Aereo Gave $61,000 in Donations to New Venture Fund, CDT, New Bankruptcy Document Shows

This year through Nov. 19, Aereo also collected nearly $264,000 in interest, dividend or other additional income, sharply higher than the $58,000 in comparable income it took in for 2012 and 2013 combined, it said. In another line item, Aereo gave $60,000 in charitable contributions to the New Venture Fund between March 2013 and June 2014, the statement said. New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity, bills itself as supporting "innovative and effective public interest projects." The contributions from Aereo came in the form of six separate and sporadic $10,000 payments, including one dated April 21, the statement said. That's the day before oral argument in the Aereo case was held at the U.S. Supreme Court. New Venture Fund representatives didn't comment.

Aereo also gave a $1,000 charitable donation Feb. 7 to the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), the statement said. CDT took an interest in the Aereo Supreme Court case, albeit as a neutral participant, when it joined with CTIA, Digital Media Association, Information Technology Industry Council, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition and USTelecom, filing a brief "in support of neither party" that urged the Supreme Court to write a decision for or against Aereo, but one that would steer clear of harming the cloud. CDT on June 27, a day after Aereo’s Supreme Court defeat, in a blog post hailed the news of the decision as "reasonably good" for those who had advocated "the principles CDT had urged the Court to preserve."

CDT spokesman Brian Wesolowski confirmed that the $1,000 Aereo donation was for tickets the company purchased to CDT's Annual Gala, an event that's open to anyone who wants to buy a ticket, he said. "As our financials show, we do accept donations from corporations, but they do not influence our policy stances." As for the Aereo case itself, "we focused on the potential implications of the case for cloud computing, which is why we didn’t take any position on the actual service," he emailed Monday.

As for its financial affairs statement, Aereo was required in it to list all payments it made to creditors in the 90 days leading up to the Chapter 11 filing. The largest such payment was for $270,000 on Sept. 24 to network services provider XO Communications, the statement said. The next largest was for $200,000 paid Oct. 27 to Fish & Richardson, leaving more than $117,000 still owed to the Boston law firm, placing it fourth on the list of Aereo’s largest unsecured creditors, the statement said. According to the statement, no payments were made in the 90 days preceding the Chapter 11 filing to any of Aereo’s three largest unsecured creditors -- Level 3 (owed nearly $606,000), Quality Technology Services (owed nearly $521,000) and Google (owed more than $309,000).

A creditors meeting will be Jan. 14 at 2:30 p.m. in the lower Manhattan office of the U.S. Trustee, the bankruptcy court said in a notice Friday. In its Nov. 20 Chapter 11 petition, Aereo listed $4.5 million in cash assets, and $4.2 million in liabilities, not including damages it still might be forced to pay out through lawsuits from broadcasters.

Other Aereo bankruptcy disclosures: (1) Robert Wiesenthal, Warner Music Group’s chief operating officer-corporate, owned 909,090 shares of preferred Aereo stock when Aereo declared bankruptcy Nov. 20, its Chapter 11 petition showed. Wiesenthal is the former chief financial officer at Sony America and was onetime chief strategy officer at Sony Entertainment; (2) Though the Chapter 11 petition filed Nov. 20 showed the Barry Diller-controlled InterActiveCorp. owning 45.7 million preferred Aereo shares, or 23.3 percent, through its USANI subsidiary, the financial affairs statement filed Thursday listed Diller as an Aereo board member who individually owns no Aereo shares. Diller, IAC’s chairman and senior executive, owned 43.2 percent of IAC as of its last proxy statement filing in April.