DIRECTV offers the #1 satellite TV service in the nation to watch entertainment, breaking and local news, weather, and more at home on the big screen. You can also sign in to your account and stream TV or watch on demand with our mobile app on all your favorite devices, like your laptop, phones, and tablets. The same goes for Sling TV, DirecTV Now and PlayStation Vue, as well as the myriad sports (NFL, NBA TV) and news (CNN Go, ABC News) apps available on Apple TV. DirecTV Now's deal requires you do prepay $200 worth of service for the lesser Apple TV 4K. That's Problem No. The other issues is that DirecTV Now's new $50 package — they call it their 'Plus' plan — only has 40-some-odd channels. The DirecTV NOW app for Apple TV is pretty nice but so far the total experience is dismal. I have yet to watch anything for longer than 5 or 10 minutes without having extensive buffering or a complete drop that requires switching channels back and forth.
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AT&T lied to investors in order to hide the failure of its DirecTV Now streaming TV service, a proposed class action alleges.
AT&T told investors that DirecTV Now was succeeding even as its subscriber base fell due to price increases and the discontinuance of promotional discounts, said the complaint filed Monday in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint accuses AT&T and executives including CEO Randall Stephenson of violating the US Securities Act by 'knowingly or recklessly' making false statements to investors and failing to disclose problems that were affecting DirecTV Now sales.
Via quarterly and annual reports, SEC filings, press releases, and other statements and documents, AT&T and its executives made statements 'to securities analysts and the media that were designed to influence the market for AT&T securities,' even though these statements 'were materially false and misleading in that they failed to disclose material adverse information and misrepresented the truth about AT&T’s finances and business prospects,' the complaint said.
In June 2018, when AT&T bought Time Warner Inc., Time Warner shareholders' stock was converted into AT&T stock. AT&T issued the shares pursuant to a registration statement that it had previously filed with the SEC, and this registration statement 'touted false and misleading financial results, trends, and metrics and omitted material facts rendering those financial results, trends, and metrics materially misleading,' the complaint said. The registration statement consisted of documents filed between November 2016 and January 2017.
'Defendants conducted the acquisition with the registration statement containing untrue statements of material fact and omitting material facts both required by governing regulations and necessary to make the statements made not misleading,' the complaint said.
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DirecTV Now is the online-only version of DirecTV, delivered without a satellite hookup. AT&T had 1.6 million DirecTV Now subscribers as of December 31, 2018 after losing 267,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter, an AT&T earnings report said. AT&T said that many subscribers on heavily discounted plans didn't keep the service when they had to pay full price.
For the full year of 2018, DirecTV Now gained 436,000 subscribers but the satellite version of DirecTV lost 1.2 million subscribers, according to Leichtman Research Group.
Risks must be disclosed
AT&T's registration statement 'touted yearly and quarterly growth trends.. including quarterly subscriber gains in its DirecTV Now service sufficient to offset any decrease in traditional satellite DirecTV subscribers, such that AT&T was experiencing an ongoing trend of total video subscriber 'net additions,' the complaint said.
But in reality, 'DirecTV Now subscribers were leaving (i.e., not renewing) as soon as their promotional discount periods expired, while at the same time new potential DirecTV Now customers were unwilling to pay the higher prices and therefore not subscribing at all,' the complaint said. By the time AT&T bought Time Warner, 'AT&T's reported 'net additions' growth trend was already reversing into a severe 'net loss.'
Publicly traded companies are required to inform investors of risks. But the AT&T registration statement 'purported to warn of numerous risks that 'if' occurring 'may' or 'could' adversely affect the company while failing to disclose that these 'risks' had already materialized at the time of the acquisition,' the complaint said.
Under US law, AT&T was required to disclose 'known events or uncertainties that had caused or were reasonably likely to cause AT&T's disclosed financial information not to be indicative of future operating results,' the complaint said. 'AT&T's undisclosed price increases and discontinuance of promotional discounts for DirecTV Now subscribers, the consequent DirecTV Now subscriber losses, and the already occurring reversal of its touted 'net additions' total subscriber growth trend were likely to (and in fact did) materially and adversely affect AT&T's future results and prospects.'
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AT&T's discussion of risk factors in the registration statement 'did not even mention, much less adequately describe, the risk posed by AT&T’s price increases and discontinuance of promotional discounts for DirecTV Now subscribers, nor the consequent DirecTV Now subscriber losses,' the complaint said.
AT&T publicly revealed DirecTV Now's problems on October 24, 2018 when it reported third-quarter earnings. The complaint said:
Traditional DirecTV satellite subscriber losses jumped over 25% from 286,000 to 359,000 quarterly. Meanwhile, DirecTV Now subscribers plummeted over 85% from 342,000 down to 49,000 quarterly. These dramatically diminished DirecTV Now subscriber gains were nowhere close to offsetting the dramatically increased traditional satellite subscriber losses. As a result, Defendant AT&T's 80,000 total video subscriber 'Net Video Additions' had reversed into a 297,000 total subscriber 'Net Loss.'
Negative media coverage about DirecTV Now's performance followed, and AT&T's stock price dropped nearly 12 percent, the complaint said.
Class certification![]()
The complaint seeks certification of a class consisting of all people who acquired AT&T common stock in connection with the Time Warner acquisition, and all people who acquired AT&T stock between October 22, 2016 and October 24, 2018.
A man named Melvin Gross is the lead plaintiff, and the suit was filed by the Pomerantz LLP law firm, which announced its investigation into AT&T in February. Separately, the Klein Law Firm says it filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of shareholders against AT&T.
AT&T told Ars that the new lawsuit 'is a carbon copy of a baseless suit filed in February. In both cases, the claims are wholly without merit.'
At least two other law firms are investigating similar claims against AT&T.
The Gross/Pomerantz complaint asks for damages 'in an amount to be proven at trial, including interest,' reimbursement for legal costs, and other relief.
In March of this year, AT&T raised the price of DirecTV Now and reduced the number of channels customers receive. AT&T also raised DirecTV Now prices in July 2018, despite telling the government and a federal judge the merger would result in lower TV prices.
The recent DirecTV Now 2.0 update is creating various login issues for some subscribers, many of whom are being told to “hang tight” and use third-party apps to access the service until issues are resolved.
The various reports of issues began almost immediately after the release of the version 2.0 update this past Tuesday, with subscribers reporting the issues via DirecTV Now’s Twitter account… Midi keyboard synthesizer software free.
@DIRECTVNowHelp Help! I am unable to log in to my Directv Now account. I can't use chat since I can't log in. I can't log in on the web and my Apple TV.
— Walter Shwe (@WalterShwe) May 16, 2018
Can’t login after the upgrade on any apple devices. User not authorized
— antariksh (@antarik34737466) May 17, 2018
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We are working to resolve this issue regarding access with your Apple TV. Please hang tight while we fix this and we greatly appreciate your patience! ^JayN
— DIRECTV NOW (@directvnow) May 17, 2018
Over 20 reports through Twitter were made of the same login issue. BESTAppleTV.com has followed up with four of those publicly reporting issues. Three of the four report they are still unable to log in, some more than three days after first encountering problems.
DirecTV Now and its parent company, AT&T, are telling customers that until the issue is resolved, they can access their accounts through their web browser, various mobile apps and directly through the apps of various networks that allow sign-on with their DirecTV Now accounts, the latter being a tedious process that restricts users from watching more than one channel at a time.
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Macos mojave on 2013 macbook pro. A communications spokesperson for AT&T or DirecTV Now has not responded to repeated attempts for comment to this story.
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