Aereo logo

A new TV service, Aereo, formally launched this week. Aereo is the old Bamboom (previously discussed here) with a new name and deeper pockets. And those pockets are needed to defend against the inevitable lawsuits from broadcasters.

Aereo’s plan is to install a tiny over-the-air (OTA) TV antenna for each of its subscribers, then stream the programming from that antenna to only that subscriber over the internet. They’ll only stream within the subscriber’s market, so a New York viewer can’t buy anything but New York channels. But Aereo will be streaming those channels without anyone’s permission and without paying any retransmission fees. TV stations hate it when you do that.

Aereo’s paradigm is different from those of my beloved ivi.tv and FilmOn, which both lost all of their major OTA channels when injunctions went against them. I think it’s got a chance in court. But I’m not so sure how many viewers will want to pay $12/month for channels they can get for free OTA.

While the broadcasters’ case against Aereo is pending, both sides are also presenting their positions in public. The article that got to me today is in Multichannel News, in which a New York Latino community activist says that major networks won’t give as much support to Spanish-speaking communities if they don’t get retransmission money.

That doesn’t make sense to me. Any local viewer with a decent OTA antenna can watch these channels for free right now. That’s what Aereo says it’ll do: stream in-market from a rented OTA antenna. Aereo might make it easier to watch some weaker signals, which include a higher percentage of Spanish-language channels.

Broadcasters are looking for the younger, device-savvy, cord-cutting audience. Until OTA technology reaches devices (and it’s coming), this is a way to ensure that this new audience stays with OTA broadcasting. Fighting Aereo to prop up a bit of immediate cable/sat retrans cash is short-sighted.

Unless you consider that the parent companies of the big OTA networks are heavily invested in cable channels. The emerging OTT and OTA technologies are starting to pull customers away from those lucrative ventures. Could that be the real reason OTA networks don’t emphasize OTA reception? It sure would be a good reason to try to kill off Aereo.

ivi.tv coffee cup

One year ago, ivi.tv launched its disruptive, revolutionary service of providing distant over-the-air signals via the internet. For months, it satisfied my craving to time-shift programs, to watch OTA sub-channels that haven’t made it to my market, and to generally see what other people get to watch. Then the big-money networks managed to get a preliminary injunction to shut down that OTA redistribution pending the resolution of their lawsuit against ivi.

Now CEO Todd Weaver is raising money to keep ivi’s court fight going. You can go to ivi’s fund-raiser site and chip in a few dollars or more. In return, you’ll get recognition, some free service if ivi.tv starts operating again, or maybe even a cool coffee mug like this one. (I bought it separately from CafePress several months ago. Now I can’t find it there, but I did find another page with T-shirts, tote bags, and a different ivi mug for sale.)

In general, you might want to bookmark ivi’s blog, where Weaver writes about ivi developments and mentions in the press. For example, it has links to August articles in Multichannel News and Forbes. (I tweeted both of those links, but didn’t mention them before in this blog.)

As I type, the ivi.tv platform is still operating, but shows only two free channels and two pay channels with limited audiences. They never listen to me, but I keep saying that ivi would be better off if they carried as many channels as they could. If you look at other over-the-top services, you’ll see dozens of other networks that apparently don’t mind being carried this way. If ivi lumped together 20-30 of the best channels, such as NASA HD, and charged maybe $2/month, they’d get some cash flow and we’d have another way to watch. And if ivi added dark placeholders for the OTA channels it could carry again with a little court or government help, that would remind us viewers that we could help the good old days return.

Sometimes it feels like everything we know about TV and music is changing. Well, it’s always been that way, just slower sometimes.

NYU researcher Finn Brunton says that the history of successful media formats “is not a history of teleological progress that ends up where we are, but a constant Cambrian explosion of different and diverse forms, most of which don’t make it.” And Joab Jackson of the IDG News service wrote a great article at NetworkWorld about Brunton’s presentation. So go read it! Afterwards, you’ll be comforted that, whatever bad choices you make, they couldn’t be worse than the BBC’s Domesday Book project.

TV Freedom picture from BamBoomHoo boy! Still another company is trying to solve the impenetrable problem of streaming live over-the-air TV to computers and mobile devices, legally.

The latest contender is Bamboom, which has worked out yet another permutation. It uses really tiny over-the-air antennas, “hundreds of thousands of them in a small space in a secure location” in a given city. Each subscriber gets an exclusive connection to one of those antennas to watch TV through the internet.

Two factors in favor of Bamboom’s survival: Only viewers in the same TV market will be allowed to watch, and it has a war chest of $4.5 million from investors. It will need that war chest because of the one huge factor that weighs against Bamboom and anyone else who tries to find a way around negotiating with OTA broadcasters – the huge corporations which own the networks and TV stations will sue or legislate it out of existence.

I haven’t checked to see whether someone from New York will be able to watch his local stations while visiting somewhere else, because it’s just a matter of time before someone gets a restraining order to shut down Bamboom. Considering FilmOn‘s history, that could be a month or less.

You see, there’s already a way to do all this. The big cable and pay-TV satellite companies are rolling out internet streaming of live TV, but only for their customers. So if you want to watch local TV on your computer, you just pay one of these providers, who turn around and pay retransmission fees to the local broadcaster. With all that money at stake, our corporate oligarchy will slap down anyone who tries to get around the system.

But just maybe, there might be one way out. With the support of the consumer electronics industry, the FCC is squeezing local TV broadcasters to free more bandwidth to be used for mobile internet access. The broadcasters are fighting back, but with the mobile communications companies against them, the outcome is completely uncertain.

Here’s my proposal for a deal between the internet/consumer electronics folks and the TV broadcasters. Local TV stations keep their spectrum, but in exchange, broadcasters agree to a standard royalty that any company could pay to stream OTA channels over the internet. Then the broadcasters could keep milking their cash cows, and viewers could choose from Bamboom, FilmOn, ivi.tv, or any other internet delivery system. How does that sound?

* You gotta love the folks at FilmOn. Even though it pretty much failed in its original idea to stream OTA channels, FilmOn has patched together a decent lineup of oddball channels for a decent price. But back when the networks sued to block FilmOn from streaming their content, founder Alki David and some friends sued CNET, a subsidiary of CBS, for facilitating “massive copyright infringement”. Because CNET had published stories about how peer-to-peer file sharing worked. Anyway, the judge in that case pressed David et al to detail exactly what copyrights were infringed. This week, the answer came: one movie and five songs.

* A couple of weeks ago, my favorite streaming service, ivi.tv, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC for all papers relating to ivi.tv and Commissioner Meredith Baker, who is leaving the FCC to join Comcast, whose merger with NBC she voted for in January. Meanwhile, ivi’s lineup has shrunk to two free channels as it fights to for the legal right to stream the marvelous banquet of OTA channels it used to provide. I’d really love to see ivi pick up some more freely available channels (NASA, Classic Arts Showcase, etc.), but what do you want for nothing?