Little-watched Newsmax wants DirecTV to pay to carry it

Newsmax, which has appealed to viewers who think Fox News isn't sufficiently supportive of President Trump or whatever they define as conservatism, wants DirecTV to pay a fee to carry its signal. Negotiations broke down in January, Newsmax got dropped, and now is going political.

"DirecTV has balked at that proposal, saying the costs would be passed down to its subscribers, a small percentage of whom watch Newsmax," Tom Kludt reports for Vanity Fair magazine. "On Jan. 13, the network sent a memo to Republicans in Congress spelling out the network’s arguments against DirecTV."  A week later, more than 40 House Republicans including third-ranking Rep. Elise Stefanik, wrote DirecTV and its owners, AT&T and TPG Capital (70% and 30%, respectively, asserting that the company "is moving to de-platfform Newsmax."

"Newsmax is wielding real clout among a newly empowered Republican Party fixated on allegations of deplatforming and censorship," Kludt writes. "A week after Newsmax was dropped, 18 Republicans took to the floor of the House of Representatives to rail against DirecTV, characterizing a garden-variety carriage dispute as something far more dystopian." Appearing on Newsmax last Friday, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer suggested again  that he might hold hearings on the dustup, saying “We’re all huge fans of Newsmax” and he had told DirecTV and AT&T “to get this worked out—or else.”

"Newsmax has insisted that it is only seeking a modest fee of fewer than 10 cents a subscriber per month, but DirecTV says that it would amount to 'tens of millions of dollars'," Kludt reports. "The company, which laid off about 10% of its management workforce last month, has argued that it can’t justify paying a fee for Newsmax at a time when the industry is facing headwinds from cord-cutting and rising programming costs."

Meanwhile, "Newsmax’s audience has plummeted since the wild post-election period" when it took some of Fox's audience, Kludt reports. "The network averaged 119,000 viewers in prime time last month, according to Nielsen, down from 206,000 the year before and 327,000 in January 2021.