Aereo, which put its service on hold after it lost a Supreme Court ruling in June, is laying off a majority of its staff, including employees in New York and Boston, although the company says that it is continuing to “chart our path forward.”
Several media outlets reported that the company informed employees in Boston that it was closing its office there and laying off 43 employees as of Nov. 12.
Virginia Lam, a spokeswoman for the company, said that “in an effort to reduce costs, we made the difficult decision to lay off some of our staff in Boston and New York. We are continuing to conserve resources while we chart our path forward. We are grateful to our employees for their loyalty, hard work and dedication. This was a difficult, but necessary step in order to preserve the company.”
A small executive team of about a dozen people will remain.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that Aereo’s service — which offered digital broadcast streams to subscribers via dime-sized antennas — violated the Copyright Act. The company has so far been unsuccessful in pursuing another approach in the courts, that because it resembles a cable service it should be entitled to transmit broadcast programming.
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The FCC, meanwhile, is mulling a proposal in which Internet TV providers, including Aereo, would receive the same classification as a cable or satellite company, something that would give over-the-top services access to broadcast channels. But it is likely that Aereo would still have to pay restransmission fees to local stations.
