Cord Cutting – Ian Isanberg

FCC just might let Aereo be a cable company after all (if they don’t go out of business first).

As I have previously written, I was an Aereo subscriber until a number of court rulings led it to shut down, at least temporarily. However, the FCC is considering rule changes to allow Aereo, and other online providers of broadcast channels to legally exist. The saga known as Aereo currently stands as follows:

1. Aereo was determined to be breaking the law by transmitting broadcast TV signals to paying customers without permission of those broadcasters. The Supreme Court ruled that Aereo was acting like a cable company, providing TV channels to subscribers for a fee.

2. A number of lower courts ruled that Aereo could not legally be a cable company, because they didn’t provide actual cable wire or satellite in customers homes.

The rules and laws that currently answer the question “What is a cable company?” are clearly in the favor of the status quo cable/satellite/telco companies that don’t want to lose their legacy subsciption businesses.

The success of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. has shown there is a market for “TV” available online. With Dish Network negotiating to launch a digital “cable” service (and enduring negotiation issues with Turner over some rights), it may become a reality soon.

With Aereo laying off employees, including their entire Boston-based staff, they may not neccesarily still exist by the time they become legal, but digital multichannel video services may soon, legally become a reality.

This is where cord cutters will (probably) watch the Stephen Colbert Late Show (not Hulu).

Stephen Colbert on the Late Show with David Letterman

One of the biggest questions about Stephen Colbert’s move to CBS has likely been answered, with the network’s announcement of a new online service.

“Will the Late Show, hosted by Stephen Colbert, be on Hulu on another digital service for set top boxes like Hulu, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, etc.?”

The answer is likely not Hulu, but probably the new CBS All Access. This $5.99/month package will feature new and past episodes of current and former CBS programming. It will also include live streams of it’s local Owned and Operated CBS stations in markets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other big cities. The one thing that it won’t have at launch will be live NFL games. While it is launching on PCs and mobile, set top box support will follow.

What the press release didn’t mention was Colbert. My guess, is since CBS will own the show (compared to Letterman, who’s Worldwide Pants company owned his show and the Late Late Show), and will not have licensing problems to put Colbert on its online pay service.

Colbert is probably going to be a big selling point for this new service, as his current show, “The Colbert Report”, is on Hulu Plus, along with virtually all late night talk shows that are not on CBS. I have long argued that there would be a backlash if the Colbert Late Show is not widely available online at launch. This is not merely being available on the CBS website, but also on mobile devices and set top boxes like Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire.

Microsoft kills their original TV project, as part of their layoffs.

As part of Microsoft’s mass layoffs, they are abandoning their plan to produce TV-esque video content exclusively for XBox. Some of the announced or rumored shows included a Halo TV series (with Steven Spielberg as an Executive Producer) and a reboot of Heroes (which is ultimately going to air on NBC sometime in 2015). In 2010, there were even reports of Microsoft making a bid to Conan O’Brien to host a late night talk show on XBox, before he ultimately went to TBS.

My opinion is that this was a great move by Microsoft to kill this plan. The ownership of XBoxes (the new XBox One and the previous generation XBox 360) is too small an audience for exclusive content.

Imagine if, say, Orange is the New Black played exclusively on XBox. It would not be the buzzworthy hit that it is today. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon instant video are available on a number of devices. The platform is the software and not the hardware.

This is not to say that a show can’t launch on XBox (or Playstation). Microsoft could take a page from DirecTV’s playbook, and have an exclusive window to a show for a while, before it airing elsewhere. DirecTV did this with the final seasons of Friday Night Lights and Damages. Damages, which originally was on FX, was actually a DirecTV exclusive in its final years, before going to DVD and Netflix.

Slingbox is legal but Aereo isn’t?

Aereo doesn't work anymore... — Aereo doesn’t work anymore…

The Supreme Court ruled that Aereo is illegal, and violated copyright laws. The winning argument was that Aereo was rebroadcasting broadcast TV over the Internet without the permission of those stations.

However, since Slingbox, which has been around for a decade is legal, and Aereo is not, I am confused.

Slingbox is a device that plugs into a cable box (and or TV antenna) and broadband router, and lets people watch that broadcast content over the Internet.

Theoretically, one could rent an apartment or hotel, pay for Internet access and a TV antenna, plug it into a router, and never actually live there, yet have live broadcast TV over the Internet. Essentially, that’s how Aereo was run.

However, since such a service was designed to serve many customers, the Supreme Court classified Aereo in the same level as a cable provider, and would have to pay cable companies fees that they successfully negotiate with each other (not a sure thing), if they want to continue to exist.

So, Aereo-like services are now only legal (for now), if they are private. I guess I need a device like Simple TV if I want to stream broadcast TV to my Roku and mobile devices…