DirecTV Could Pose Aereo-type Threat

[Scott Greczkowski]

[h=1]DirecTV Could Pose Aereo-type Threat[/h]CBS CEO Leslie Moonves says he’s not losing sleep over Aereo. But DirecTV could bring some restless nights with the amount of money it could ultimately deny broadcasters.

The satellite operator’s CFO Patrick Doyle said this week DirecTV has a fully legal way to avoid paying carriage costs for local stations. Broadcasters – including the Big Four networks -- are banking on those retransmission consent payments to provide a robust dual-revenue stream. DirecTV accounts for a lot of their cash with its 20 million subscribers.

To be sure, what could be a majorly disruptive initiative is in the early stages and may go nowhere. Doyle indicated it is still a significant if -- not a when at DirecTV.

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publicatio...uld-pose-aereo-type-threat.html#ixzz2TVBmTd66

 

[lparsons21]

The article was a hoot! Re-introducing OTA tuners into the HDDVRs and Receivers. Shades of HR20!

 

[Lanarian]

all dtv would have to do is start giving away am21's

 

[Claude Greiner]

Its not as simple as giving away AM21's. Not all customers can put up an antenna, or live in an area where an antenna can pick up all the local channels.

 

[Lanarian]

True, but as the article stated, to avoid the re-transmiision costs, they could add internal OTA antennas to the receivers (or, give away AM21's.. thats not in the article).. enough customers would be able to utilize the the Antenna Signals that the re-transmission charges would be significantly lower.. result: DTV pays less to the local broadcasters and we get less of a bill hike

 

[Neutron]

OTA would be so awesome for us but we cant get the signals reliably. We are 50+ miles from the Tyler, TX towers and 80+ as the crow flies for Dallas.