| reply to elray
Re: Bring on the Streisand Effect What Aereo needs to do is to start cutting deals with any programmers they can, be it niche cable/sat channels that can't get good carriage agreements from the big cable companies, foreign channels that want to enter the market, independent producers, and even smaller OTA TV stations that want carriage into a market. Tell these guys that, if they'll agree to waive carriage fees and allow Aereo to insert ads in any local ad slots the channels provide, Aereo will agree to make their service available for free to consumers for a specified amount of time, say maybe five years. Then either distribute via Roku or, if that doesn't work out, build their own similar streaming box.
Yes, caps will be an issue for heavy viewers, but that's something that the cable companies and telcos are going to have to defend someday, either in court or in the court of public opinion, and I suspect it's an issue they'd rather not have to air out in public. But, at any rate, if Aereo goes this route, and if it can build an even decent selection of programming, it will serve to really pull away the budget-conscious TV households.
At that point, the big programmers may have wished they'd left them along or gotten on the bandwagon. |
