Right wing propaganda outlets are bottoming out
While right-wingers love to accuse the media of having a liberal bias, the reality is that much of the media has moved considerably further to the right in just the last five years than any of them will care to admit. This is partly because network execs have seen Fox News as a profitable business model and have modeled many of the same efforts at CNN.
There have also been a number of right-wing networks that tried to pan Fox as being ‘too woke’ and hired their own anchors to say things even more insane than we’re used to at Fox News – though each has had varying degrees of success at peeling away Fox viewers. OAN was already dropped by its biggest carriers and ratings suffered as a result. Now, Newsmax is being dropped by DirecTV – one of the largest platforms for cable news channels.
While right wing pundits are decrying DirecTV’s decision as yet another example of “conservative discrimination,” the real reason for DirecTV’s choice was obvious. Newsmax demanded higher carriage fees than DirecTV was willing to negotiate – something that would have forced the satellite provider to raise its subscription costs for all members.
The problem is that despite what Newsmax’s CEO wants to say about the channel being discriminated against, their views are just not popular for all DirecTV subscribers to pay them more than the $2 per month each that they already pay to Rupert Murdoch – even if they hate Fox News. Their numbers for viewership don’t give them the leverage – and this is a bit of a problem for the former guy, since one of the most adamantly pro-Trump networks on TV is having problems of its own.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making