Aereo’s competitors are itching to take its place
If you take a look at Aereo‘s website, there’s a letter from the CEO that says the streaming TV company put its operations to a halt. The Supreme Court ruled last Wednesday that Aereo’s service was deemed illegal.
That ruling – bad as it was for Aereo – was an opportunity for its competitors. Mark Ely is the founder and CEO of one of them: Simple.TV.
Ely says his company does things differently from Aereo. In his mind, the ruling was about “where that TV content is fundamentally captured.” Aereo captured broadcast TV content from a central facility and streamed it out to their subcribers. Simple.TV?
“We put the capture point in the user’s home, and by doing so…really sit it in the same place that your traditional DVRs and place shifting technologies sit. It turns out that where you capture the content – who’s doing it – really makes all the difference.”
According to The New York Times, the number of households who subscribe to paid television is down seven percent from last year while the number of households who use internet or other streaming services is up 30 percent from 2013. Ely sees this as an opportunity to increase business, especially since one of his main competitors is on pause.
“What we see is a whole generation of people growing up on Netflix and Hulu and over-the-top streaming services. And see those kinds of traditional networks – ABC, FOX, NBC – and others as having great content but they’re not willing to necessarily buy those in a large bundle of other expensive channels that they don’t care about.”
Listen to our full interview with Mark Ely in the media player above.
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