I saw a corporate settlement

Context
This morning, an agreement was reached between DirecTV and Viacom in their 10-day-long dispute over how much the former would pay to carry the latter's channels. DirecTV's announcement posits the settlement as a triumph over "bullying" by a programming provider. Viacom's announcement is more subdued. I myself am a DirecTV subscriber who frequently watches Comedy Central, one of Viacom's channels.

Commentary
I found many interesting aspects to this dispute and its resolution, but I'm going to start with the one that caused me to want to blog in the first place: the belligerents immediately removed all references to the dispute itself from not only their main websites, but the little ancillary ones each of them had set up just to rag on each other about it (this one for DirecTV, and this one for Viacom).

I was sad this information was gone, because I thought the tone each company took in defending its viewpoint might be indicative of their corporate culture, and I wanted to share them with you. Fortunately, the people over at Ping! Zine have been covering the story and have some characteristic quotes from each side here.

It's funny, in the past the two parties seemed to be taking the opposite positions of the ones they're using today. DirecTV generally spoke in measured tones. "We are negotiating." "We'll get this handled." "We're on your side." Viacom claimed to be on the consumer's side as well, but their rhetoric went more along the lines of, "DirecTV is run by greedy, lying bastards who want to take away your Spongebob!" In fact, I have to believe that one of the reasons Viacom took down their previous comments so quickly was because only yesterday they were saying, "DirecTV refuses to negotiate!" And yet a settlement was reached today. Magic, yes?

Perhaps I'm predisposed to take DirecTV's side. I've been generally happy with them as an entertainment provider, and I don't really feel like I have a relationship with Viacom. I like The Daily Show, but I associate that with Comedy Central and Jon Stewart, not Viacom. And of the other 16 channels that were in dispute (See, I even take DirecTV's word for that figure.), TV Land and Nick at Night are the only ones I watch, and those very rarely.

That being said, I really just liked DirecTV's approach to the whole conflict. I don't like scare tactics under the best of circumstances, and Viacom's making the loss of a few TV channels sound like a personal assault was just egregiously bad. It's more than that, though. From my perspective, disputes over money rarely have an ethically right or wrong side. If money's been stolen, or if one party is much more vulnerable, sure, but we're talking about two corporations arguing over how much money they were going to, let's face it, take from me. Best to make it sound like business, because that's all it was. So DirecTV's decision to use the emotionally charge "bullying" word today was disappointing. Ah well, at least I get my Daily Show back.

What did you see today?