With a little more space and some extra time, this would be a great opportunity to launch into a discussion about the Boston Tea Party, how the Sons of Liberty action against British tax policy helped launch the American Revolution, and how Aereo’s announcement today that it would be expanding its service into the Boston area could be seen as an historic parallel.
Or, it could simply be seen as one more reason broadcast execs will have trouble sleeping tonight.
The start-up, which just got a boost from an appeals court decision to not accede to broadcaster’s demands to shut down its operation in New York, will bow in Boston May 15, marking its first expansion out of New York City.
The company will offer, as it does in NYC, access to an array of over-the-air channels, along with DVR services starting at $8 a month (or, $1 a day if you just want, say, to watch the Yankees and Red Sox duke it out in a weekend series). The expansion puts another 4.5 million viewers up for grabs. Aereo’s lineup of 29 channels for the Boston market includes the Big Four, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, as well as PBS, CW, the Country Network, PBS Kids, Ion, Qubo, Univision, Telemundo and Bloomberg. The service will be available to the 16 counties in Boston’s DMA, which includes nine Boston-area counties, six in New Hampshire and one in Vermont.
Aereo works on ‘smart’ devices from tablets to phones to laptop computers. Aereo currently is supported on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Chrome, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Safari, Opera, AppleTV (via airplay) and Roku.
The company recently closed a $38 million Series B funding round, and counts among its backers Barry Diller, no stranger to disruptive technology in the space. Aereo also has said it will rollout services in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Birmingham (Ala.), Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Madison (Wisc.), Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Providence (R.I.), Raleigh-Durham (N.C.), Salt Lake City, Tampa, and Washington D.C.
“Consumers deserve more choice and flexibility in how they experience television and Aereo provides them a high-quality, rationally-priced alternative,” Aereo CEO and founder Chet Kanojia said in a statement. “This is an exciting step forward for the company. Today’s announcement is even more meaningful and special for our more than 60 employees who call the Boston area home, including me.”
It’s also pretty meaningful to Comcast, which will now have to face yet another competitor in a market that has become more crowded as Verizon and AT&T have both targeted the area with IPTV services.
