Aereo has launched a PR blitz ahead of its April 22nd Supreme Court hearing, the centerpiece of which is a new advocacy site called "Protect My Antenna," which includes all of the court briefs, decisions and documents related to the Aereo case. The site also invites visitors to sign up for email updates. Presumably additional media, such as interviews with Aereo's founder and CEO Chet Kanojia will be added as well.

Chet has been interviewed by many media outlets in the past couple of years (including VideoNuze, here and here), but a new one appearing today as part of the PR campaign is with Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric (embedded below). As he has done in prior interviews, Chet adroitly positions the case as being about far more than Aereo itself, but rather about the legitimacy of cloud computing, the expense of today's pay-TV bundles, consumer choice and the importance of innovation.

Yet another piece of the campaign is an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal by Barry Diller, Chairman of IAC and a major investor in Aereo. Interestingly, Diller devotes a good chunk of his op-ed to criticizing the Obama administration for taking the broadcasters' side, via a "friend of the court" brief that the Justice Department filed. Diller's op-ed thereby escalates the battle into broader political terms ("the administration has signaled that the preservation of legacy business models takes precedence over lawful technological innovation.") Has Aereo left any stone unturned?!

With the PR campaign, Aereo is clearly trying to win in the court of public opinion, but whether any of this means anything where it really matters - at the Supreme Court next week - is another question. The justices don't live in bubbles, but I'm guessing they're also unlikely to affected by much of this. Still, I do think that part of the justices' decision-making will be influenced by how much to favor Aereo's pro-technology innovation arguments when evaluating the precise copyright questions before them.

As one last update, Aereo will now have to win 5 votes to prevail, as Justice Samuel Alito has un-recused (is that a word?) himself. He had previously recused himself without explanation, meaning that Aereo only needed 4 votes and therefore could win on a tie.

(Note: if you are planning to attend the hearing, please let me know as I'm looking for first-hand observations)