DirecTV to drop One America News Network
DirecTV plans to drop the One America News Network, shrinking the reach of the right-wing TV channel friendly to Donald Trump and widely criticized for spreading misinformation including the former president's false claim that he won the 2020 election.
The satellite television provider said Saturday it had informed OAN owner, Herring Networks. When their contract ends, Inc. will no longer carry its two channels. The decision is believed to remove OAN from millions of homes.
After a routine internal review, we told Herring Networks that they do not plan to enter a new contract until the current agreement ends, according to a DirecTV spokesman.
A spokesman wouldn't say when the contract ends, but Bloomberg News, which first reported development on Friday, said it would end in early April.
San Diego-based Herring Networks did not respond immediately to an email seeking comment.
Bloomberg said DirecTV is OAN's largest distributor. Herring says that OAN is carried by Verizon FiOS and several smaller TV providers. It can also be streamed online. AT&T has a 70% stake in DirecTV, which has carried OAN since April 2017 after AT&T settled a lawsuit demanding it carry the channels. Herring Networks had claimed AT&T reneged on an agreement to carry OAN on DirecTV, which it acquired in 2015.
OAN became a darling of Trump during his presidency and has continued to make claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, a claim that was directly contradicted by the facts and exhaustive reporting. It has had Trump live in post-presidency appearances, but its reporters have refused to challenge his contrafactual claims.
Trump came to the OAN's defense at a rally on Saturday night in Arizona, praising the network — I love One America News, and threatening to call for a boycott of AT&T, the parent company of DirecTV.
This is horrible, Trump said. This is a great network. I watch it all the time and you get the truth. They want to cancel them now because of politics, for purely political reasons. It is a disgrace for what is going on. He said, But I don't think people are going to stand for it and, noting the company's founders were in the crowd, he said, Maybe what we should do is not use AT&T. Dominion Voting Systems sued OAN and other right-wing broadcasters in August, claiming that they damaged the election technology company's business by trumpeting lies spread by Trump, who believes that it was complicit in an election-rigging conspiracy.
As more people abandon it for streaming services, the paid TV market has been shrinking.