Aereo investor Barry Diller says that the company isn’t about taking free, over-the-air signals and charging for them, but is instead about moving TV from a closed system to IP. At the D11 Conference today, Diller defended the company’s plans to build a more open video distribution platform.
Diller said that what Aereo charges for isn’t that different from going to your local Radio Shack and buying an antenna to receive free, over-the-air TV signals. But just because Aereo charges for something that is available on an over-the-air signal, doesn’t mean that he wants to take revenues from broadcasters — Diller says that they will still make money from advertisers.
“I don’t want to beat up broadcasters… I want to move from closed systems to Internet systems,” Diller said. “The more you can get video to IP, the better it will be.”
When asked if that has the potential to break up the cable bundle, Diller said that he expects the current system to bust on its own. That’s a result of a system where he says about 90 percent of households end up paying so that 10 percent can watch ESPN.
“The idea of you paying thousands of dollars a year for a package of cable channels that you don’t watch, it doesn’t make any sense,” Diller said.
While Aereo still doesn’t have that many subscribers, he says the company just getting started. “We have very few [customers] because we just started marketing,” Diller said. But soon the company will be spreading out to 22 cities in the next 6-8 months.
(Updating…)
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