Odds of Aereo prevailing about 30 percent, analyst says [telecom]

Hundreds? How about five? Comcast, Cox, Charter, Bright House, and (for now) Time Warner. Are there any important markets where one of those companies does not control the market for wireline cable TV? Remember that CBS doesn't care about market #150.

The issue for CBS would more likely be all their non-O&O-market broadcast affiliation contracts. Would they terminate those, or remain on broadcast in those markets? They have some fairly significant large-market affiliates owned by large group owners who could tie them up in court for a long time.

Um, they are already, by electing retrans consent. Cable companies are already free to say "no, thanks"; the only reason for MVPDs to negotiate retrans deals with CBS is that their customers demand CBS's programming, and that doesn't change if that programming is no longer available over the air.

If we saw any sort of broad-based move of the major networks to drop their FTA broadcast service, I would not be surprised to see an a-la-carte bill actually pass Congress, effectively restoring the status quo ante. That might not be an unlikely outcome if Aereo loses, either, depending on exactly how they lose.

-GAWollman

But their non-O&O affiliate stations certainly do. As I've noted previously here on T-D, stations can switch networks. If CBS goes cable-only, those stations are not going to just go off the air.

The stations would remain on the air, and one way or another, they'd affiliate with a broadcast network. The big (and not-so-big) group owners have the power to make or break a network. They can build a network by switching to (or buying out) some Brand X network, or by creating a new one from scratch, or by buying a popular non-broadcast network and switching it to broadcast.

Well, that's another possibility. But switching their affiliations to a different network would be quicker and the outcome more certain.

Yeah, right. And you know who gets blamed if some cable company actually does that.

Not necessarily. Any programmer that sells its product for broadcast use isn't likely to be happy if the network suddenly becomes non-broadcast. If it wanted to sell its programming to a non-broadcast network it could have done so in the first place.

Sooner or later that programming will move back to broadcast. It might happen when the current contract runs out; or it might be because of some specific language in the contract; or it might be because the programmer sues the network alleging breach of contract. But one way or another, that programming will be available over the air.

As for the newly-reconstituted Brand-X network, it might be able to buy that programming if the group owners put enough money into the effort. It's likely that competing broadcast networks would join the bidding war, especially for sports programming.

In the face of united opposition from ACA, NAB, NOTOA, and NCTA?

Broadcasters would oppose it because it would deprive them of their power to force CATVs to carry their broadcast signals on the basic tier. They'd oppose it because they wouldn't have the power to bundle co-owned non-broadcast programming with retransmission consent for broadcast signals.

NOTOA would oppose it if it allowed CATVs to drop PEG (public, educational, and government) access channels.

Every other interest group from sports to religious to gameshows to home-shopping to Al Jazeera to Glenn Beck would oppose anything that would threaten their access to CATV subscribers.

If anything resembling a-la-carte ever gets serious attention in Congress it will be littered with so many exemptions for special-interest groups that even Consumers Union will probably oppose it.

Even a feeble attempt like Rep. Enshoo's CHOICE Act is still bottled up in committee.

More about a-la-carte on my blog:

Neal McLain

I don't see why they'd care -- and the networks already own much of the "marquee" programming they currently offer, so the "programmers" are hardly independent any more. And even the big non-network rights holders -- mostly sports leagues at this point -- can surely see the writing on the wall, which is why they've been going towards a subscription model as well. With the vast majority of households using cable or satellite to access all of their "broadcast" video already, and an ever-increasing number of young cord-cutter households going exclusively to Hulu/Netflix/insert-your-favorite-video-platform, there's really little downside for the networks any more.

Near as I can tell, the NFL is the only major sports league that has any particular attachment to broadcast television, and I don't think either Disney or the NFL has lost revenue since Monday Night Football moved from Disney's ABC broadcast network to Disney's ESPN cable network.

An independent program producer wants to sell its programming to the highest bidder, and how that programming is delivered to consumers is no longer of much consequence. If CBS and Fox did go "cable-only" (really, MVPD-only), the sports leagues and awards shows would quickly realize that it made absolutely no difference to their audience, so long as they were still on the same dial positions as before.

-GAWollman