Barry Diller wrote off Aereo months ago. Now the embattled company’s CEO, Chet Kinojia is finally throwing in the towel as well by filing for bankruptcy. It was a long hard battle–and just as it seems the tide is turning, the Boston-based company is giving its last gasp. Enter Aero.tv, a division of FilmOn, the free streaming TV service, which was launched before the creation of Aereo. A gentleman’s agreement between Diller and FilmOn founder Alki David kept Aero on the sidelines until now.
The FCC has been meeting regularly with FilmOn Netowrks about its rule changes that will allow MVPDs to operate as cable companies. Even CBS has dragged itself into the 21st century by finally creating an app that allows viewers to watch live TV–many other networks are scrambling to follow suit. And one of the biggest blows to the infamous cable bundle came this Fall when HBO announced it would make HBO Go available to consumers without cable subscriptions.
Why did Aereo fail while FilmOn thrives? Though the companies are often lumped together by the media, in truth they are quite different. FilmOn has always licensed and owned a vast amount of content and offers an SD streaming version for free to the consumer. Over 600 linear channels and 40,000+ VoDs are available. The addition of local over the air broadcast channels was always going to be a bonus on a robust consumer offering–and its one FilmOn is still working hard to deliver.
When Aereo shut down its service it had some 75,000 users. FilmOn routinely surpasses 40 million unique users worldwide each month.
So what will Aero.tv users get? Free access to all the channels and VoDs, free DVR time,
the ability to create their own Pay-per-view events via the ETV service on FilmOn and more.
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