Sure. (Photo: Hashgram)

As HBO drums up promotion of the upcoming season of Games of Thrones, the premium cable network is trying a different approach: cozying up with the digerati. (Historically, HBO has greeted the Internet much Night's Watch would approach a horde of White Walkers.)

Last week, the cabler held elaborate Games of Thrones-themed events in techie hotspots like Silicon Valley and Seattle--home base to Internet giants like Amazon, Google, Netflix prone to disrupting the archaic television distribution process.

The Los Angeles Times described the crowd at the party as a sea of t-shirts adorned with Twitter logos, with plenty of Google Glass to go around. That explains why we spied tech bigwigs, like AllThingsD co-executive editor Kara Swisher and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in attendance.

So, why is HBO trading in the glitzy red carpet premieres for neckbeard laden shindigs? Uproxx hypothesizes it sees the “writing on the wall” since its subscriber growth rate has leveled. HBO wants to make a preemptive strike to protect its yearly $3 billion revenue before it emotionally collapses, Hannah Horvath style.

According to the LA Times, all that the hobnobbing with tech companies could help HBO secure better deals on their platforms.

Analysts say HBO was looking to strengthen its alliances with an emerging new distribution network and the social media companies that help spread the popularity of its original programming.

HBO’s glacial, but inevitable, decision to offer HBOGo as a standalone product could be a good first step if it come to an agreement with those pesky cable providers. Perhaps an autograph from Mr. Dinklage could smooth the way?

Look, IDK. (Photo: USAToday.com)

Netflix has just inked another high-profile content deal, this time with Time Warner. Via Deadline comes news that, as of March, the service will beef up its offerings for kids with a whole host of Cartoon Network shows including "Adventure Time" and "Johnny Bravo." 

Perhaps more exciting for the adults out there is the fact that several Adult Swim shows will be added to the service, including "Robot Chicken," "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," "The Boondocks" and "Childrens Hospital." So just go ahead and put in a preorder with your weed dealer. Oh, and in January 2014 Netflix will also get TNT's Dallas, which means you can pretty much expect to lose at least one three-day weekend to the Southern soap.

In a devastating blow to displaced Georgians like this reporter, however, Squidbillies is not on the list. My dreams are all dead and buried, etc.

Can you feel the MAGIC? (Photo: flickr.com/cdharrison)

Good news if you're sick to death of movies that weren't that great when you first saw them in the mid 1990s: The Wall Street Journal reports that Netflix has landed a plum deal to show Disney movies earlier than any other subscription TV service, to the tune of seven months or so after they leave theaters. Usually the deal goes to a premium outfit like HBO; Starz has the rights until 2015. 

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told the Journal: 

"Disney and Netflix have shared a long and mutually beneficial relationship and this deal will bring to our subscribers, in the first pay TV window, some of the highest-quality, most imaginative family films being made today."

Not to mention the move is likely to help as Netflix attempts to fight off incursions by rivals like Amazon. No word on the terms of the deal, which probably cost a pretty penny; we eagerly await a look at that SEC disclosure.

Unfortunately for users, 2016 is quite a while away, meaning you'll likely be re-watching a lot of Law and Order and Say Yes to the Dress in the meantime. Direct-to-video releases will appear next year, however, in case any of you were really jonesing to see Planes, the spinoff to Cars.

(Photo: The Atlantic)

If you're into bloodsports, there's another way to watch Obama v. Romney tonight. Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed startup that lets you live-stream network TV, just offered New Yorkers two hours of free viewing tonight from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m--and free viewing for both subsequent presidential debates. Users don't have to input their credit card information, but they do have to own a Mac since the service still only works through Safari browsers.

For those of you outside Steve Jobs' reality distortion field, there are a number of other options.

YouTube is live-streaming both the presidential and vice presidential debates for the first time ever, via both YouTube’s Election Hub and ABC News’s YouTube channel. C-SPAN is also live-streaming the rhetorical sparring match.

And if you miss cable's wailing of the partisan banshees to tell you how you're supposed to feel about the assorted sound bites, well, there's always Twitter.

Mr. Diller

The sun was still setting when The Observer rounded the corner under The High Line for IAC's Internet Week closing party, co-hosted by Aereo, a provocative new startup that will allow users to view broadcast content on their computers, smartphones and tablets. Off the drab West Side Highway, the Frank Gehry-designed building shimmered like a landing dock for a space ship--as if the top could twist off and whir its way into the atmosphere. Will Arnett and Wilmer Valderrama walked the red carpet. Dolled-up in pale pink, Allison Williams (the Miranda to Lena Dunham's Carrie) took Barry Diller's elbow as she navigated the crowd.

As the origin myth has it, Mr. Diller’s transformation from a Hollywood mogul to Internet soothsayer for this new digital era started with an Apple PowerBook. “No question that his relationship with his little screen, which is irritating to everybody in the room, has altered his life,” his closest confidante and now wife Diane von Furstenberg told The New Yorker some years back.

It was the early ’90s—right around the time Rupert Murdoch refused to make Mr. Diller a principal at Fox, the fabled fourth network Mr. Diller pioneered when competitors insisted that three would do just fine.

In search of an empire of his own, Mr. Diller embarked on a self-directed innovation tour—PowerBook in hand—visiting MIT’s Media Lab, and meeting with Steve Jobs (biding his time at NeXT Computers between gigs at Apple) and Bill Gates. Looking at the future through his PowerBook–shaped crystal ball, Mr. Diller concluded that a “new video democracy” was on the horizon. As The New Yorker put it, Mr. Diller saw how “the computer screen might become a TV set, and the keyboard would be a mechanism for summoning anything. The speed would be astonishing. A billion bits of information per second would travel over a wire.”

“My god. I’m impressed,” Mr. Diller told The Observer earlier this week, chuckling at his own prescience. “I mean that’s really shocking, at least to me, since I can’t imagine my thinking in ’92 had evolved that far. ’94, yes. But not ’92.”

Over the phone, Mr. Diller sounds not unlike a debonair Darth Vader. There’s a lot of impeccable elocution and heavy breathing. “I haven’t read that story since it was published. I don’t even know if I ever actually read the whole thing,” he offered with the kind of offhand braggadocio one might expect from the man credited with inventing the TV miniseries and the movie of the week at ABC, and greenlighting The Simpsons.

Two decades later, IAC, the corporate salmagundi of Internet companies where Mr. Diller now serves as chairman, recently led a $20.5 million investment round in Aereo.

Using remarkably tiny, thumbnail-size antennas stored in a warehouse in Brooklyn, Aereo is able to live-stream broadcast TV—the adorkable New Girl on Fox, say, or the upcoming London Olympics, which cost NBC $4.4 billion—to any mobile device for just $12 a month. Users can watch the programming as it airs, or record up to 40 hours of content. Aereo won’t say so, but coupled with a Netflix subscription, the new service will enable many users to cut the cord of their cable subscriptions.

“I thought it was fascinating,” Mr. Diller said. “And because I thought it would further develop ‘television’ over the Internet, I was intrigued.” According to Aereo’s CEO Chet Kanojia, Shana Fisher, one of the start-up’s seed investors, first introduced Aereo to IAC, which is a limited partner in her fund, High Line Venture Partners. “Barry immediately gravitated towards it because of his history,” said Mr. Kanojia, who divides his time between Aereo’s headquarters in Long Island City and its engineering base in Boston. “He said, ‘I want to meet this guy.’” He had to be sure, said Mr. Kanojia, that the technology was not “a fantasy.”

Skepticism allayed, Mr. Diller has been helping shine the spotlight on Aereo through everything from his recent congressional testimony on Net neutrality to that celebrity-studded Internet Week party.

Naturally, Mr. Diller’s former colleagues from the broadcast world would like to litigate Aereo out of existence. Less than two weeks after IAC announced its investment in Aereo, 15 plaintiffs, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and even PBS, filed a lawsuit seeking damages for copyright violation and an injunction to stop Aereo from operating, just as they did a similar startup called Ivi.tv last year. Rumor had it Aereo raised $20.5 million expecting a fight, a claim Mr. Kanojia denied. The core dustup involves retransmission fees, a backdoor money stream networks came to depend on after the 1992 Cable Act, which required broadcasters to either declare their channels a “must carry” for distributors like Time Warner and DirectTV or opt for retransmission consent in the form of cash or other considerations. (Aereo argues that its minuscule antennas enable a “private performance” for individuals, absolving it from paying licensing fees.)

New Yorkers were forced to familiarize themselves with “retrans” fees after a dispute between MSG Network and Time Warner Cable resulted in a blackout of Knicks and Rangers games smack in the middle of Linsanity. On an earnings call last month, Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt told analysts he found the Aereo lawsuit “very interesting” and would be watching it closely.

“[Aereo] is the most direct attack on retransmission consent that we’ve seen,” Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for the broker-dealer BTIG, told The Observer. “I think the multichannel distribution world, which would benefit from an end of retrans, is foaming at the mouth for a legal ruling in favor.”

Television incumbents have fought every major technological advancement, from cable TV to the Betamax. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that Mr. Diller’s involvement in Aereo is particularly nettlesome. After all, who would be better poised to introduce broadcast TV on the Internet to the masses than a storied executive who spent the last few years nurturing online video start-ups like CollegeHumor and Vimeo.

Of course, betting that Mr. Diller can replicate the audacity of his network days hasn’t always panned out for prognosticators. He may have seen the future of TV on the Internet, but post-Fox, Mr. Diller landed in the woods of West Chester, Pa., as “king of cubic zirconium” at QVC. Then there was the $1.85 billion bid to one-up Google with Ask Jeeves. One would be more likely to ask Google than Jeeves how that venture fared. But IAC’s stock is on an upswing since Mr. Diller successfully fended off a suit from cowboy billionaire John Malone in 2008 for spinning off properties like Ticketmaster and the Home Shopping Network into their own public companies.

Hearings in the copyright lawsuit, which begin at the end of this month, will determine whether Aereo will add to Mr. Diller’s legacy as an upstart, or end up the next Napster.

“Whatever,” was Mr. Diller’s response to the notion that Aereo’s future might rank on par with his past successes. “I don’t relate things one to the other.”

Mr. Kanojia at the Internet Week party (via Wire Image)

For a product that’s attracted so much legal heat, it’s perhaps fitting that Mr. Kanojia’s inspiration started with a lawsuit, he told The Observer early this month in the Park Avenue outpost of his PR company (Aereo’s Long Island City office is under construction).

Mr. Kanojia, who speaks with a polyglot post-colonial accent shared by many an Indian expat, sat cross-legged in an armchair. His Gérald Genta watch was a jump-hour, a wonkish call-back to his training as an engineer. But like his benefactor, Mr. Kanojia also has ties to the television world he is upending. His former company Navic Networks, which was purchased by Microsoft in 2008, produced a piece of software embedded in cable boxes.

“We would monitor viewers across millions and millions of homes,” he recalled. “What I really saw was a third of the households, give or take, watched broadcast only,” he said. Despite access to 500 channels and DVRs, “80 percent of the households only watched seven or eight channels.”

Then, Mr. Kanojia saw a way to provide those “pulse-of-life” broadcast channels from the cloud in a manner that followed the letter of the law. In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that Cablevision was within its rights to move its DVR systems to remote servers, rather than have consumers store the programs they chose to record in their individual boxes. “A simple logical extension to me was: this content is broadcast for the consumer, ends up in the public airwaves, is part of the broadcast legacy. So if network DVR is legal why can’t we build a remote network antenna?”

When Aereo launched publicly in March in the New York market, the service billed itself as merely an upgrade on rabbit ears for the Internet era. Because users only access one antenna per viewing session, the company argues it’s a “private performance,” allotted to every citizen in exchange for the broadcaster’s access to the public airwaves.

Network sources view it differently. “They’re stealing the content!” one executive told The Observer. “It’s baloney, it’s a rationalization of pure theft.”

The plaintiffs argue that Aereo is more of a cynical legal ploy than a technological innovation—and that Aereo puts the networks’ very existence in jeopardy by cutting into advertising dollars, retransmission fees and their own ability to monetize the Internet. The case has echoes of a similar argument Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association, leveled against the VCR, comparing it to the Boston Strangler. In that landmark Supreme Court trial, referred to as “the Betamax case,” Fred Rogers, he of the cabled cardigans and neighborly wisdom, testified in favor of innovation. “Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others,” he said. “I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.”

But in Aereo’s case, even Mr. Rogers’s own network is siding with the plaintiffs. In filings for the lawsuit, declaration after declaration from studio execs insinuates that Aereo could mean the end of beloved content and the networks’ ability to offer it for free over the airwaves. NBC’s declaration made threatening remarks about Sunday Night Football; PBS, a nonprofit, bemoaned the future of Great Performances.

“I don’t believe that for a second. I’ve heard that literally going back 40 years,” Mr. Diller said. “It used to be argued, by networks—I was at one when I started in the ’70s—that cable was the biggest threat to networks survival. So I don’t think the argument is valid."

Not that it surprised him. “Any incumbent in any area,” he added, will wield “pitchforks to protect their incumbency.” Asked how he would have responded, were he still head of a network, he said, “Exactly as they are. I understand why they would make arguments about diminished programming, because it’s such a populist concept. I just don’t think it’s got any basis in reality.”

Network sources intimate that Mr. Diller, who made his name in programming, should know better. But it’s a sensitive topic. Asked about Aereo at a recent executive breakfast at the Pierre Hotel hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Disney/ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney curtly declined to comment.

But Mr. Greenfield, the BTIG analyst, sides with Mr. Diller. “This should lead to people watching more television, not less. Advertising should benefit. It does attack retrans, but retrans didn’t even exist in terms of dollars until a few years ago, so I find it hard to believe it would destroy them,” he said. The reason networks cling so desperately to retrans fees is because they represent a growing source of revenue with “no cost attached to it,” Mr. Greenfield added.

Mr. Diller also downplays the effect to networks’ bottom line. “Well, first of all, I don’t think Aereo presages the end of retransmission fees,” he said. “It may affect the absolute amount, but the amount is going to be large regardless of Aereo.”

The real impact, he noted, will be in increased video consumption online. “It will lead to more à la carte viewing, not packaged viewing. And I think that is an alternative many people would like.”

Still, it’s not as though Mr. Diller is entirely devoid of concern for his former colleagues in the broadcast world. “If I felt that they would lose revenue, in a material way, of course I would be sympathetic,” he said, surprising us with a benevolent tone. “I want them to get as much revenue as possible.” After all, he pointed out, IAC is also in the business of content creation. “We make programs we want them to pay for.”

-ntiku@observer.com

A version of this story appeared in the May 23, 2012 issue of The New York Observer. 

IAC/InterActive Corp chairman Barry Diller testified before the Senate Commerce Committee today about the future of online video. We can't believe someone thought this was a legitimate question in the era of Netflix and Hulu, but the hearing was actually called "The Emergence of Online Video: Is it the Future?" Then we remembered who was asking.

“Incumbents have the means and incentives to engage in economic and/or technical discrimination against online video distributors,” Mr. Diller told lawmakers, referring to our cable and broadband overlords. To level the playing field, he said, “I think you need to rewrite the [Telecommunications] Act of '96. It’s overdue given the Internet. And it needs revision." Congress, he added, should “prevent cable and telecommunications companies from leveraging their dominance in existing markets” to control emerging technologies.

A much-needed call for updating outdated legislation, but Mr. Diller is hardly an unbiased party.

In February, IAC led a $20.5 million round in Aereo, a disruptive new startup that lets users livestream broadcast TV to any mobile device for $12/month. Shortly after that, every broadcast network and their mom sued Aereo for copyright violation for rebroadcasting without licensing or consent.

Aereo argues that since users access one individual antenna a piece, it's within the consumer's right to access the content. Broadcasters call that argument "technological gimmickry." In pitching Aereo, Mr. Diller has pointed out that taxpayers contributed roughly $650 million to ensure that over-the-air households could get digital broadcast signal.

The former IAC CEO, however, isn't as eager to talk about Aereo in court. He's currently fighting a subpoena from broadcasters demanding that he explain IAC's investment in front of a judge. Mr. Diller's attorneys countered that the subpoena, which mentions him by name, is "patently overbroad," because broadcasters want to know “confidential investment decisions and analyses that are extremely sensitive and should not be produced to any of the parties in the litigation,” reports Wired.

The next hearing is set for New York federal court in May, so we'll see if Mr. Diller gets out of testifying soon enough.

Screengrab

A new TV Everywhere-oriented start-up, NimbleTV, begins beta-testing its service in New York City on Monday. One question about this new bid to give TV junkies an easy, anytime fix is will they be sued like Aereo? After all, as Brian Stelter reports in his Times article about NimbleTV, the services have a few similarities:

...NimbleTV is like Aereo, the start-up backed by Barry Diller’s company IAC that repackages broadcast channels like NBC and Fox into a streaming service for $12 a month. As Aereo started letting customers in New York City sign up last month, virtually all of the city’s broadcasters filed lawsuits against the company, citing copyright infringements. The suits are pending and Aereo is online for now.

That said, NimbleTV chief exec Anand Subramanian told Mr. Stelter that his service has taken great care to not break any laws. Users of NimbleTV would still pay their original service--cable providers like Xfinity or satellite distributors such as Dish Network--while NimbleTV wants only to provide a way to view a given package of channels via the Internet for maybe $20 a month.

Mr. Stelter reports investors in the service still think they'll be sued. If that isn't tough enough, NimbleTV joins a growing crowd of TV Everywhere pretenders to throne besides Aereo, like Skitter. Skitter is only available in Portland, Oregon at the moment but as the streaming TV market begins to open, the first companies to hit the market may be the most well-positioned to profit.

Unless they're sued out of existence, that is.

Battleground via Hulu

Earlier this week, the New York Times chronicled Hulu's trajectory from an upstart streaming video service into something more in the vein of a traditional TV network with its own original programming, much like its corporate masters. Of course, that change has been in the works since January. But as Hulu and Netflix face increasing difficulty in convincing TV and cable stations to hand-over programming in a timely manner, they've put more of an emphasis on creating its own content to fill that gap.

As the Times noted, when Hulu first launched it had a galvanizing effect on the media industry, accelerating the trend toward getting networks and studios to stream shows online. Hulu's owners, including NBC, Fox, and Disney, were always worried that online advertising might not make up for the millions they earned from traditional cable and satellite deals. But after NBC's Jeff Zucker and other Hulu champions moved on, more recently they've been striking streaming deals to make their shows available to subscribers via tablets and smartphones instead.

That explains why Hulu, which now has 2 million subscribers and boasted $420 million in revenue last year, headed to the "upfronts" this week, the annual event where networks and cable channels try to convince advertisers to ensconce their new programming in sweet, sweet ad dollars. There CEO Jason Kilar announced four new shows, including projects involving SNL's Seth Meyers (thumbs up) and "Entourage-r" Adrian Grenier (thumbs down).

That's in addition to the three shows Hulu announced in January: "Battleground," a simulated documentary style show in the vein of "The Office" that follows the fictional campaign trail in Wisconsin and "A Day in the Life," a Morgan Spurlock show looking at the "ordinary lives of extraordinary people," and "Up to Speed," a show from Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater following around "flaneur" and historian Timothy "Speed" Levitch, which has yet to air.

Aside from the "A Day in the Life" episode about Das Racist--did we mention youthy-ness is part of its appeal??--nothing in the first batch has interested us except "Battleground." "A Day in the Life" isn't enough of a step forward from more interesting offerings from Spurlock (like his FX show "30 Days.") Half an hour about Will.i.am is roughly thirty minutes more than we care to pay attention to him.

But you should go watch "Battleground." (Don't listen to that tech blog, listen to this one!) The show was picked up when Fox, which greenlit the script, passed on airing it. It has an Aaron Sorkin-y speedtalking vibe, if Sorkin cared less about righteousness and more about making jokes and moral gray areas. Plus, there is a love quadrangle--innovative! Of course, "Battleground" hasn't motivated us to pay for Hulu Plus, even though the free trial was a fine supplement to our online viewing, but we're more than happy to watch the ads and probably tool around on the site and rate commercials so Hulu can sell our ad tastes to the highest bidder.

Hopefully one of these new offerings will be able to do the same. As years of watching prime time sitcoms will teach you, original isn't necessarily better.

• We Got Next (2012): Four unlikely friends butt heads on the pick-up basketball court and on the sidelines of everyday life. Starring: Kenya Barris (THE GAME, ARE WE THERE YET?, AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL), Hale Rothstein (THE GAME, EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS), Danny Leiner (THE OFFICE, MODERN FAMILY, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, FREAKS AND GEEKS, HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE, DUDE WHERE’S MY CAR?
• The Awesomes (2013): An unassuming superhero and his cohorts battle diabolical villains, the ever-present paparazzi, and a less-than-ideal reputation as second-class crime fighters. Starring: Seth Meyers (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE), Michael Shoemaker (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON) and animation studio Bento Box (BOB’S BURGERS, ALLEN GREGORY).
• Don’t Quit Your Daydream: A cast of famous musicians travel across America in search of could-have-been musical artists to collaborate on a new song giving them a second-chance at stardom. Based on an award-winning documentary by Adrian Grenier and John Loar.Starring: Adrian Grenier; Produced by Virgin
• Flow: When Ed Dante, a hard-working kid from the wrong side of the tracks is framed for a crime he didn’t commit, he begins an epic quest to deliver true justice. To achieve his goal, he must discover the mysteries of an ancient art, uncover hidden worlds and become a hero to a generation. Starring: Michael “Dooma” Wendschuh (show creator, co-founder and president of sekretagent studios: ASSASSIN’S CREED II (2009), ARMY OF TWO (2008), ASSASSIN’S CREED (2007); David Belle (Founder of Parkour); Produced by Agility Studios (producers of The LXD) and the Shine Group (WHO KNEW? IT’S EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS, APPETITE FOR LIFE)

Only it’s not true, as those numbers are apparently outdated. Upon reaching out for a comment, Betabeat was informed by Boxee’s Liz Dellheim via email that it was all the intern’s fault:

“We don't release numbers for Boxee Box sales - it was an intern handling our Twitter feed who quoted an outdated number. Since it's a D-Link product, we let them quote sales numbers. This year we surpassed 2 million users worldwide and while at this time the PC represents a bigger user base than the box, we expect that to shift by the end of this year.”

Of course, that dumps us back at square one. We're not sure just how "outdated" that number is, which leaves us without a real sense of total active Boxee Box users.

Regarding the PC client, Ms. Dellheim added that while they’re not actively distributing it, there are still plenty of people downloading it from other sources. “So it lives on,” she told us.

Guys: We all love interns, but let’s please remember that they are poorly paid for a very simple reason, and that is that they aren’t ready for primetime. Proceed accordingly.

The Contender

This is just what Aereo needs, in addition to their legal hurdles: A competitor that’s already lined its licensing ducks all up in a row, nice and neat.

Here's the deal: A $12/month Aereo subscription buys you access to a remote antenna, which replaces old-fashioned rabbit ears. You get ABC, NBC, CBS, etc, without shelling out for basic cable. But local broadcasters don't buy this argument, hence the lawsuit.

Now GigaOm reports that a company called Skitter is launching a new service that takes a different tack. Previously, Skitter offered an over-the-top solution to smaller telco providers who wanted to offer TV services. (Think would-be rural Time Warner Cables.) To make that work, they had to purchase retransmission licenses for any over-the-air broadcasts they'd be carrying. Now that they've got those licenses, according to the article, they're using them to build a consumer business streaming live TV to Roku devices:

That means that the company can only offer its subscriptions in markets where it is partnering with a telco provider – but it’s also a pretty ingenious business move that could help Skitter to avoid the legal pressure Aereo and others have been facing.

So in Portland, Oregon, where they've just launched, they offer CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, plus the actual local PBS affiliate.

These two companies aren't going head-to-head just yet: Skitter has those existing telco partners, but this new service is only available in Portland at the moment. Meanwhile, Aereo is limited to New York. But generally speaking, it’s easier to operate when you’re not working under a legal cloud.