Emily Steel

Aereo, the start-up firm that threatened to upend the television industry, has hit the pause button.

Three days after the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo had violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals on miniature antennas and transmitting them to subscribers for a fee, the company suspended its service.

“We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps,” Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s chief executive, said.

Aereo said that the service would not be available after 11:30 a.m. on June 28 and that it would give users a refund for their last paid month. The company had fewer than 500,000 subscribers in about a dozen metropolitan areas.

The day after the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo in a copyright case brought by the nation’s major broadcasters, Mark Ely was trying to scoop up Aereo customers by promoting his start-up, Simple.TV, on social media.

“Former Aereo customer? Join the Simple.TV Family,” the company wrote on Twitter. “We’re telling Aereo customers: ‘Your favorite service is going away. Here’s an idea that isn’t,’ ” Ely, who started his company in 2011, said.

The television establishment still has much to worry about after its Supreme Court victory over Aereo, the digital start-up that had threatened to upend the economics of the media business. “Television is a castle filled with money,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the Publicis Groupe’s digital marketing unit. “People are trying to get into that castle and take some money.”

Eager for a piece of the $167 billion American television market, dozens of companies are offering options for the growing number of viewers known as cord cutters, who are canceling their traditional pay-television subscriptions. The providers range from Hulu, which the broadcasters own, to bigger services like Amazon, Google and Netflix, all of which offer cheaper streaming alternatives.

In a decision with far-reaching implications for the television industry, the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo, a start-up streaming service, had violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals on miniature antennas and delivering them to subscribers for a fee.

The 6-3 decision was a victory for the major television networks, which had argued that Aereo’s business model amounted to a theft of their programming. The judges’ ruling leaves the current broadcast model intact while imperiling Aereo’s viability as a business after just over two years in existence.

In arguments before the court in April, the broadcasters contended that Aereo and similar services threatened to cut into a vital revenue stream -- the billions of dollars they receive from cable and satellite companies in retransmission fees, the money paid to networks and local stations for the right to retransmit their programming. The networks said this revenue was so essential that they would have considered removing their signals from the airwaves had the court ruled for Aereo.

The start-up contended that the service it provided through warehouses of small antennas was merely helping its subscribers do what they could lawfully do since the era of rabbit-ears: watch free broadcast television delivered over public airwaves. Both Barry Diller, who heads Aereo owner IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia have expressed doubt about whether Aereo could remain in business if the Supreme Court ruled against it.

Digital video is making a leap from the tablet to the television. A growing number of US homes are utilizing streaming devices, such as the Apple TV box, Google’s Chromecast and Roku, or Internet connected televisions to watch online video, according to media consultancy and research group Frank N Magid Associates.

People with connected TVs are watching nearly 12 hours of video programming each week via the Internet, according to research from video advertising company Tremor Video, and Nielsen, the media measurement company. Of that, people spend about seven hours per week watching film or TV show-length programming and about five hours watching short videos, such as five-minute clips. That compares to about 33 hours per week people spend watching traditional television.

The uptick in digital video viewing on television sets comes as more people in the US cancel their pay-television subscriptions in favor of cheaper online streaming alternatives.