Aereo boss Chet Kanojia is skeptical broadcast networks will go cable-only just to stymie his company’s ability to stream their over-the-air signal to paying customers.
“Are they bluffing?” Kanojia asked an audience at a New York media conference. “I’m the engineer at the bottom of the food chain. There’s an obligation, a public interest,” to provide the signal.
“The real question is a consumer question: Can you rightfully disenfranchise 50 million consumers?” he asked. “Is that what the preferred policy is?”
The networks have been battling the Barry Diller-owned Aereo in court — claiming the service is nothing more than piracy of their content.
They fear losing retransmission fees paid by cable companies.
The networks, which have lost two court decisions, yesterday asked a full federal appeals court to hear their case.
Kanojia, speaking at an Advertising Age confab, threw down the gauntlet, suggesting that broadcast networks would be unlikely to give up such a big number of customers who still access TV via rabbit ears.
Fox Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said recently that his company had “no choice but to develop business solutions that ensure we continue to remain in the driver’s seat of our own destiny. One option could be converting the Fox broadcast network to a pay channel.”
Fox, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.
When asked if Aereo would pay retransmission fees, Kanojia responded: “The spectrum was granted free to air; all this is, is a new type of antenna.”
Diller also weighed in this week. Speaking at a newspaper conference, he waved off the broadcast-to-cable threat as “just a lot of noise.”