Aereo Entrepreneur Has Broadcast TV Quaking

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"Resorting to name-calling is a sign of desperation," said 43-year-old Chet Kanojia, a supremely confident native of Bhopal, India, casual in jeans and an open-collar blue-striped shirt.

"They are focused on this because it is real. It is credible. There is not anyone in these industries who can say with a straight face that consumers are getting a good deal."

According to philly.com, his Aereo Corp. online TV service has few subscribers, is available only in the New York metro area, and faces significant legal challenges. Kanojia, though, plans to take it to the nation's TV markets this year and has millions of dollars in venture capital to do it.

And that has the broadcast-TV executives very twitchy. The New York Times reported last week that TV bosses were "circling the wagons" with talk of converting broadcast-TV networks - free American institutions for decades via rabbit-ear antennas - into cable channels because of Aereo.

If Aereo is successful and ultimately deemed legal, subscribers could drop Comcast Corp. and other pay-TV systems for Aereo's $8-a-month streaming service to TVs, smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

Billions of dollars in retransmission fees paid to CBS, ABC, Fox, and NBC by cable and satellite operators for their stations could be threatened as TV viewers switch to Aereo or a service like it. TV insiders say these fees are modern economic pillars of broadcast-TV stations and help pay for sports and local news.

He believes the time is ripe for Aereo because of customer dissatisfaction with pay-TV prices and because people don't watch many of the channels for which they pay.

Half of TV viewing is of network shows available free over the air, which he can stream inexpensively. Aereo customers could supplement this broadcast-TV content with Netflix, Amazon Prime, or other video services.

Aereo has raised about $65 million in venture capital and has the backing of longtime entertainment executive Barry Diller. It plans to expand to 20 additional markets this year, including Philadelphia. Kanojia, who sold his previous tech company to Microsoft, said that Aereo could announce its next market in a month and that new markets would be added every two weeks.

On April 1, a New York appeals court ruled in Aereo's favor in a suit by broadcasters seeking to shut it down. That prompts the current handwringing in the broadcast-TV industry.

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