Interesting. My take is that Macys and Dreamworks and all their other regular big advertisers have been dialing the number.
Shoot, Dreamworks or some other lefty company probably ponied up the money to pay the imbalance. They got caught and have decided this is the best course of action. Pay up and call it a mistake. This defense falls apart when you hear the NYT’s initial response to the scandal. They said they charged the rate for an ad that wasn’t guaranteed to run. Only if they had space. However announcements for the ad were running in the NYT and other media days before the ad was to run. This moveon guy had to know that.