CliffCentral takes legal action over “Unradio”
Gareth Cliff’s multi-platform content channel, CliffCentral, is taking legal action against a large number of entities – including Twitter – for making “uncouth” use of its Unradio brand.
CliffCentral, which launched “Unradio” in May, has already had to launch legal action to protect its multi-platform concept.
“Such has been the interest in it,” the group’s legal representatives, Adams & Adams’s said in a statement on Friday (27 June).
The firm’s Sandton office lodged a successful complaint “on the Twitter social network”, and are now processing 50 more similar complaints against infringers using the “unradio” brand, it said.
“We are delighted with the outcome as it shows just how protectable the goodwill of the Unradio brand is, even though it has only been in active for a relatively short time,” said Darren Olivier, head of the Adams & Adams’ team representing CliffCentral.
“Copying is the sincerest form of flattery but we were forced to take steps to protect us against brand misuse, especially on such a scale,” said Rina Broomberg, spokesperson for the Channel.
“It’s a mark of our success and we expect more of it as we continue to grow using more platforms to disseminate our content.”
On Thursday, it was reported that CliffCentral’s Gareth Cliff Show was dropped from Comedy Central just a month and a half after it launched, due to low viewer ratings.
Cliffcentral said that it terminated their agreement with Comedy Central because “Comedy Central wasn’t working for either of us, so we made the mutual decision to move on”.
“We felt initially that an additional television audience would expand our reach, in reality, it was holding us back from doing the crazy, fun, provocative stuff we needed to be doing with our new platform,” Cliff said of the matter.
Comedy Central responds
Comedy Central said that the Gareth Cliff show was cancelled because the viewership figures for the show were too low.
This was confirmed by Alison Reid, director of communications at VIMN Africa.
Comedy Central would not release official figures, but said that “the ratings were less than we hoped”.
“We mutually agreed to stop after 42 episodes and two months. This was an experiment for both parties and creatively we felt that we hit the right notes but unfortunately the ratings did not live up to the expectation,” said Reid.
“Live TV on this scale is a big investment and it made total sense for Gareth to focus on the online and WeChat aspect of his operations at this point.”
Reid also dismissed Gareth Cliff’s comment that he initially decided to “do Comedy Central because they’ve got such a low audience at the moment anyway”.
“On the contrary, Comedy Central is one of the highest rated general entertainment channels on the DStv Premium bouquet,” said Reid.
More on CliffCentral
Comedy Central was a bad idea: Gareth Cliff
Gareth Cliff canned from DStv’s Comedy Central
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