to focus on becoming "apps" with content stores or subscriber libraries. There are constant rumors of HBO GO waiving the cable subscriber requirement and becoming a Netflix or Hulu. Premium channels are not going to standby much longer and watch Amazon Prime and other services steal "their audience". They will get in the game and it will by the end of the status quo for cable tv.

    Smaller local news affiliates will become an afterthought. They will need to figure out how to survive as the business model continues to shift to streaming.

  7. Re:While you are at it by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

    Life-Line by Robert A. Heinlein, 1939

    /If they want to take their ball and go home, I would encourage them to do so.
    //NBC/CBS/ABC as well. Someone will fill your shoes, if for no other reason than the lucrative sports broadcast.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  8. Inevitable step by Average · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This was an inevitable step once we went down the path of allowing OTA broadcasters to start demanding payments for retransmission on cable (originally "Community Antenna TV"). That was a stupid step to begin with... you're sending an unencrypted signal into my house... why do you care how I get it or if I let a middleman bring it to me? It is also inevitable once the broadcasters started getting bought by pay-TV companies (Disney, Comcast, etc).

    For FOX, though, I don't think their #1 TV property (a little thing called the NFL) is going to be real happy at all with them becoming 'yet another cable station'.

  9. Fox Corporate Asshole by SpaceManFlip · · Score: 5, Insightful
    +1 for appropriate Heinlein wisdom

    This Fox COO is making dumb threats. As one with an inside-view of how broadcast TV is made available to viewers, I can tell you that this action if taken will result in no good for Fox.

    Basically, there is in many areas at most a 15-20% marketshare for OTA broadcast TV, and the rest get their TV from cable or satellite. For Fox to be able to charge the "freeloaders" viewing by broadcast, they would have to implement some kind of scrambling of the broadcast signal.
    Scrambling the signal would require hardware on both ends: 1 scrambler at the broadcast transmitter, and 1 descrambler at each viewer's house (many).

    How many currently free viewers do you reckon are going to start paying Fox for hardware/subscription to view their 1 broadcast channel that they used to get for free? My bet is nearly none. So their 15-20% share would drop to ~ 2-5% costing them 10+% of their viewers. Look at that number, then think of the nation-wide ad revenue for the corporation it could represent, and plop that figure onto the table of the shareholders' meeting....

  10. Re:While you are at it by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why should less popular channels by subsidized? Why should anything ever be subsidized (as far as entertainment)?

    Because mass-market pablum will be the only thing produced?

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  11. Re:So what is this mythical new business model? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know who that "everything must be free" crowd are. Personally, I would gladly pay for quality content if that content is made available to me in a convenient way. This boils down to two things: 1) I must be able to pay for it once and stream it when I want it (i.e. no subscription), and 2) it must not be bundled with some other crap. I'm fine with time-limited rentals, DRM etc. Just make it all easy and convenient and get rid of all the bullshit.

    Oh, and forget the word "cable". And the general idea that I need to subscribe to a load of crap to get a few things that I actually care about. I want to pay only for what I actually want, and no more than that.

  12. Re:While you are at it by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't even think its the subscription model...

    Sure, television always had a lot of crap.. but it wasn't always so loaded up with cheap crap aka "reality television."

    How many channels have names that lie about their content now? The learning channel? National geographic channel? The history channel? ....

    Its cheap to pay 4 or 5 guys with cameras to follow around a bunch of douche bags.. its crap so they only get 10% of the viewers that they used to, but it only costs them 1% of what their old programming had cost to produce, and sometimes the cast of douche bags they are following are so extraordinarily douchy that they have a "hit" and get twice as many viewers as their old programming did...

    I'm not sure that I wouldn't make the same decisions as they are if I was in their place.. profits are up all the way down the death spiral...

    --
    "His name was James Damore."