Sounds like they had bad lawyers (or bad judges). Shouldn't be simultaneously possible to be a cable company and not.
But as IA isn't to my knowledge doing controlled digital lending with broadcast television, is there any plausible argument they would be found to be a cable company?
But, even after the Supreme Court said they were operating more like a cable company https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/supreme-court-pu... they were not allowed to actually operate like a cable company. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/in-win-for-broad...