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Aereo Shutting Down Boston Office
An anonymous reader writes with news that Aereo is shutting down its Boston office and laying off some NYC staff. "Aereo's bad year just got worse. The company said on Thursday that it will shut down its Boston office and lay off 43 employees, citing yet another adverse court ruling and its trouble obtaining additional investment. According to Virginia Lam, a VP at Aereo, the company is not shutting down entirely: 'In an effort to reduce costs, we made the difficult decision to lay off some of our staff in Boston and New York. We are continuing to conserve resources while we chart our path forward. We are grateful to our employees for their loyalty, hard work and dedication. This was a difficult, but necessary step in order to preserve the company. We decline to comment further,' Lam wrote in an email."
Aereo was an attempt to make local TV be receivable on cell phones and computers, but the copyright license wasn't negotiated properly. Why can't the iPhone have a ATSC chip inside it?
Crap, I loved the old Aereo chairs.
... I'm pretty sure "We are continuing to conserve resources while we chart our path forward" is code for "We executives are hiding money for ourselves until the inevitable shutdown." Unfair as the ruling is, I'm pretty sure they're hosed.
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The only Aero I know is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Vodochody Aero
Aereo has offered to pay the FTA networks the same amount of money as they get paid by Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, Dish Network, DirecTV and all the others and broadcast the same content (ads included) to the same geographic area. Why aren't the FTA networks interested?
The supreme court said they were not able to use antennas because they basically functioned exactly like a cable network.
Then they tried to pay for their content like the cable networks pay, and the networks wouldn't let them.
Poor Aereo. The courts weren't brave enough to say "You're small potatoes, and we only rule in favor of big companies. Come back when you're big."
I am surprised Aereo lasted as long as they did. They tried to be something that most knowingly knew was illegal. Re broadcasting a station over the internet is still re broadcasting and without permission its still illegal no matter the means that it is done. Personally, I would think a broadcast station would love to be able to live stream to more people and yet, the value and profit to a company like Aereo to sign re broadcast deals would probably mean that its customers would pay more and in the end the customer would not see the value. I totally agree that streaming will have to get more efficient or the internet will eventually become bogged down with data over load from streaming HD content.
This is the way of things. I am sure the execs will not be hurting. The employees? Go find another job, you,
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Because the OTA network want to bundle their cable channels in the packages. There's no standalone rate for just the broadcast channels, you have to carry all the channels such as NBC wanting to also package in CNBC, MSNBC, NBCSN, etc.