Chairman Walden Sees Aereo as Potential Marketplace Disruptor

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) says Aereo could be a major disruptor in the marketplace -- as could Dish's Hopper -- and suggests he understands why Fox would warn that such disruption could move programming off the broadcast model.

He called both Aereo and Hopper disruptions in the marketplace and said he was surprised by the court decision allowing Aereo's service to continue, at least while the court decides the broadcasters' underlying challenge. "Disruptions aren't bad, necessarily," he said, drawing "necessarily" out a little bit as he pondered it. "But this really has much bigger consequences, as people are beginning to read into it." Asked how he reacted to suggestions by Fox that they could move programming to cable if the court upheld Aereo, Chairman Walden seemed sympathetic to a point. "At some point, producers of programming have to have a way to get paid or you aren't going to have programming... If someone is taking your product and putting it on cable [SIC] for free, basically, then all of a sudden you have to look at how you change that model."