If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em… and if your cohorts can’t crush ’em in court, crush ’em in the market. Aereo is a streaming television service that has made a lot of waves recently. The pay service allows subscribers in certain regions to stream a handful of channels to PCs, smartphones and tablets for $8 per month. And according to broadcasters, Aereo is stealing their content. Aereo is being sued by several broadcasters including CBS, which alleges that the company is stealing its content and transmitting it over the Internet to subscribers. Aereo has not yet been shut down by these suits, however, and now major service providers including DirecTV and Time Warner Cable are planning to launch similar services of their own in the event Aereo prevails in court, Bloomberg reports.
The move would allow companies like Time Warner Cable and DirecTV to avoid paying billions in retransmission fees, and broadcasters will undoubtedly do everything in their power to prevent it from happening. In fact, News Corp’s COO has already said that the company is considering taking its Fox channel off of public airwaves and making it a pay channel in the event Aereo wins its court battles.
