Los Angeles Times: Why pay TV operators are dropping Trump-loving cable networks

Before One America News Network host Dan Ball finished an interview with guest Jim Jordan last week, he asked the Ohio Republican congressman for a favor.

“Please put some pressure on AT&T and DirecTV for us,” said Ball, whose nightly program “Real America” airs nightly on the right-wing cable channel. “OAN would love to continue broadcasting on that platform and we know for a fact it is all political behind the scenes on why they’re doing that to us.”

Earlier in the week, Ball solicited viewers to send him “dirt” on William Kannard, chairman of of the board for DirecTV parent AT&T, including any evidence of marital infidelity. OAN’s 80-year-old founder, tech entrepreneur Robert Herring, also went on camera to plea with viewers to ask other cable and satellite providers in their areas to add the channel to their lineups.

The desperate calls for help — which would be considered unseemly on a traditional cable news outlet — follow DirecTV’s Jan. 15 announcement that it will drop the San Diego-based OAN from its service in April. DirecTV, which AT&T spun off last summer, accounts for nearly half of the 35 million homes that can receive OAN on cable or satellite TV. The channel is not broadly distributed enough to be measured by Nielsen.

The loss of DirecTV will deprive the channel of its major source of revenue and cast doubt on the future of the operation, where President Biden’s administration is called a “regime” and concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic are described as hysteria. OAN correspondents have promoted efforts to audit the vote counts in the 2020 election.

OAN is not be the only conservative outlet losing distribution. Newsmax, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based channel that is the TV home of former President Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, was dropped from four cable systems in January after it failed to reach new carriage agreements with those companies.

The two channels gained notoriety in recent years by seeking out conservative viewers who believe right-leaning Fox News, the dominant ratings leader in cable news, did not show enough unwavering fealty to Trump. Both believe it’s now open season on conservative outlets. …

Progressive groups, which have lobbied companies to drop OAN, lauded DirecTV’s decision.

“The network is a known perpetrator of disinformation and extremism, fueling real-world violence and placing the health and safety of so many in jeopardy,” said Yosef Getachew, director of Common Cause Media & Democracy Program.