Trump Fans May Be Abandoning Right Wing Niche News Networks

Trump supporters may be abandoning some right-wing news channels, perhaps tired of the lack of news and waiting for his up and coming twitter-like social medial app Truth Social to get re-engaged. This probably won’t hurt the giant of conservative news, Fox News, as they are likely to avidly follow Truth Social which could generate interest from viewers. However, smaller news networks may not be as popular amongst staunch supporters of our former President with little controversial news to absorb. 

News channels OANN and NewsMax, who promoted conspiracy theories and other story lines that were popular at the time of the Trump regime, may have also lost interest in these story lines moving to more greener pastures like covering the Senate battles.

As a result of a lack of viewership that didn’t justify the fees being paid, OANN will be dropped by DIRECTV on April 1 and NewsMax (which is also carried by DIRECTV) may not be far behind. “We informed Herring Networks [the owner of One America News Network] that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” DIRECTV said in a statement.

It is not uncommon for cable and satellite operators to review set-top box data when a cable network’s contract is coming up for renewal. Such data shows exactly how many people are viewing, for how long, and what demographic they belong to.

All of the major news networks did well during the Trump Administration, and a number of new and fledgling networks which shared in President viewpoints jumped on the bandwagon, airing extremely controversial programs.

Trump used OANN and other news network to promote fake news, Tweeting, for example, on December 1, “Hope everyone is watching @OANN right now,” citing a false report that there was a truck carrying more than 100K fake ballots on the road. “Other media afraid to show,” he tweeted. In an internal email, an OANN news director told staff that the week of the Capitol assault produced the network’s best ever viewership (the channel is not Nielsen-rated and therefore no data for this is available).

OANN also captured the mainstream press as one citizen storming the capital on January 6, 2021 carried a giant flag with the OANN logo on it. AT&T T , the owner of both CNN and DIRECTV (which was spun out of the company last year with AT&T shareholders receiving 70% and TPG the other 30%), was the biggest supporter of OANN for many years.

Reuters reported last October that the channel was an idea drummed up by AT&T as far back as 2013, when management asked Charles Herring, the owner of OANN and a network called AWE to start a competitor to Fox News, a behemoth who in 2013 generated almost $2 billion in revenue and more than $1 billion in cash flow. Click here for a deep dive by Reuters on OANN.

AWE, which is under the same DIRECTV carriage agreement as OANN, may be dropped as well. The channel was originally branded Wealth TV but changed its name after the Great Recession caused a backlash against shows taunting people’s wealth on programs like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

OANN, by comparison, only launched in 2013 and had almost no revenue that year, finishing 2020 with less than $50 million in revenue and $17 million in cash flow. The channel generated an estimated $16 million in ad revenue in 2020, much of it from infomercials purchased by MyPillow, whose CEO Mike

Lindell has been at the forefront of the news with false claims that Biden stole the election from Trump. 

He wrapped infomercials around “docu-movies” produced about the “stolen” election. Lindell and MyPillow, amongst other defendants, are being sued by Dominion Voting Systems which has been targeted by Trump supporters claiming (with no proof) that their voting machines miscounted ballots in the 2020 Presidential Election.

Going forward, it’s not clear whether AWE or OANN will continue to exist. Although clearly OANN will be losing a significant amount of money starting in April (and AWE as well if DIRECTV drops them), Trump fans can be unpredictable so the Herring family may keep it going as a pet project. Donald J. Trump supporters have continued to push for a “Trump TV” channel. However, it appears that the former president is more focused on social media than a linear TV channel.