Aereo doesn't offer a value proposition: Bewkes

MUMBAI: While News Corp and other broadcasters are threatened by the Barry Diller backed Aereo Time Warner chairman, CEO Jeff Bewkes is not fazed by it.

Speaking at a panel at the Financial Times Digital Media Conference he said that Aereo does not offer a value proposition. "Nobody?s going to buy it. I don?t think they have much of a proposition" he said dismissively.

The main change for him in the television landscape is that consumption of TV is moving to on-demand. But the basic subscription business model will stay. Video-on-demand is the revolution and it?s happening now. Mobile phones are no different than TVs. TV will take over the internet, not the other way round".
 
Bewkes said that Time Warner was seeing best growth in VoD, especially overseas. He spoke about Netflix saying, "It actually went the way we thought. It?s essentially giving you a great library service with a great interface. Netflix is a pretty good company. It is not at all surprising that they have the subscriber count they have." In terms of Netflix being a competitor to HBO he noted that HBO has 110 million subscribers while suggesting that Netflix would keep acquiring subscribers, perhaps up to 40 million.

According to Bewkes the amount and quality of TV production is increasing. "We all have to realise there is no distinction between TV and digital media. All TV is basically digital".