Chet Kanojia said the demise of cable companies, as they currently exist, will be a death by a thousand cuts.

Kanojia, the founder of defunct media company Aereo, said large cable companies, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, will not survive because they are not efficient. Cable companies require a customer to pay for packages they don’t fully use, which leads to overcharging, Kanojia said.

That’s why he started Aereo, he said, a service that allows customers to gain access to cable without subscribing to cable packages.

Considered by many to be a pioneer in media technology, Kanojia sat down for a conversation with Roy Gutterman, director of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ Tully Center for Free Speech, on Thursday in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium.

Kanojia discussed his experience founding the groundbreaking company Aereo in 2012, and the legal trouble he faced afterward.

A company of more than 100 employees, Aereo was intended to be a service that would allow subscribers to watch and record television as it broadcasts live without paying a cable company for access. A subscriber would access Aereo on their computer and choose what channels they wanted to watch. That channel would then be broadcast directly to that computer.

Television and movie services that allow a user to customize their experience are referred to as an “à la carte” system, Kanojia said.

Kanojia was particularly interested in giving television viewers options, rather than the expensive packages offered by cable companies, he said.

“There’s a huge difference between what people get from a value perspective, and what they pay for,” he said. “We said … this is an interesting way to reach consumers who aren’t going to ordinarily be a part of the cable bundle.”

However, after its launch, Aereo was quickly sued by a variety of cable companies who felt the service threatened their livelihood by drawing away customers.

Kanojia said 17 plaintiffs were in the original lawsuit, largely driven by CNN, ABC, CBS and FOX.

“We tried to work out a deal with the broadcasters … there was so much animosity built in,” Kanojia said.

In June 2014, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the broadcast networks in a 6-3 decision, despite federal district courts ruling in favor of Aereo, and the company was fully dismantled that month.

Kanojia recalled the complicated nature of the case, and the arguments of both sides. Broadcast companies argued that businesses like Aereo infringed on copyright, while Aereo argued that they served an important purpose by expanding television access.

“… We could have made the argument that we were doing the government’s job, busting monopolies,” he said.

Kanojia described the final days of Aereo as a graceful wind-down. However, the ending was still disappointing to the company’s staff, who initially predicted to eventually gain more than 4,000,000 subscribers, he said.

In the aftermath of the shutdown, Kanojia said interested parties wanted to make a deal for the remnants of Aereo, largely for the people, who Kanojia described as “incredibly talented,” and the company’s technology.

However, due to lingering uncertainty over what could still be done with Aereo, no deal was ever conclusively reached, he said.

Kanojia didn’t speak with a defeated tone, but instead looked to the future. When asked about his upcoming work, he referred to it only as “Project Decibel.” Kanojia did not divulge any information as to the nature of the venture. He said the project would be announced in January.

“It’s going to be spectacular,” he said.

Published on November 8, 2015 at 9:23 pm

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