Local TV Advertisers Ask Court to Deny Media Firms' Motion for Extension

Local TV advertisers in an antitrust suit against Hearst Television, Gray Television, Nexstar, Tegna and about a dozen other media companies asked the court to deny Tegna, Raycom and Meredith’s motion for an extension to produce advertiser and agency contact information. If the court provides a reprieve of the Thursday deadline, plaintiffs Fish Furniture, Hunt Adkins, One Source Heating & Cooling, and Thoughtworx asked that it not extend beyond Friday, said the Thursday response (docket 1:18-cv-06785) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Plaintiffs also asked the court to order movants to cover their costs for responding to movants’ three motions, plus costs incurred in delaying the notice program, it said. On June 15, the court ordered movants to produce customer contact information within 21 days for purposes of providing settlement notice. “Rather than immediately notify Plaintiffs or the Court that production of such information would purportedly take at least 60 days -- a fact Movants have apparently known for months -- they sat silently on their hands,” said the response. The information the court ordered movants to produce “is basic customer contact information already produced by every other Defendant in the case and regularly produced by defendants in antitrust cases like this one,” it said.