Media Moves

A group of television broadcasters is appealing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s ruling that startup company Aereo wasn’t infringing any copyrights.

Univision, Fox and PBS have filed a petition for an “en banc” review of the Aereo case.  They argue that Aereo is a subscription retransmission service that allows paid subscribers the ability to see over-the-air copyrighted programming on an internet-enabled device and that it’s operating without a copyright license.

In the document, filed on Monday, the plaintiffs state the court’s ruling should be reconsidered based on the Copyright Act of 1976:

“One of the express purposes of the Copyright Act in 1976 was to establish that any service engaged in retransmission of copyrighted television programming to the public is ‘publicly performing’ the programming and therefore must pay copyright royalties.”

The broadcasters affirm that “unless reversed, that decision will wreak commercial havoc.”

Last week Fox and Univision executives threatened to pull their networks’ signals off the air and move them over to cable if the legal system doesn’t force Aereo and other similar live streaming services to pay the network to broadcast its signal.

At issue are the more than $2 billion in retransmission fees the networks generate in revenue from subscribers.

The broadcasters say they their business model can longer depend strictly from ad revenues, and that retransmission fees are fundamental for their survival.

Other Hollywood players have also come in support of the broadcasters against Aereo.  Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., MGM, the Directors Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild are among those who teamed up to file an amicus brief in support of the “en banc” review of the Aereo case.

They argue that as performers, creators and distributors, they need to be copyright protected:

“The right is especially important, and will only become more important, asmovies and television shows increasingly are disseminated and viewedthrough internet streams to the public.”

Meanwhile, Aereo founder and CEO Chet Kanojia says broadcaster’s threats to pull their networks off the air would disenfranchise about 54 million people still using antennas.

During yesterday’s paidContent Live conference in New York, Kanojia said he’s creating “an experience that’s better for the consumer” at a fraction of the price of a cable subscription.

While his company plans to “experiment” with program offerings, Kanojia says they’ll be providing “news for sure.”

Kanojia predicts that by 2015 broadband capacity will have increased enough that the average household won’t see a need for a cable subscription.

Here’s the interview:

Start-up video company Aereo last week won a legal battle that has many broadcasters furious and threatening to pull their signals off the air and take them over to cable land.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled Aereo, which lifts the over-the-air signals of local television stations and streams them to phones and tablets of paying subscribers, is not infringing any of the network’s copyrighted material.

The ruling sparked outrage from some executives. During NAB in Vegas earlier this week, News Corp President Chase Carey said Fox may have to pull its content off broadcast airwaves and take it to a pay only cable subscriber if the legal system doesn’t force Aereo and other similar live streaming services to pay the network to broadcast its signal.

News Corp President Chase Carey and Univision Chairman Haim Saban threaten to take their over the air networks to cable if Aereo pushes forward.

Haim Saban, Chairman of Univision, agreed with Fox.  He called Aereo a pirate and defended his position saying, “we need to protect our product and revenue streams and therefore we, too, are considering all of our options — including converting to pay TV.”

Several networks, including Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC first sued Aereo last year, claiming the service engaged in copyright theft.  So far, Aereo has withstood legal challenges to its business.

At issue are the retransmission fees.  Cable and satellite operators have to pay the networks to transmit their signal.  But Aereo is offering the TV streaming service without paying those fees to the networks.

To put it in perspective, according to the New York Times, SNL Kagan estimates station owners made $2.36 billion in retransmission fees from subscribers in 2012.

The question is whether Fox and Univision are really serious with their threats, which could bring about a whole series of other problems for local TV stations.

For example, as the Los Angeles Times points out, “If Fox were to pull its network programming off the air, the local stations would have to fill 15 hours of prime time a week.”

Aereo is currently only available in the New York City market, but plans to expand to 22 other U.S. cities later this year.

Joe Jaime has been named National Sales Manager for WFLD and WPWR, FOX’s duopoly in Chicago. Starting July 18th, he’ll be responsible for national sales initiatives, reporting directly to Rita Marcocci, the station’s Vice President and General Sales Manager.

Most recently, Jaime served as National Sales Manager at KXTX Telemundo in Dallas. Before that, he was Local Sales Manager at KXTX.

Jaime was previously Account Manager-National Sales for NBC Telemundo in Dallas and Account Executive at NBC Telemundo in Chicago. He began his career in Chicago as Media Service Representative at Target & Response and later moved to Kelly, Scott & Madison, where he was a media buyer.

Sebastian Dimant has been named Senior Director/News at MundoFox. He was most recently a freelance director for Fox Sports, ESPN and Telemundo.  He was previously Director at Fox’s KTTV in Los Angeles and Director at Univision’s KMEX-34.

Sebastian started his career at CNN and was part of the team that helped launch CNN en Español’s 24 hour news channel.  He started the new job this week and is part of the team that will launch newcomer network MundoFox.

Telemundo is paying $600 million for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup Spanish-language U.S. rights and Fox is paying between $400 to $500 million to broadcast the games in English in the U.S.

Although a Telemundo spokesman said they were not disclosing details of the financial agreement, The Wrap, B&C, The Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated are reporting inside sources familiar with the bidding revealed the stunning $1 billion dollar combined pricetag.

Univision paid $325 million for the 2010 and 2014 World Cup rights. ESPN paid $100 million.

The Telemundo deal includes exclusive U.S. Spanish-language all platform media rights (excluding radio) for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada, the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, FIFA Confederations Cup and all Under-20 and Under-17 FIFA World Cup matches in this time period.  The all-encompassing media agreement also includes exclusive coverage and promotion of FIFA soccer events across multiple NBCUniversal properties including Spanish-language broadcast and cable television, Internet, broadband, wireless and Video-On-Demand.

“This landmark deal for Telemundo represents perhaps the greatest milestone in its history,” Lauren Zalaznick, chairman, NBCUniversal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media, said in a statement. “The acquisition of the FIFA World Cup, one of the world’s great sporting events, speaks directly to the commitment NBCUniversal has made in the future of Telemundo and to our diverse U.S. Hispanic communities that we serve.”

According to a release, Zalaznick was on a plane flying home from Zurich when the deal was officially announced.

How will Telemundo justifiy the expense?  The WSJ reports “one person familiar with the thinking at Telemundo parent NBCUniversal said that the network hopes to use the World Cup as a way to wrangle paid subscription fees from cable and satellite operators in coming years.”

Telemundo has scored a major goal: beating Univision for the rights to World Cup 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar. Fox got the English rights, outbidding ESPN. Bids were submitted on Wednesday in Zurich.

FIFA hasn’t yet released what the winners will be paying up, but The New York Times reports an insider has said the amount is “significantly higher than the combined $425 million that ESPN ($100 million) and the Spanish-language network Univision ($325 million) paid for the American rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.”

Getting the World Cup rights could be a big game changer for Telemundo, which has been struggling to catch up with behemoth Univision, the country’s #1 Spanish-language network.

The World Cup is a major revenue generator for Univision, which helped the network earn $2.25 billion in 2010 – an almost 14% increase over the previous year.

Both networks have undergone recent significant changes. Will these changes affect the growth of either company?

In the past year, Univision has done a series of management changes, starting from the top, ousting CEO Joe Uva and later replacing him with Randy Falco.  There has been an overhaul of the news division, with the hiring of Isaac Lee as President of News.  Critics also question the weight of Televisa’s influence on recent hiring decisions, since it signed a deal in October of last year, investing $1.2 billion and becoming part owner of the company.

Telemundo has gone through transitions of its own.  This year, the NBC Universal-owned network became part of Comcast.  In September, Emiliano Romano was named President of the network replacing Don Browne, who retired in June. Just last week, Telemundo announced it would be producing and airing its first GOP debate in December, after the Republican candidates boycotted Univision.

Padre Alberto Cutié, the former Catholic priest who made headlines when he was caught making out with a woman in a Miami beach and wrote a book about his break from the Catholic Church, makes his English-language talk show debut today on Fox.

What is he offering? In the show promos he offers “to help people” without “imposing his religious beliefs” and without judging them.  He says “don’t be fooled by the outfit,” and in his first show talks about “love at first sight,” saying that’s what he felt when he met his wife.

Padre Alberto had his own talk show on Telemundo in 1999. He has also hosted shows on Telemundo Internacional and the EWTN en Español network.

“Father Albert” has his own YouTube channel, where you can check out some clips.

Padre Alberto Cutié’s new talk show “Father Albert” is set to debut on July 11 on Fox TV stations in 6 markets.