I’m of the belief that far fewer people understood the implications of Aereo, the tech company smacked down by the Supreme Court yesterday, than understand their own health insurance. In others, almost no one is conversant in what Aereo, with its tiny little antennas, might have done to the way you and I consume, and more importantly, pay for television entertainment.

Most of the large, national papers, (and here), break down the legal arguments in the case, decided by a 6-3 vote with the Court’s resident trolls — Scalia, Thomas and Alito — actually dissenting in favor of Aereo’s “disruptive” technology. (So yes, let the record show I’m actually aligned with those three … on this one.)

Aereo’s case was always a hard sell. It smells pretty densely of someone making a buck off someone’s else’s investment, and god knows we can’t allow that kind of thing to happen here in the US of A. But the concept of paying one company maybe $80 a year to deliver network programming … instead of handing $50-$120/month to some cable or satellite giant like Comcast or DirecTV … has a lot of appeal, and, more to the larger point, seems an utter inevitability in the age of streaming media … (which I think is going to last a while.)

The Court was careful to assert that it wasn’t going all Luddite with this case. It says it has no quarrel with new technologies, just that this one was pretending to be an antenna company when in fact it was a “retransmitter” like Comcast and the satellites, and therefore should pay ABC, NBC, PBS etc. … like cable and satellites do.

But with Aereo’s defeat goes another opportunity to loosen the grip professional sports has on our wallets. Had Aereo won, the betting was that millions of people would have begun dumping Comcast, et al, since viewers wouldn’t have needed them to get “Two Broke Girls” and “America’s Got Talent” and all the other high-quality, advertising-glutted programming the networks are “providing” for their viewers.

Moreover it would have been, some argued persuasively, an evolutionary moment in the war-on-bundling, the preposterous practice whereby Grandma Millie pays $100 a month for 300 channels of cable/satellite service even though she only watches six shows, none of which are the NFL or local pro sports teams like the Twins and Timberwolves. (I find it odd that our legions of raging, anti-tax zealots never complain too loudly about this kind of flagrant, no-freedom-of-choice scam.)

Pro sports have had a fine, long run at the trough of bundling, via the way cable and satellite operators cover the fantastically large costs of paying the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL for game rights by requiring sports fans to buy packages of 40 other channels to watch them, or in sweet Grandma Millie’s case, in order for her to watch HGTV and the Food Channel.

The bet is that very soon someone will invent a way to grab live streaming of sports broadcasts via the internet and stick a dagger in the heart of the cable/satellite business plan. It may not be free, but it’ll be tough to duplicate the $50-$75 a month bundling up-charge most of us pay to have “free access” to any Twins game when we want it.

Beyond all that though is the threat to the standard, laughably ossified TV advertising model. Even as a geezer, the appeal of the DVR/Apple TV/”cloud” experience is simple: Better picture, no commercials. Watching hackneyed pitches for pickups, beer and Cialis is not a quality use of my time, and who in their right mind, especially younger consumers, will ever accept it any other way? I, for example, had no problem paying $2.99 an episode for “Fargo” sans the interminable three and four minute commercial blocks. (Also, as I say, the streaming picture is far superior to the compressed signal coming in via Dish satellite. The picture quality difference was particularly noticeable with “Breaking Bad’, a virtuoso moment in small screen cinematography.)

So let’s get real. Pay-per-view is the natural future for everything. It’s what we do with everything else. Buy only what you really want. Especially when post-bundle, you’ll find you have plenty of jing leftover at the end of the month for programming that you actually watch. Someone, maybe even a re-considered Aereo, will eventually construct a business model that provides exactly that service to every corner, holler and mountain top of the country.

But it won’t be happening right now.

– Brian Lambert