It was a settlement (no guilt admitted or filed in the court system) to end the investigation over marketing and advertising practices including claims of poor reception, allegations that they did not receive channels that were promised and accusations that some customers were charged for canceling services during free programming offer periods that had not yet expired.
If that effected 500k people = $10 before fees; 700k = $7; 1M = $5
Revenue
$12B /yr DirecTV
$22B /yr News Corp (parent company)
$7B from Rupert's British Sky service
Maybe an insider has a better numbers, but this is just chump change AND no more claims. This also happens routinely in the credit and lending world; people don't read the entire agreement, get mad and then they find lawyers to threaten to sue, just to get the settlement; which they all know is in the best interest of the company REGARDLESS of guilty or not. BAD PRESS always wins!
This fact in no way means I don't think they, as well as 99% of most companies, have room to improve.
