New Twist in Comcast-DirecTV Tussle
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 7/29/2007 8:00:00 PM
DirecTV and Comcast's legal soap opera, set to go to trial Oct. 22, took another twist last week.
In the latest chapter, Comcast asked a federal court to issue a temporary retraining order to bar DirecTV from running a new flight of TV ads involving a survey of home-theater installers. The satellite provider said it has already stopped airing the spots.
Comcast filed its request in Chicago with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, where DirecTV has a false-advertising suit, filed in May and set for a fall trial, pending against Comcast. DirecTV's suit relates to an aggressive ad campaign that Comcast launched proclaiming that in a survey, satellite customers thought that the cable operator has the best high-definition TV picture quality.
But in papers filed July 23, Comcast asked for the temporary restraining order against DirecTV. The nation's largest cable company accused DirecTV of “outrageous conduct” for kicking off a new television ad campaign that same day. Those commercials claim that home-video professionals prefer or recommend DirecTV's picture quality to that of cable.
The cable operator last week told the court said that based on representations from DirecTV, it believed that the satellite provider was not going to air any new TV commercials. Nonetheless, DirecTV “snuck on the air” the ads, according to Comcast.
Those DirecTV ads say “Home Theater Professionals Recommend DirecTV Picture Quality 4 to 1 over Cable.” Comcast maintains that claim is false, because the survey of installers it's based on was unreliable and that its findings are being misrepresented.
On July 24, DirecTV filed papers denying it had done anything “outrageous' and arguing there was “no emergency” that warranted the issuance of a temporary restraining order.
“The television advertisements that are the subject of Comcast's TRO motion … were limited to a few local markets and in all events have been ordered stopped so as not to permit Comcast an opportunity to create a mountain out of the proverbial molehill,” DirecTV said in its filing.
Comcast, in turn, last Tuesday answered DirecTV's opposition to any restraining order regarding the ads. Comcast said that even though DirecTV has stopped its new ads, its conduct proves it can't be trusted.
Unless DirecTV agrees to a stipulation that it won't run any more ads based on the installer study until the October trial, the court should grant Comcast's request for a retraining order, the cable company argued.
And as for DirecTV's comment that the ads were pulled, Comcast said, “That representation does not say who ordered whom to do what, what authority the person has to make such an order, or what assurances the court has that the order will be respected.”
Comcast in June filed a counterclaim against DirecTV's original suit, denying the false-advertising charges.
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