In the Flight Entertainment system under Payment options there is a way to comp it for select rows or all rows. On Frontier the Flight Attendant comes by with her special card that bypasses the payment. If they can comp it for first class they can comp it for Economy class. I know people who work at LiveTV and they showed me how its done.

Its like at a restaurant they can comp for a drink the same thing here. All they do is under menu"System Reset". When the main menu comes on they go to "Payment Options" And select the rows they want to comp in this case they say "Select all rows' then it asks" Are you sure you want to activate free Live TV".

In fact there is a way to comp Live TV for top level frequent fliers . Apparently the Flight Attendant will go into the system and comp the rows of frequent fliers flying in Y or Unaccompanied Minors or Military Members.

When the plane is at 10,000 feet the attendant has to activate the Pay feature under the settings there is an option to turn Free Preview on and off. I believe the Flight Attendant would have selected Free Preview as another option so passengers would not have to re swipe the cards.

My point is its a very simple process to do it so shame on the lazy Flight attendant. If I was your FA I would have done it this way.