Last week the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo. You’ve most likely heard about the case and Aereo’s service, which streams television broadcast content to subscribers. And you’ve read that the court ruled that Aereo violated copyright law. But what you probably haven’t heard or read, and what the Supreme Court totally failed to consider, is the impact of the decision on free over-the-air television: The court just killed it. And in doing so, it dealt only with the copyright issues and utterly ignored broadcasters’ obligations to the public. In fact, the court failed even to mention them in passing.

In case you’re not steeped in the relevant laws, here’s how it works. Television broadcasters, such as the ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox networks, use radio spectrum to transmit their video and audio signals into local markets, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. By law, the broadcasters don’t own the spectrum. The public does. The federal government, through the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), specifically “licensed” the radio spectrum that broadcasters use for their programs for a finite period of years. And the broadcasters, unlike the cellular and wireless companies, paid nothing to the government for the spectrum. They got it for free. And we all understand how valuable radio spectrum is today, with the ubiquitous use of smartphones and the demand for wireless broadband.

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