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NFL, MLB Warn That Aereo Could Trigger End of Free TV Game Broadcasts
- brianwawok 13y agoGood riddance to sports.
- HarryRotha 13y agoI generally find broadcast sports to be incredibly boring, but saying 'good riddance to sports' is a great way to lose the political battle, which is what this really is.
- theg2 13y agoIt feels like the NFL is making every effort possible for me to be unable to watch games these days. They continue to do this, I might just give up on watching live games all together. The legal options are A) pay an expensive cable bill B) go to a bar C) have an antenna and live in a city. Keep going NFL, eventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL. I say this as a diehard football fan.
- freehunter 13y agoHopefully Aero will push them, through whatever means, to offer their content in a more direct manner (and by more direct, I don't mean the NFL Network). MLB.tv is a good example to go by. Let me pay $10/mo and stream the games anywhere. MLB.tv has limitations (blackouts make the service useless for home games), but it's a heck of a lot better than needing cable.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoNews Corps's COO threatened to take Fox off the air because of Aereo. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/news-corp-says-it-will-take-fox-off-air-if-courts-ok-aereo-1-.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/news-corp-says-it-w... A lot of broadcast TV business models are about to get (ugh, I'm so sorry; I hate to say this) disrupted. EDIT: Edited to correct "Fox News" to "Fox" in general.
- modeless 13y agoThis year there was another legal option, not well publicized: $99 for NFL Sunday Ticket. That's every Sunday game live streamed over the internet. The only problem with Sunday Ticket is the restrictions that are there to protect the broadcast industry: local game blackouts, no Monday Night Football, etc. I say, good riddance to the broadcasters! Go all in on internet broadcasts and get rid of the restrictions. It's not like the major networks are going to actually drop NFL games. Call their bluff.
- HelloMcFly 13y agoI thought Sunday Ticket was a DirecTV-only thing?
- aroch 13y agoIt is, but DTV has an online streaming version of it. If you bought the anniversary edition of Madden 25 you got access to the streaming (and actual channel if you have DTV) for the season. It's pretty much the only reason I bought Madden -- it was ~$100 for the game + DTV combo.
- smackfu 13y agoI thought Sunday Ticket was more like $299.
- modeless 13y agoThere was a special deal where if you pre-ordered this year's Madden game for $99 you got NFL Sunday Ticket for "free". Of course, Sunday Ticket is worth more than the Madden game, so it was a ridiculous and silly deal, but no more ridiculous and silly than the rest of the contracts and regulations the NFL has for their game broadcasts.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kevincrane 13y agoI bought into that deal and have been hugely disappointed. Half the streams don't load and many other games are blacked out locally so I had to buy a TV antenna to watch them live. Despite my best efforts to follow the rules and watch legally, I still end up on sketchy free sites because they work more reliably.
- antonius 13y agoeventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL. What does this imply? Aside from the lockouts, the NHL has secured long-term broadcasting deals in Canada and the US to fulfill the growth that it sees in the North American market. Clearly the NHL isn't anything close to the NFL from a financial standpoint, but implying the NHL is some bottom-feeder, profitless sports league isn't right.
- theg2 13y agoThe NHL is a shadow of its former self after losing support during the lockouts.
- antonius 13y agoStating things without sources/facts doesn't mean much.
- mitchty 13y agoAnecdotes aren't data, but where I live in Minnesota, every hockey fan that up until 2 years ago always had season tickets, won't even contemplate buying them again. These are people that have been buying NHL season tickets for their entire lives in what amounts to "hockey country". We'll see how it affects certain teams but the NHL does have fallout from the lockout.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bunderbunder 13y agoEven if folks don't end up pissed off, I think even just cutting down on exposure tends to have a similar effect. It's pretty easy to fill the gap left by one TV program with some other TV program. Or any number of non-TV activities, for that matter.
- jasonkester 13y agoOption D) is to watch all your games on Monday. Torrents usually show up first thing Monday morning (US time), and are commercial free. So if you can stay off Facebook and refuse to answer your phone or check email (just in case) for long enough to download and watch the game, you don't need any of that hassle. Or you could move to Europe and pay the NFL a hundred bucks a season for the same thing. (Probably not as good a dollar value as your other options, though, considering moving costs and all.) ps. Don't tell me who won the Seahawks game!
- bruceb 13y agoIs the game at home? Then they won. Go Hawks.
- ralphc 13y agoAs someone who rents a VPS in the UK, tell me more about this "move to Europe" thing...
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 13y agohttps://gamepass.nfl.com https://gamepass.nfl.com This is my second year using NFL Game Pass. It’s excellent. And the cost of VPN + Game Pass subscription is less than cable.
- pyre 13y agoIs this supposed to show up as more expensive in the US? In Canada, it's showing up as only $104.
- drawkbox 13y ago"NFL Game Pass is not available in the United States and Mexico,* but you can still get unlimited access to NFL games:" Game Rewind and Audio Pass, they lock out their biggest fans in the US for live games online legally.
- joe_the_user 13y agoIt feels like the NFL is making every effort possible for me to be unable to watch games these days. Good Maybe it'll put an end to head-injury peddling, rape-festooned garbage pit that is American Football. http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/14/2777431/maryville-missouri-rape/ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/14/2777431/maryville... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/head-injuries-make-football-a-bad-bet.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/head-injuries-make-...
- wdr1 13y agoThey did have another option this year: Get NFL Sunday Ticket for ~$90 dollars.
- jowiar 13y agoI'm curious what the optimal PPV price is for the NFL. I'd easily pay $10-15 PPV, any game. For now, they seem to actively make their product impossible to consume for fans of non-local teams.
- hsod 13y ago> For now, they seem to actively make their product impossible to consume for fans of non-local teams. What about NFL Sunday Ticket?
- twoodfin 13y agoWould you buy 20 out-of-market non-national games per season? That's about what they'd need to make up the revenue from the current Sunday Ticket package, if DirectTV's pricing (around $300/season) is any guide. Maybe more consumers would buy access to games if they could buy them individually, so you'd end up with 4x the number of current Sunday Ticket subscribers buying at least 5 games a year. But that seems like a lot. Eventually you run out of sufficiently motivated out-of-market fans. Remember that the teams with big out-of-market fan bases are just the teams that get picked routinely for national coverage. I could easily see 6-8 Dallas Cowboys or Green Bay Packers games/year for free already.
- curun1r 13y agoIt's a mistake to consider only the cost of the Sunday Ticket. If that were the only factor, the NFL could easily make up the difference. There's a ton of people who either don't or can't get DirecTV who would sign up to stream NFL games, so I'd be surprised if they didn't multiply Sunday Ticket subscriptions by a factor of at least 10. But the reason why this isn't profitable for the NFL is the billion dollars per year that DirecTV pays them to be exclusive. There probably wouldn't be enough of an increase in viewership to cover that. The $300 DirecTV charges customers is actually selling it at a loss considering how much they pay the NFL. Their bet is that they can make up the difference in $60-$100 per month subscription fees.
- jowiar 13y agoMaybe not 20, but 10 -- definitely. Try being a fan of any other Eastern Time Zone team in DC (and presumably NY suffers from the same situation). Even if your team has a pretty national audience (i.e. Steelers, Eagles, Patriots, Giants, etc.), the Rs and Ravens block out two weekly TV slots. Anyway, you end up with perhaps two games where your team is playing the local team, another 2-3 games of national coverage, but I'd definitely be willing to PPV at least 10 games (and I'd definitely consider dropping cable and PPV-ing all 16).
- rjohnk 13y agoThe NFL is as large as it is because of Free TV (Network) broadcasts. While cable tv is largely thought of as ubiquitous, it's still the ONLY sport where I can watch 80-90% of local team regular season games and all of the playoffs OTA. It's a TV sport. EDIT: local team
- mosburger 13y agoI'm a Patriots fan and their game is on ESPN tonight - this is one of the 10%-20% weeks for me. :( The NFL network Thursday night game earlier this season against the Jets was another (fortunately I was in the actual stadium for that one). Red Sox games are only available on cable (NESN). Because I "cut the cord" this year I basically missed the Red Sox season (although, quite honestly, my interest in baseball has waned over the years anyway). It's felt like the tide has been going against OTA broadcast of sports for a while now, and that 10%-20% is growing instead of shrinking, so this story is a bit disconcerting. :-/ And, like almost everyone else here, I'd be willing to fork over cash for NFL Sunday Ticket and/or MLB.tv if it weren't for the archaic blackout restrictions... grr...
- kgermino 13y agoCheck your local listings. If you're in a "Primary Market" for an NFL team the game should be on broadcast. I'm not sure if/how it works for NFLN games but ESPN usually simulcasts on ABC in primary markets.
- greg5green 13y agoThe primary markets can get it OTA, but the secondary markets are out of luck, which makes zero sense since the games can be blacked out in secondary markets. Eg. Rochester and Syracuse are secondary markets of the Bills. If the Ralph doesn't sell out, Rochester and Syracuse get blacked out along with Buffalo, but only Buffalo can get NFLN/ESPN games OTA. Rochester and Syracuse fans without cable cannot see the game. In the parent's case, if they lived in Providence or Worcester or Portland, which are definitely Patriots markets, it wouldn't be on OTA :s
- timje1 13y ago>> Aereo, the startup that features unauthorized streams of local broadcast signals. This is a pretty loaded statement. As every legal objection so far has been struck down, and the streams are authorized by the Aereo user, it seems like disingenuous reporting to call the streams 'unauthorized'.
- nanoanderson 13y agoHah, I had the same exact thought when reading that. Though like I said in my comment, I think the statement goes well beyond "loaded". It's just false.
- timje1 13y agoI meant loaded because it could technically be considered true (the broadcasters certainly haven't 'authorized' Aereo's behaviour), but the term is obviously chosen to sway public opinion before the legal battle.
- fryguy 13y agoThey didn't authorize me to eat a ham sandwich today, but that doesn't make it unauthorized. More to the point. If I recorded a game on my DVR, and the DVR streams it to another DVR in my house, that is not an unauthorized transmission, either.
- avolcano 13y agoI got Aereo purely to watch NFL games legally. If this goes away, I suppose I could go back to pirating streams. To be fair, NFL Sunday Ticket is a really great subscription service if you want to follow out-of-market teams (I considered getting it this year to keep up with the Falcons now that I've moved to NYC, though in retrospect I'm glad I didn't). It's too bad that local games are subject to arcane blackout and broadcast restrictions.
- nanoanderson 13y ago"Aereo, the startup that features unauthorized streams of local broadcast signals." That statement isn't even loaded, it's just wrong. What makes Aereo so interesting to me is that its premise is unbelievably simple. It's a regular old [ridiculously small] TV antenna, but instead of plugging it into your TV, it's plugged in a few dozen miles away and it connects to your computer over the internet. When the leagues say that Aereo cuts into their retransmission fees from cable companies, what they're saying is "we want people to use cable tv, and making broadcast tv easier to use makes that less likely."
- shittyanalogy 13y agoNo actually they're being rather straight forward. They gave you the exact reason why they want Aereo to be shut down. They don't care at all if people use cable, they just want re-transmission fees. I don't agree with their position at all, but there is absolutely no reason to change their words or act like they're being indirect. Aereo is causing a stink from the cable companies. Cable companies have very little public good will. Cable companies realize they can threaten NFL and MLB. Cable companies lobby NFL and MLB to make statement. NFL and MLB have enormous public good will. NFL and MLB make statement.
- joezydeco 13y agoThen add: Public finally gets involved when the threat of losing football games is announced.
- hudibras 13y ago"NFL and MLB have enormous public good will" is drastically overstating the case. Americans love professional football and baseball but the NFL and MLB are far from beloved institutions. I think the average fan is more likely to see this as another instance where the team owners are trying to screw over the little guy who just wants to watch the game.
- joezydeco 13y agoWhat the broadcasters are saying is "we don't like this precedent of Aereo doing it for free, because then that means Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/etc are going to quit paying us retransmission fees as well" The NFL and MLB are just being used as a pawn by the networks to crank up the pressure.
- joezydeco 13y agoHow much of that NFL and MLB broadcasting money was going back to the government from the use of those OTA broadcast licenses? Maybe the broadcast networks need to implode sooner than later.
- VLM 13y agoVery little revenue from broadcast stations goes back to the feds as renewal fees. Visit http://www.fccfees.com/query_all_2008.asp http://www.fccfees.com/query_all_2008.asp And enter your local station callsign, it seems my local NBC affiliate in a top 30 market paid $23550 last year to the FCC. This is actually pretty extortionate for the FCC compared to my ham radio license which ends up being less than a buck a year. From memory marine radio licenses were like $5/yr? Note that you need more than a broadcast license, many stations have microwave studio-xmtr links and maybe a mobile van or two it can all get complicated. Maybe its $16K for the big xmtr and everything else boosted it up to $23K. So license fees are not being used as a centrally controlled market or whatever, it really pretty much only accounts for the costs of paper filing and professional evaluation of facilities WRT safety etc. Auctioned off licenses for new stations can be quite expensive and that's a different problem. An excellent way to make a small fortune is to start with a big fortune and then go into the broadcast industry. There's not much room for innovation or leadership, its pretty much all about financing. He who raises the cash the cheapest, wins. This is a fed issue, as for municipals, the feds let them charge up to 5% of gross cable co revenue as a franchise fee, which is a separate issue. As far as I know the state level usually doesn't get involved beyond tangential DNR wetlands protection type issues. I think it inevitable that OTA broadcasting will end soon enough, except perhaps for PBS stations and religious broadcasters. The future of the TV bands looks a lot like the shortwave broadcaster bands today.
- joezydeco 13y agoExactly my point, and that kind indicates the endgame here. As people cut the cord and try to get back to watching television OTA, the broadcasters could just vacate their licenses and auction the spectrum off to mobile carriers. They win both ways: the windfall from the spectrum auction and the move of OTA viewers back to paid-retransmission carriers.
- macinjosh 13y agoI am an Aereo subscriber and they go through great pains to ensure I live in the market I say I do. So I don't understand how the networks view this as anything different than me putting up an antenna on my roof and watching their sports ball that way. How does this impact them at all? If anything technology like this could tell them more about their audience then they could ever hope to know via traditional OTA broadcasts. But maybe that's the rub? They're scared that people will finally realize that not as many people are watching as they think?
- joezydeco 13y agoSee discussion above. It's all about the retransmission fees that the networks are getting from the cable companies. Aereo is breaking that model.
- evandena 13y agoCall me obtuse, but I still don't get it. Specifically, how is it any different than me using my own antenna? Does it just boil down to an OTA vs Cable war, and the networks/NFL/etc would rather everyone pay for cable instead of installing their own antenna?
- joezydeco 13y agoThe NFL doesn't really matter here. They are getting their rebroadcast fees from the networks no matter who is watching. The networks are the ones making extra revenue by forcing the cable companies to pay them to carry shows on their systems. The historical reasons for this are complex but I would refer you to a nice NPR podcast that explains it better: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/27/226891181/episode-488-the-secret-history-of-your-cable-bill http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/27/226891181/episode-... So back to the problem at hand: Aereo has found a way to skip around those carriage fees that the networks demand. The courts have backed them up. So the real problem is that the cable companies are now asking "why should we pay if Aereo is not?" It's not a cable-vs-OTA war, it's the networks-vs-everyone-else.
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- donretag 13y agoThat would mean less sports on OTA TV. For people like me, that is a win/win situation.
- edhebert 13y agoHow is that a win/win?
- MichaelGG 13y agoPlenty of spaces like restaurants or airports leave sports on TV. If it cost them more money to show sports, they might not play the games at restaurants, and perhaps might even turn the TV off. That's a win for folks like me that dislike background screens displaying anything[1], and particularly dislike sports playing. Now if only CNN, Fox, and other "news" stations would do the same... 1: After not having TV for years, I'm drawn to any screen like a bug to light. I find it extremely difficult to focus on things if there's a screen in the background showing any sort of moving image. I notice people that do have TVs seem to be able to just leave them on as ambient audio/video.
- shock-value 13y agoCNN and Fox News are already cable only... ? Also, I'm not sure I've ever been to a bar or restaurant with a TV that was OTA only (without a cable or satellite hookup).
- chris_mahan 13y agoCan they really get sports off TV? That would be awesome!
- jacobquick 13y agoNo it would mean you'd have new mandatory sports channels to pay for along with all your other mandatory sports channels.
- chris_mahan 13y agoAha! Doesn't apply to me, as I do not pay for cable at all!
- hsod 13y agoSo why do you care if they are broadcasting sports?
- chris_mahan 13y agoBecause if there was some good stuff on cable TV then I would pay for it again.
- bo1024 13y agoSo are they making some sort of legal argument, or is this just a thinly veiled threat?
- gtaylor 13y agoThe frustrating thing is that more people would pay up for MLB.tv if they didn't have these stupid blackout rules in place. It's the way business is done in the industry, but I can't stand it. Let me throw my money at you, MLB. Right now I have to hit Aereo for a good chunk of my team's blacked out games since I'm in a terrible spot for reception, thus I can't get it on my TV. They can still see me in their viewer metrics, and I am still adding value for their advertisers with Aereo. For the stuff I can't get on Aereo, I can sometimes find it on MLB.tv, but not always (depends on which network is the primary on the game and whether there are blackouts). Sports broadcasting rights are a mess, and they're missing out on a lot of money by not doing something less stupid.
- gtaylor 13y agoAlso, college football is even worse about this. Cable-cutters would gladly pay up to be able to watch their team all season. You can get the low profile games/teams on WatchESPN (ESPN3) (if your ISP pays a toll), but if the game is on ESPN or ESPN2, you're probably out of luck unless you've got a TV subscription with your ISP.
- devonbarrett 13y agoAs a non-american MLB.tv was great this season! No blackouts, every game, hi-def, choice of home or away commentary. I would gladly pay for that every season, and for the NFL. I would even rather they show commercials instead of a blank screen.
- gtaylor 13y agoThat's somehow ironically funny. Someone outside of the US gets a better selection than someone inside the US, where the actual product "lives". Blackouts are messed up. And pretty easy to circumvent for online stuff like MLB.tv (if you have the knowledge and want to hassle with it).
- acjohnson55 13y agoThat's funny because that's how soccer is becoming in America. We all EPL games on NBC's channels.
- wiml 13y agoWhat's funny to me is… isn't this exactly how cable TV came about in the first place? Putting a broadcast-TV receiver on a hilltop with good reception, then piping the signal to homes without good reception? Cable's business model has changed over the years, but I wonder if most of the case law supporting Aereo's use would be cases originally fought by the cable companies themselves.
- josephby 13y ago“The court’s intervention is now necessary to restore clarity and certainty in this area and to prevent the unraveling of marketplace built upon the licensing of rights rather than the expropriation of such rights through technological chicanery,' the brief states." The hypocrisy of an industry built, in large part, on the suppression of fair use rights through "technological chicanery" is amazing. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
- swang 13y agoI would pay to watch NFL and NBA games in HD in a format that doesn't require me to download additional plugins besides Flash. The NFL won't even show you live games in the US. You can watch them only after the broadcast. Also it took them forever to provide te All-22 stream where their only excuse was "we don't think fans should have this footage because they might criticize the coach" The NBA website is just a mess to use and if im paying something like $250 a season for it I expect it to at least function properly. And don't even get me started on stupid blackout rules. Ugh.
- jrs99 13y agogreat way to spread the publicity of aereo
- jccooper 13y agoI keep forgetting why extending the reach of a free broadcast is such a problem. More viewers==more ad revenue, right? Oh, right, it's because the major broadcast stations don't actually want people to watch their broadcast; they'd rather people buy cable, watch their programming there, and be paid by cable for the privilege. Plus the ad revenue. A guide to laws surrounding cable retransmission: http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cable-carriage-broadcast-stations http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cable-carriage-broadcast-stations And why do the sports leagues care? Kickbacks out of the same system. The article even says so: "The leagues collect about $100 million of the $300 million broadcasters receive from “compulsory” license fees paid by cable and satellite outlets, the brief stated". Plus the money the broadcasters keep is used to buy the sports content. So: this is just another attempt to discourage cord-cutting and preserve the (huge) cable money stream. If people can actually watch the broadcasts (which, I'm convinced, only exist due to historical and political inertia), it's one less reason to have cable. But why do we need trickery like Aereo to watch OTA programming? Some of it is convenience, but a large part is because the "digital TV" transition seems to have removed reliable reception for lots and lots of people. I'm 13 miles from a whole host of 1000MW towers, and can barely get a decent signal. That's just terrible. It ought to work fine 50 miles away. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, and it's probably just poor execution, but it sure is tempting to think that the digital broadcast transition was subtly sabotaged to push people to cable. So good luck to Aereo. I don't think they're breaking any laws, just threatening an old business model. And that shouldn't be illegal. Sorry, entertainment industry (including the leagues): cable is gonna fade, whether you like it or not, so you better learn to deal with it. Deal with less money, lean more heavily on ads, or, even better: use the Internet! I'd pay the NFL directly for a decent streaming solution, but that'll never happen because it would tread on the toes of the networks. Maybe let the networks sell streaming directly? That would tread on the toes of the affiliates! Oh well. Figure something out.
- ryankshaw 13y agoThe other day I was talking to someone that had a source at one of the satellite companies (I can't remember if it was dish or directTV) that said they were working on putting a digital antenna in their box. Basically, the idea was that the vast majority of customers could just use the digital antenna to get the local channels and since it was built into their box it would be 100% seamless to the user. And then they would only have to pay the retransmission fees for those that couldn't get good enough signal. Even if they didn't turn them on, they would have some leverage as the networks tried to rake them over the coals for retransmission fees
- kadabra9 13y agoThis is nothing more than a huge bluff from the NFL/MLB on behalf of the major networks. The networks have seen the lower courts mostly rule in favor of Aereo, and are now pulling out all the stops to play the scare card by floating the possibility to the public of losing NFL games on Sundays. I'm not sure what the exact legal details of the NFL's current broadcast agreement with CBS/FOX are, but I believe they currently receive upwards of $1bn a season from each network, extending out to 2021. Are they seriously just going to leave all of that on the table and take their chances with plummeting viewership and/or bank on the majority of fans purchasing some sort of season package?
- walshemj 13y agoFunny how the USA goes all socialist over football and other sports - in the uk you used have to pay that nice Mr Murdoch to watch most soccer. Which makes my ex employers kick in the balls to the sky monopoly even more sweeter
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- frodopwns 13y agogood riddance
- bruceb 13y agoMLB with declining viewership is without a doubt bluffing.
- taude 13y agoIn Boston, the RedSox are only available on NESN, which required a $50-$60 cable package to get last time I checked. So from my view, the end of Free TV broadcasts is already here. Because cable tv isn't free.
- thrillgore 13y agoMeanwhile the NBA gets which way the wind is blowing in, and I CAN watch nearly every game without having to have cable through a Game Time subscription.
- parennoob 13y agoWow, could this mean the end of overpaid, media-hyped sportspersons being on American TV all the time, and American people actually getting off their asses and going out and reducing the obesity rate? Yay! I hope they cut "free" game broadcasts and force people to pay $1000/month to watch them. Also, The NFL and the NHL are registered as "tax free organizations", which means that those of us paying taxes have to pay more because these corporations are too greedy to give up a fair share of their (enormous) profits. This makes the hypocrisy of them crying about "free" broadcasts extremely irritating.
- jat850 13y agoA comment like this reeks of ignorance and adds nothing to the dialogue. If you wanted to vouch for the reduction of sports on broadcast television with reasons related to health that are backed up with facts or citations, rather than speculative opining, you could have, and should have, done so.
- criley2 13y agoThe "sports" word was mentioned, so yes, we can expect a deluge of holier than thou prejudiced nerds explaining in very ethnocentric terms why sports is bad. It'd be comical if it wasn't depressing.
- parennoob 13y agoI had to look up what "ethnocentric" meant, but I don't think I am "evaluating other peoples and cultures according to the standards of my own culture" here. Perhaps you could elaborate? (Also, even if I was, don't we all unconsciously view things through the lens of our cultural upbringing? Fail to see how this could be either comical or depressing. Or perhaps you want opinions to be restricted to only people from your own culture?)
- criley2 13y agoYes, it means exactly that. As in, nerds who have lived in their own geek culture bubble all of their lives, aggressively and prejudicedly judging sports culture from the perspective of their own comfort bubble, without ever truly experiencing it with an open mind or truly trying to understand why people enjoy those things and behave that way. Jock-bullying. It's very common in nerd circles, if only as a reflexive against the injustices against nerds, both real and imagined. It's comical/depressing because nerd crowds are generally very self-congratulatory on how open-minded, liberal and intelligent they are. And then this kind of reflexive antagonist behavior against jocks bubbles up, and we're forced to realize that no, just because geeks paint themselves as these smart and open-minded people does not mean it is true. Sometimes, they're no better than bullies, insulting ways of life that they've never tried, simply because it is different or because they are expected by their group to dislike those things.
- jeffdubin 13y agoIf the NFL is taken off network television, major broadcasters will lose many local affiliates and a large portion of their audience. Ad sales will collapse across all network programming. It'd effectively put the studios out of business. That's not Aereo's fault, it's the NFL's decision to take their ball and go home.
- dyselon 13y agoIt seems weird that the NFL would complain about this when NBC already streams Sunday Night Football, their biggest game every week?
- forgotAgain 13y agoNot going to happen. Decades of growing income inequality isn't a problem for DC politicians but take away an opiate from the masses and they'll raise hell.
- dd36 13y agoIs Aereo a clever trick by cable to destroy broadcast TV? Step 1: Get declared legal Step 2: Have cable companies stop paying retransmission fees or threaten to stop paying them. Step 3: Cancel local broadcasting in response Step 4: More subscribers for cable
- drawkbox 13y agoIf they were smart they'd see this as a market tell and come out with a competitive product for it. Cable companies, let me get my cable tv on my digital devices, same wire, just more usable. HBOGO is a nice start but I want all the channels I pay for. I hope sports goes away from basic tv though so they might also finally open up NFL online for the US (available for the rest of the world). Why make it painful to watch, why not take people's money that want it.
- a3n 13y ago"if Aereo prevails, it would mean sports programming would likely migrate to cable." Which is fine. Either their new cable revenue will make up for the long term loss of public interest in these sports and the resulting loss in merchandise and advertising, or they'll slink back to broadcast. But they don't have a right to make a living playing sports. I don't see the problem, at least not this problem.
- cafard 13y agoThat sounds to me a great way to alienate the casual fan. What will be the effect when the team decides that it needs a new stadium and wants tax breaks, subsidies, and so on? This could be the beginning of an era of common sense--but probably won't be.
- bloopletech 13y agoAs a non-US non-sports fan, can someone explain the context for this? I have no real clue what this fight is about. As far as I can tell, this fight seems to be between two ways to watch a sports game: 1. on over-the-air broadcast, which is free to receive. 2. cable television, which is not free to receive. Apparently Aereo makes (1) easier, which presumably means more people will choose (1) instead of (2). What I don't understand: * If I could watch the sports game for free, why would I ever choose to pay for it instead? * If they (I think in this fight 'they' refers to the NFL and MLB) don't want me to watch the sports game for free, then why do they allow/provide free broadcasts in the first place? From what I can tell, the whole sports game watching market looks even more ludicrous than the arbitrary restrictions online TV/ebook market (the number of books in the kindle store that are available - then suddenly disappear when I log into my Australian amazon account - presumably publishers/authors love losing money).
- ijk 13y agoTo answer your questions about the context: over-the-air broadcasts generally only include the games for that particular region of the country. (Here's this week's map: http://506sports.com/nfl.php?yr=2013&wk=11 http://506sports.com/nfl.php?yr=2013&wk=11 ) Having regional broadcasts allows the sports leagues to essentially sell the games twice: once for the local network and once for the cable network (though I'm sure the actual licencing is more complex than that). Access to all of the games is a selling point for cable, particularly when your favorite team hails from a different region than the one you are currently living in (which is fairly common in the US, particularly since team attachment is often based on where someone grew up or which college they went to). This setup makes sense for the leagues, since it was based on the limits of the original technology. Aereo removes the technical limits, and is threatening to remove the legal limits.
- saurik 13y ago> What I don't understand: * If I could watch the sports game for free, why would I ever choose to pay for it instead? * If they (I think in this fight 'they' refers to the NFL and MLB) don't want me to watch the sports game for free, then why do they allow/provide free broadcasts in the first place? Because they currently have a way to monetize it: retransmission fees. If, however, Aereo becomes popular, the broadcasters claim this monetization model will be undermined; their response will be to stop doing over-the-air transmissions and instead directly license with premium content companies, such as ESPN.
- neurotech1 13y agoMaybe we need a TV-B-Gone[1] over IP so that bars streaming too loud can be shut off. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV-B-Gone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV-B-Gone
- noarchy 13y agoGreat, can we also end public subsidies to help build their stadiums, while we're at it?
- KurtMueller 13y agoI guess I won't be watching NFL games then. I can live without them. As for baseball? Boring sport anyway.