American cable news channel
Television channel
Newsmax TV is an American conservative television channel owned by Newsmax. The network primarily focuses on opinion-based talk shows. It carries a news/talk format throughout the day and night, with documentaries and films on weekends. During and after the 2020 United States presidential election, it grew rapidly by broadcasting conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of voter fraud.[1][2][3]
The channel was created by American journalist and Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy. It launched on June 16, 2014, to 35 million satellite subscribers through DirecTV and Dish Network.[4] As of May 2019, the network reaches about 75 million cable homes and has wide streaming and digital media player/mobile device availability.[5] The channel primarily broadcasts from Newsmax's New York studio on Manhattan's East Side, with headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida and Washington, D.C.[6][7][better source needed]
Newsmax TV holds a conservative political stance, broadcasting many programs hosted by conservative media personalities. CEO Christopher Ruddy has compared the network to Fox News. The company has hired many former Fox News Channel program hosts, including Greg Kelly, Rob Schmitt, Bob Sellers, and Heather Childers.[8][9] The Washington Post has described Newsmax as "a landing spot for cable news personalities in need of a new home", citing the network's airing of Mark Halperin and Bill O'Reilly following their resignations from other networks due to allegations of sexual harassment.[10]
History
Network launch
In May 2014, U.S. news organization Newsmax announced that it had signed a distribution deal with DirecTV and would launch a national television news channel to compete directly with CNN, Fox News, and other American news networks. It was launched to provide independent news; its founder, Chris Ruddy described it as intended to be a "kinder, gentler Fox News," saying that "Our goal is to be a little more boomer-oriented, more information-based rather than being vituperative and polarizing."[9]
Around the time of the channel launch, Businessweek Bloomberg profiled Ruddy and Newsmax in a feature story entitled "The Next Ailes: Newsmax's Chris Ruddy Preps TV Rival to Fox News.[11] Businessweek Bloomberg reported that Newsmax planned to build off its success as a digital media player to challenge Fox News in the traditional cable arena while developing a stake in the emerging streaming OTT business.
A Fast Company report in December 2020 suggested Newsmax was on a course to "dethrone" Fox with its streaming digital strategy by offering the channel for free to platforms like Roku, YouTube, Pluto TV, Xumo, Samsung TV Plus and others. "You wouldn't know it by looking at cable TV ratings, but Fox News has a problem on its hands," Fast Company wrote, noting that "When you factor in Newsmax's streaming audience, the race between the two right-wing news networks is closer than you might think."[12]
On January 16, 2016, Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered debuted on the channel.[citation needed] The program ended after the first segment of the August 10, 2016, episode after Lynch announced that he would resign from the network and made comments defending Fox News Channel and criticizing his network for its reporting of the Trump campaign and suggesting they were restricting his editorial control; he was escorted out from the network's New York studio during what would have been the first commercial break.[13][14] It was replaced the next Monday with an hour-long video simulcast of radio's The Howie Carr Show from WRKO in Boston.[15]
Beginning in 2020, the network significantly ramped up programming, adding evening shows with Greg Kelly, a former Fox News and local affiliate host, and Grant Stinchfield, a former NBC local correspondent and ex-NRA TV host.[16] The network launched Spicer & Co. on March 3, 2020, featuring former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and co-host Lyndsay Keith,[17][18] Historically, the network started out with a documentary-heavy lineup, but as of 2022, replays of daily and weekend shows make up the bulk of the network's late night programming, like most news channels.
2020 election
During the 2020 United States presidential election, then-President Trump began to promote Newsmax over rival competitor Fox News.[6][19][20] Trump's preference for Newsmax over Fox News became clearer after the latter became the first news outlet to call Arizona for Democratic challenger Joe Biden.[21] Newsmax has made their more conservative leanings a selling point to disaffected Fox News viewers, as well as employing Fox News alumni to join their lineup on Newsmax TV, such as Rob Schmitt and Greg Kelly.[21][22][23]
After the election was won by Democrat Joe Biden, Newsmax struck a defiant tone, focusing on conspiracy theories and allegations of voter fraud as a way to attract Fox News viewers angered by what they saw as insufficient loyalty to Trump.[1][2][3] Emily VanDerWerff of Vox reported that the outlet did not "go full arch-conservative" and "doesn't give airtime to QAnon paranoiacs", but that it "spent lots of time arguing that other media outlets jumped the gun in calling the election for Biden and that Trump still has a path to win this thing."[24] Newsmax was thus positioned further to the right of Fox but less so than One America News Network, another conservative news channel that embraced a far-right editorial stance during and after the Trump administration.[25]
CNN's Brian Stelter, in an on-air interview, asked Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy why the network chose to air "election denialism" and "bogus voter fraud stuff," to which Ruddy replied that the network featured all points of view and argued that all of the other major news outlets who had reported Biden's election win were "rushing."[26]
2021–present
Since the election, Newsmax has seen increasing viewership; according to Nielsen, Newsmax averaged 182,000 viewers in the week leading up to the election. In the week that followed, the average increased further with daily averages around 400,000 viewers, with Greg Kelly Reports and Spicer & Co. having attracted numbers in the 700,000–800,000 range.[27] On December 7, 2020, Greg Kelly Reports beat its timeslot competitor on Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, in average key demographic viewership for the first time (229,000 to 203,000), while Stelter observed that overall the program "has nearly a million viewers on a good night".[28]
A small number of cable providers, including Breezeline (formerly Atlantic Broadband), dropped the channel in January 2022. The company stated that the decision was not based on the network's content, but because of Newsmax wanting to move to more traditional retransmission consent arrangements where providers pay to carry the network (rather than Newsmax paying providers to carry the channel), while simultaneously being available at no charge via YouTube and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platforms.[25] Newsmax plans to discontinue its free online streams by the end of 2023.[29]
As of October 2022, Newsmax was in a distant fourth place among the cable news channels, behind Fox News, CNN and MSNBC but ahead of NewsNation.[30]
On January 25, 2023, Newsmax TV was removed from DirecTV and U-verse after their carriage agreement expired; the network sought to convert from paying DirecTV for carriage to a retransmission consent arrangement. DirecTV subsequently replaced Newsmax TV with the competing conservative network The First TV. While carriage disputes are a routine disagreement between television providers and broadcasters, this particular dispute was politicized by Ruddy and other Republican figures such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who characterized DirecTV's removal of Newsmax TV as deplatforming and censorship. DirecTV is under no obligation to carry Newsmax TV; U.S. law relating to cable network carriage only deals in preventing television providers from giving co-owned networks favorable treatment over others.[31][32][33] Newsmax eventually reached a carriage agreement with DirecTV on March 22, 2023, allowing the network to return to its lineups. The financial terms of this agreement are unknown.[29]
