If you're not familiar with Dave McKenna, a journalist for the Washington City Paper, let me fill you in on two things. First, he absolutely hates Dan Snyder (so I always read his work with an extra few filters up), and second, he is a fantastic writer that I wish I had 5% of the skills of.
As we all know, Dan Snyder's Red Zone Capital company purchased Six Flags and tanked it. What you may not know is that Red Zone and Six Flags jointly purchased Dick Clark Productions (dcp) in 2007 - presumably with money that could have been used to keep Six Flags from going into bankruptcy. That's not what the juice of this story is. The gist of it is that dcp (I don't know why it's lowercase, but it is) and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have had a TV deal in place for the Golden Globes since around the time when Jesus died that the HFPA and the TV company split the profits 50/50. Well, things naturally changed, reportedly, when Snyder's company took over.
I suggest you read the whole thing, but here's some highlights of the Hollywood Foreign Press' lawsuit against Red Zone Capital:
"In fact, dcp did not even notify or consult with HFPA before entering into the NBC agreement, in marked contrast with all prior extensions of the NBC agreement," reads the suit, filed on Nov. 17 in a U.S. District Court in California. "Rather, dcp proceeded in stealth...In short, dcp granted NBC a broadcast license for rights that were not dcp's to grant."
It gets worse...
HFPA alleges in the suit that after learning about the NBC deal it has also discovered that dcp has been peddling various digital media rights to the Golden Globes -including a deal with Facebook -that Snyder's company never even discussed getting from the association.
The allegations of infringement and bad faith dealing listed in the complaint contain numerous charges that "dcp was acting at Red Zone Capital's direction and under its control."
So, who has more pending lawsuits right now? Haynesworth or Red Zone Capital??? Obviously, before we all go blasting Snyder, it would be nice to hear HIS side of the story.