Gray Television has announced it will add the Syncbak internet TV platform to all of its 41 TV stations.

“Gray Television was one of the very first broadcasters to launch mobile DTV service,” said Bob Prather, Gray’s president and COO.  “Over the past few months, Syncbak has proven that they can provide another critical route to reach our local viewers.  We are therefore excited to be able to improve our local products by adding all of our stations to the Syncbak platform.”

The Syncbak platform allows stations to stream their signals over the internet to mobile and connected devices. Syncbak uses a “location-based authentication technology” to keep station signals within its market reach.

Syncbak is being tested by all the major networks in over 150 TV stations in 98 markets. Gray Television has stations in 30 markets including Wichita, KS, Winchester, VA, Rockford, IL, and Knoxville, KY. 21 of Gray’s stations are CBS affiliates, 11 are affiliated with NBC, eight are with ABC and five are FOX affiliates.

[TVNewsCheck]

Aereo, the company that give customers access to over-the-air channels online with a cloud based DVR, has announced plans to expand its service to Atlanta beginning June 17.

“We’re grateful and humbled by the continued support we’ve received from consumers for our technology,” said Aereo CEO and founder Chet Kanojia. “The response and enthusiasm from consumers across all of our expansion cities has been phenomenal. It’s clear that consumers want more choice and flexibility in how they watch television and they don’t want to be fenced into expensive, outdated technology.”

Aereo launches tomorrow in Boston.  The service has faced stiff legal challenges from broadcasters and content creators alike for its ability to grab content from over the air antennas and sell it to its customers without paying licensing fees.

Yesterday, the company announced a simplified pricing structure with an $8.00 a month fee for basic service and an upgraded plan with expanded DVR storage for $12.00 a month.

This week, ABC will become the first major broadcaster unveil an app that allows users in New York and Philadelphia to live-stream local programming. Content from WABC and WPVI will be available first, with plans to introduce it in other markets later this year, The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter reports:

ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, said the live stream would be available in the other six cities where it owns stations sometime this summer. It is also in talks with the companies that own ABC’s more than 200 affiliates to make the “live” button work in their markets.

ABC finished the first of its affiliate deals, with Hearst Television, on Sunday afternoon; it said the live streams would work in Hearst’s 13 markets, including Boston and Pittsburgh, in the coming months.

The app is also a way for ABC to get ahead of Aereo, the streaming television service that allows subscribers to watch over-the-air programming on Internet-connected devices. Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, told The New York Times that plans for ABC’s app were in place before Aereo was launched.

The FCC’s upcoming incentive auctions may be the weapon broadcasters are looking for in their fight against Aereo, the upstart company using over-the-air signals to sell content to consumers on the cheap.

One theory being floated says the threats by CBS and FOX to pull their networks off the air may not be so far fetched. Selling off spectrum would accomplish two goals: it would bring in billions to broadcasters while they stick it to Aereo by denying them the very root of their service, over-the-air signals. The Verge has more details on the idea that may make Aereo the game changer it promises to be, just not in the way it intended.

Conveniently, CBS directly owns 29 stations, most in major markets, while Fox parentNews Corporation owns 27. Every station sits on a lucrative license to regional spectrum that it uses to broadcast its signal. By submitting those licenses to the FCC’s auction, these networks would stand to see a windfall, shutting the door on Aereo (which relies on over-the-air signals to collect its source content) in the process. Meanwhile, American households that rely entirely on over-the-air television — a recent GfK report estimates them at 17.8 percent of the viewing public — would be the pawns in the game.

Another legal battle is brewing between Aereo and the broadcast networks. In a complaint filed in New York federal court against CBS Broadcasting, the streaming television service has asked for a declaratory judgement that says the streaming technology does not infringe on the broadcasters’ rights and does not violate the Copyright Act of the United States.

CBS has said it will challenge Aereo in each market where the company introduces its technology. The Hollywood Reporter has more details on the suit, which seeks to bar CBS from further legal action against Aereo:

The upstart is now seeking a nationwide permanent injunction against CBS and its licensing entities. The big question in Aereo’s latest lawsuit is whether a New York judge will exercise authority to stop the broadcasters from seeking action in other jurisdictions.  CBS might attempt to have the case transferred.

A CBS spokesperson says, “The issue of unauthorized streaming of copyrighted television programming is now being contested in the 2nd Circuit and the 9th Circuit, and wherever Aereo attempts to operate there will be vigorous challenges to its Illegal  business model.”

IAC/InterActiveCorp founder and chairman Barry Diller sat down with Bloomberg TV’s Willow Bay at the Milken Global Conference Monday. Diller, the primary backer of Aereo, talked about the future of television in an interview that aired on “Lunch Money” (video above).

“The law of the U.S. is that if you have an antenna, broadcasters must provide a signal that you can receive without any interference. That is the right of Americans who gave licenses to broadcasters. That is the covenant. We are providing a technological method for them to receive them,” Diller said. “In 1972 or 1973, [Broadcasters said] the video recorder was an illegal thing. They went to the supreme court. And of course we all enjoy video records.”

As we’ve been reporting recently, streaming television technology — used by Aereo and the Dish Hopper — has the potential to cause a dramatic shift in the television business going forward. With Fox and Univision already contemplating converting to cable networks, another executive is weighing in about the future of the television business: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

In a letter to shareholders this week, Hastings lays out the 10 reasons why Internet TV will continue to gain popularity, concluding that “over the coming decades and across the world, Internet TV will replace linear TV. Apps will replace channels, remote controls will disappear, and screens will proliferate”:

People love TV content, and we watch over a billion hours a day of linear TV. But people don’t love the linear TV experience where channels present programs at particular times on non-portable screens with complicated remote controls. Consumers click through a grid to choose something to watch. DVRs and VOD add an on-demand layer, at the cost of storage and increased complexity. Finding good things to watch isn’t easy or enjoyable. While hugely popular, the linear TV channel model is ripe for replacement.

Streaming TV service Aereo is expanding to the Boston metropolitan area next month. The technology will be available to pre-registered consumers on May 15 and to the general public on May 30.

“This is is an exciting step forward for the company. Today’s announcement is even more meaningful and special for our more than 60 employees who call the Boston area home, including me,” Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said in a statement. “I’m proud of our team and what we’ve accomplished in such a short period of time.”

Currently, Aereo is available only in New York. The streaming technology threatens to disrupt the traditional model of broadcast television. ABC, CBS, NBC Universal and Fox Television Stations have a pending lawsuit to block Aereo, and News Corp. COO Chase Carey has said Fox could be forced to convert to a cable channel if Aereo wins in court.

Boston’s DMA includes 4.5 million eligible consumers in 16 counties across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Aereo, the embattled internet service allowing consumers to watch TV over the internet without paying licensing fees, has announced it will be expanding its service to 22 cities.

“Consumers want and deserve choice,” said Aereo chief executive officer and founder Chet Kanojia. “Watching television should be simple, convenient and rationally priced. Aereo’s technology provides exactly that: choice, flexibility and a first-class experience that every consumer deserves.”

What makes Aereo both unique and a possible threat to local TV stations is the technology enables consumers to watch and record live broadcast television on computers, tablets or even smartphones without paying for the broadcast content.  Subscriber fees for the service start at $8 a day or $80 a year.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Aereo was able to avoid being shutdown because of its technology,

A federal judge in New York ruled in July that the service doesn’t appear to violate copyright law because individual subscribers are assigned their own, tiny antenna at Aereo’s Brooklyn data center, making it analogous to the free signal a consumer would get with a regular antenna at home. Aereo spent the subsequent months selecting markets for expansion and renting space for new equipment in those cities. Read more

Stations who streamed their live coverage of Hurricane Sandy on their websites and mobile apps are reporting record traffic according to Broadcasting & Cable.

The ABC O&O, WPVI in Philadelphia, hit a single day record of 13.1 million page views across mobile and desktop on Monday October 29^th and had over 9 million page views on Sunday, October 28^th.  Meanwhile, The ABC owned WABC station in New York City also hit a record 7 million page views on mobile and desktop on October 29, when it had 2 million unique visitors.

B&C also said stations who streamed coverage also drove downloads of their mobile apps.  As of this writing, Cablevision’s News12 (#2), Philadelphia ABC O&O WPVI (#5), Boston’s ABC affiliate WCVB (#7), WFSB the CBS affiliate for Hartford-New Haven, CT (#8) and New York’s ABC O&O WABC (#10) occupied 5 of the top ten free news apps available on iTunes.  CNN holds the top spot.