CBS chief says network could go all-Internet if Aereo wins | Hacker News Reader

CBS chief says network could go all-Internet if Aereo wins

news.cnet.com

29 pointsdanso44 comments

The headline is very misleading. CBS is threatening to stop broadcasting over the airwaves and become cable-only, like USA, TNT, TBS, etc. That's a far cry from "internet-only".

Which is too bad, because my first reaction to the headline was "great, let's get beyond the broadcast/cable model of television". But moving CBS to cable will only strengthen the status quo.

Moonves comes across as a whiny, powerless loser in the quotes in this article. Any time you hear powerful people in a position of strength throwing a tantrum over interference with their revenue streams by small-time players with a tiny audience, you can bet it'll be in your best interest to favor the little guy.

They won't - their most valuable assets are their spectrum, and broadcasting free content on them is a requirement for owning them. They're looking to reap billions when they "sell" the spectrum back to the FCC in the upcoming wireless incentive auction. (I use "sell" in quotes since they never really bought them and in theory, the airwaves are owned by the government).

They do not own most of those assets directly, only a small fraction of their local affiliates are actually owned by CBS. Additionally, they are not mandated to broadcast their main money-making content on that spectrum either -- they could provide 24x7 wheel of fortune re-runs and a simple re-broadcast of the local morning and evening news would probably be sufficient for them to maintain the license.

He said "we could go OTT with CBS." Over-the-Top Content (OTT) refers to delivery of video, audio and other media over the Internet without a multiple system operator being involved in the control or distribution of the content.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_content

Thanks for the clarification. I thought he was making a reference to World War I, and the idea of being the first to go over the top meant they would be mowed down by machine guns.

Can we send Comcast first? ;-)

Once upon a time, the United Nations threatened to leave New York unless the city allowed diplomats to violate parking regulations with impunity. Giuliani replied, "Great! Do you know how much that land is worth?"

Similarly, I say to CBS: Fantastic! Imagine all the wonderful things people will invent to make use of your spectrum.

I have no idea why we haven't already kicked broadcasters off the spectrum and farmed it out for mobile data. Its far more valuable for 2-way communications vs Judge Judy.

It's far more valuable to you for 2-way communications vs. Judge Judy.

There are a lot of really quite vocal, really quite elderly people who love, support and value CBS and the like. The pitch of enhanced communication, in whatever form, is much less appealing than Wheel of Fortune.

The balance comes down to how the spectrum is serving the public interest.

In the eyes of the FCC, free-to-air broadcast television serves a greater public benefit at the moment than does private subscription datacasting on that spectrum.

> In the eyes of the FCC, free-to-air broadcast television serves a greater public benefit at the moment than does private subscription datacasting on that spectrum.

You're right, but it still makes me sad.

My startup is majority-owned by a broadcaster in a major market :) I'm very familiar with audience demographics.

Sometimes, decisions can't be democratically decided (moving spectrum from broadcasters to 2-way comms), as opinions ("I want my stories") shouldn't hold the same weight as facts (spectrum is far too valuable to waste on broadcast).

"Valuable" is an opinion, not a fact.

Valuable is still subjective, and is essentially an opinion. Valuable to who? Valuable in what way? Free, over-the-air television is still wildly valuable for many people in rural areas, much more valuable than a paid communications service.

"Sometimes, decisions can't be democratically. . ." I would love to hear your thoughts about the CIA story on the front page right now ;).

> "Sometimes, decisions can't be democratically. . ." I would love to hear your thoughts about the CIA story on the front page right now ;).

My comment was less about government and more that you can't design/make decisions by committee.

Yes, and Congress is a committee. That's the point of having a parliament.

There's been a lot of work in trying to use the unused television spectrum for data broadcasting. Trials have happened before (with controversial results[1]) but they're still going[2]:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spaces_(radio)#Preliminar...

[2] http://www.whitespacealliance.org/

> Once upon a time, the United Nations threatened to leave New York unless the city allowed diplomats to violate parking regulations with impunity. Giuliani replied, "Great! Do you know how much that land is worth?"

Perhaps not your best example. Giuliani lost that battle.

The NYT called it a reluctant truce:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/19/nyregion/grumbling-giulian...

Anyway, he may have lost, but it wasn't because anyone actually believed the UN's threat.

> "If the government wants to give them permission to steal our signal, then we will come up with some other way to get them our content and so get paid for it,"

I can't believe he thinks that capturing a signal they are freely broadcasting over the air is stealing. That's insane. There's definitely a better way their argument against Aereo could have been made.

Yeah, they'd be facing a MAJOR class-action lawsuit from their affiliates (many of whom are part of not-so-small conglomerates) if they actually attempted anything like this. I have serious doubts they even have the power to do this, as much as they want us to believe they do.

Good point. CBS owns/operates only 16 stations and affiliates with 200 others.

I hope they do this, and good riddance if they do. The thing we need more of is old-content companies going out of business. Hopefully they take their outdated models and rent-seeking, extortionary copyright models with them.

I came here to say exactly this. The TV broadcast spectrum has some really desirable FCC licenses. Imagine if white spaces became the de facto standard simply because the old-guard broadcast TV companies went cable-TV only ...

The same cable TV that is losing cable-cutters in the US [1] and elsewhere.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000087239639044379260...

A decade ago CBS said they'd refuse to support HD unless the broadcast flag was mandated. They're bluffing again, poorly.

CBS and other broadcasters are suing Aereo over its service using antenna and remote DVR technology to let subscribers watch live, local over-the-air television broadcasts, without making any payments to the creators of the programming.

...

CBS is the parent company of CNET.

You can tell.

Isn't their whole business model built around free tv stuffed with ads? By very design their consumers do not make any paymnets to the creators of the programming.

No, their business model is a combination of free TV stuffed with ads and gouging cable companies for the rights to rebroadcast their shows on cable TV. If Aereo wins in court, the cable companies will immediately clone Aereo to get around those rebroadcast fees.

I will never understand why the networks are whining so hard about Aereo. Their content is already FTA and the customers still see advertisements. If anything, this helps the network since it increases ad penetration!

Because, as it's been stated before, if Aereo sets a precedent in court that they do not have to pay retransmission fees the cable/dish companies will stop paying the networks in a heartbeat.

The networks could care less about Aereo the business but they care DEEPLY about this court ruling.

This is a great point and sums up why this is on the way to the supreme court at all.

I think this whole Aereo case is crap. Those signals are out there in the air and ready to be grabbed by anyone. Aereo has taken a very interesting approach to the system but I don't see how that is any different than every subscriber having their own antenna on their roof connected to their own DVR. This is just a co-located antennas much like co-located servers.

Why would CBS care about how people access their junk? They get paid by advertisers who care about eyeballs. More eyeballs, more money for CBS. Unless I'm mistaken and the cable bundler services of Time Warner / Comcast pay big bucks to have CBS in their packages.

They do pay pretty big bucks; both CBS and the local affiliate groups tend to have pretty long drawn-out conflicts over those fees. Yet their signal is still broadcast for free.

Yeah, I don't get it either. :/

> Unless I'm mistaken and the cable bundler services of Time Warner / Comcast pay big bucks to have CBS in their packages

Yep, in the form of "retransmission fees" paid by the cable companies. CBS currently makes about 250M dollars a year from these fees, and they project that'll be up to 2B by 2020: http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/cbs-chief-raises-retransmiss...

Of course that projection may be inflated for their own selfish reasons.

wow, talk about easy money.

This is just ill-informed big talk. They could never go Internet only and get both the advertising revenue they currently do, and the government breaks they currently do.

They would be giving away drastically more than Aereo costs them, and they know that. Mark my words, even if Aereo becomes wildly popular, this will never happen.

Is there some Aereo equivalent that I can have at home? Would love a simple solution to DVR stuff by way of antenna.

It depends on your location, but many places in the US have the big 4 + PBS available over the air. You just need an antenna capable of picking up the signal, a tuner capable of decoding it, and some device to record the decoded signal.

Go here to see what kind of antenna you'd need: http://www.antennaweb.org.

For the tuner and recording device, there are several options. I think most people use a PC + a tuner card + scheduling/recording software like Windows Media Center or MythTV. I'm using MythTV w/ XBMC as the frontend.

The value to Aereo is in markets where local geography and budget constraints don't allow everyone to get every channel over the air. For example, we can get NBC, Fox, and PBS reliably, but CBS is spotty and ABC is out of the question (no digital transmitters in our area). The only way for us to get all 5 networks is a service of some kind.

If you want a device that "just works", Series 2 TiVo devices support connecting a digital converter box, and Series 3 TiVos support OTA digital broadcasts out of the box.

Apparently there are a few options for doing this: http://bitwhich.com/2013/12/12/best-dvr-without-cable/

I do use an antenna at home but have not tried any of these DVR options. As an aside, it's funny to me that many people (not you) have seemingly forgotten that broadcast TV exists, or are surprised that it's an HD digital signal.

I doubt this will happen. CBS owns rights to show the AFC division of the NFL. It is not in the NFL's interest to reduce it's audience. The NFL is a HUGE money maker for CBS and other networks that cary games.

CBS also has the worst NFL presentation. Their broadcasters and production quality is so far behind Fox and NBC, not to mention ESPN.

That spectrum will be worth a bunch of money, no?

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