Aereo Finally Gives Up The Ghost, Files For Bankruptcy Protection

AFive months after the Supreme Court issued the fateful verdict against Aereo and a little more than a month after the company tried to convince the Federal Communications Commission that it was now just like cable companies in an attempt to save itself from the dustbin it seems the streaming broadcast TV service has thrown in the towel, filing for bankruptcy last night.

The Boston company filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Thursday in New York, reports the Wall Street Journal, listing assets of $20.5 million and a debt of $4.2 million.

Chief Executive Chet Kanojia said it all went back to that SCOTUS decision, which made the company basically illegal.

“The U.S. Supreme Court decision effectively changed the laws that had governed Aereo’s technology, creating regulatory and legal uncertainty,” Kanojia told the WSJ. “And while our team has focused its energies on exploring every path forward available to us, without that clarity, the challenges have proven too difficult to overcome.”

The company’s finance chief said in an affidavit filed with the court that Aereo filed for bankruptcy so it could work toward a goal of “consummating a sale of substantially all of its assets, recapitalizing or entering into some other reorganization transaction for the benefit of its creditors and shareholders.”

Aereo shut down “temporarily” (read: forever) at the end of June, giving customers refunds. That was followed by unsuccessful attempts to convince the U.S. copyright office and the U.S. Appeals Court that it was actually a cable company now, instead of what it started out to be — a company that took transmitted signals from broadcaster over the air by antenna and streamed that conent to customers online.

TV-Streaming Firm Aereo Files for Bankruptcy [Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist