Name: Watch now: No antenna required, Madison native brings his Locast TV platform to his hometown
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Watch now: No antenna required, Madison native brings his Locast TV platform to his hometown

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Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. You can cancel at any time!Loading&amp;hellp;{{title}}{{description}}{{banner}}(renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax){{tagline}}{{special_title}}{{html}}You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.© 2022 Lee EnterprisesShare ThisWatch now: No antenna required, Madison native brings his Locast TV platform to his hometownShare thisDavid Goodfriend could have chosen much larger cities in which to place the next installment of his growing business.St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Cleveland, New Orleans and Milwaukee were all available. Instead, he chose his hometown of Madison.He’s hoping a successful court fight will allow his business to remain here and continue to expand to other cities around the country.Goodfriend, 51, a Madison West High School graduate, is the founder of Locast, a service that streams over-the-air television stations to computers, phones and tablets via the internet. By using a provision in federal communications law that allows nonprofits to re-transmit broadcast signals without paying the television stations, Locast is now available in some of the largest television markets in the nation and covers 48% of the country’s population.The genesis of the business stemmed from federal government policies from the 1940s that were designed to ensure people had free access to local television. But today, Goodfriend said, there are too many people who are unable to receive clear broadcast signals and are being forced into pricey satellite and cable system packages.“That social contract has been eroded and eroded,” Goodfriend said. “Millions of people can not get over-the-air signals. This notion that companies get (broadcast) licenses from the public and in turn give something back to the public, I feel, has been horribly twisted. And who lost every time? Consumers.”The service, which launched in Madison Jan. 16 and doesn’t require an antenna, is free to users, but Locast asks for donations of $5 to $25 a month or $60 to $100 a year to help cover its costs. The service is only available to those living within a specific designated market area as defined by Nielsen Media Research. So, those living in the Indianapolis area, for example, can only get television programming from Indianapolis television stations, not other media areas around the country.The Madison media market, ranked 81st in the country, includes more than 343,000 television households in 11 southern Wisconsin counties, according to Nielsen. Dodge, Jefferson and Walworth counties are part of the Milwaukee area, which does not yet have Locast.In the Madison area, Locast offers 34 stations that include the ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and PBS affiliates plus their digital channels, like WMTV’s 15.2, 15.3 and 15.4. Sports are not restricted, so viewers can watch the Super Bowl on CBS while shopping at Woodman’s Market or sitting in an ice shack on Lake Mendota. Locast does not stream cable stations such as ESPN, CNN, HGTV or Discovery. Likewise, Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks games on Fox Sports Wisconsin are also absent from Locast.Other stations available from Locast in the Madison area include COZI, home to classic television shows like “Little House on the Prairie,” “The Munsters,” “Frasier” and “Rosanne.” There’s Court TV, True Crime Network and Sonlife Broadcasting Network, an extension of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. LAFF has sitcoms like “According to Jim,” “Home Improvement” and “How I Met Your Mother.” GRIT features westerns and ION has crime dramas like “Law &amp; Order” and “Chicago P.D.”However, the future of the business, launched in 2018, is tied to a court case filed in New York in 2019 by ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. According to a story by Marc Berman of NextTV, a website that tracks the television industry, the suit alleges that Locast violates their copyrights by re-transmitting their programming without permission and compensation. The lawsuit also accuses Locast of allowing its service to be used as a pawn in broadcast re-transmission negotiations with Dish and AT&amp;T, operators of the Dish and DirecTV satellite TV companies, respectively, Berman reported.The networks compare Locast to Aereo, a for-profit business that was forced to shutter in 2014 after the U.S. Supreme Court said it could not re-transmit programs unless, like cable and satellite operators, it paid broadcasters a copyright fee. In the case of Locast, both AT&amp;T and Dish have added Locast apps to their pay TV set-top boxes.“Locast is simply Aereo 2.0, a business built on illegally using broadcaster content,” the suit from the networks contends. “While it pretends to be a public service without any commercial purpose, Locast’s marketing and deep connections to AT&amp;T and Dish make clear that it exists to serve its pay TV patrons.”In Madison, Lyle Banks, vice president and general manager of Morgan Murphy Media, which operates WISC-TV (Ch. 3), declined to comment on Locast because the case is in litigation. Attempts to reach the general managers of WMTV-TV and WKOW-TV were unsuccessful. However, the National Association of Broadcasters, an association that represents television stations, was blunt with its assessment of Locast.“Locast is all about gaining a commercial advantage for its backers and others in violation of U.S. copyright law to the detriment of local broadcast TV viewers,” the NAB said in statement released at the time of the lawsuit’s filing. “We’re confident the courts will see through the AT&amp;T/DISH/Locast ruse and uphold the integrity of U.S. copyright laws that sustain the economic viability of local broadcasting.”But Goodfriend believes his company, now with 2.3 million registered users and with no advertising revenue, is quite different from Aereo and will prevail in court. Locast, he contends, operates under the Copyright Act of 1976 that allows nonprofit translator services to rebroadcast local stations without receiving a copyright license from the broadcaster.“The Copyright Act of 1976 is clearly on our side, and we believe we will win,” Goodfriend said. “These broadcast giants reap billions of dollars from charging users for programming that’s supposed to be free and are attempting to use their copyrights to maintain market power and force consumers to pay more. The law allows for nonprofits to retransmit local TV channels and to ask for donations to help cover costs. Locast clearly meets these guidelines.”Goodfriend, whose father, Ted Goodfriend had a storied career as a researcher and professor in medicine UW-Madison, grew up in Shorewood Hills and the Hill Farms Neighborhood. He volunteered at WMTV-TV and WHA-TV when he was in high school before attending Beloit College, where he volunteered for Rep. Les Aspin and studied English before graduating in 1990.He then left for Washington, D.C., where he worked for Sen. Herb Kohl and then landed a job in the West Wing of the White House as a deputy staff secretary for President Bill Clinton. That led to a gig at the Federal Communications Commission before he headed off to Georgetown University to pursue his law degree. In 2004, Goodfriend helped launch the now defunct Air America Radio Network that offered a liberal point of view to counter conservative talk radio.“I’ve had a remarkable, unbelievable career,” said Goodfriend who is an attorney in Washington, D.C. “The older I get the more I appreciate what Madison gave me. It’s a gift to grow up in Madison.”In 2009, Goodfriend helped found the Sports Fans Coalition, a New York-based nonprofit, fan-advocacy group which led the successful campaign to end the FCC’s sports blackout rule. Locast launched in 2018 and is operational in Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Houston, among others. Goodfriend said he spends about $50,000 in each market on equipment to collect and stream television signals. Goodfriend is the only employee of Locast, as he uses contracted vendors for customer support, software and operations.Locast is a 501©(3), which means donations to the company are tax deductible.“The sign-ups in Madison are going so well that I think it’s going to pay for itself pretty quickly,” Goodfriend said. “People are cutting the cord. The number of people subscribing to cable and satellite is going down, and it’s going down at an accelerating rate. It’s over. It’s only a question of when is it over.”Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.Locast, a service that streams broadcast television stations over the internet, offers more than 30 stations in the Madison market.Locast is in litigation with the NBC, Fox, CBS and ABC over whether it can legally stream the signals of the network's local affiliates, like WMTV-TV in Madison.&nbsp;Among the stations streamed by Locast are digital, over-the-air stations that in Madison can include 27.2, home to MeTV, which broadcasts episodes of "Leave it to Beaver" and other classic television programs.The roster of some of shows available to Madison area users of Locast.Curious George is a PBS staple but is also streamed to internet users by Locast, a nonprofit operated by a Washington, D.C., attorney.Goodfriend{{title}}{{summary}}You don't have any notifications.Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.Topics

Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. You can cancel at any time!Loading&amp;hellp;{{title}}{{description}}{{banner}}(renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax){{tagline}}{{special_title}}{{html}}You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.© 2022 Lee EnterprisesShare ThisWatch now: No antenna required, Madison native brings his Locast TV platform to his hometownShare thisDavid Goodfriend could have chosen much larger cities in which to...

Watch now: No antenna required, Madison native brings his Locast TV platform to his hometown

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