"Not Red Or Blue—It Is Green"
I turned down an advertisement on my radio show that would have generated a good bit of revenue for my small syndication footprint. The ad would have been a live read for Newsmax. But I did not want to take the angle of telling my listeners DirecTV is censoring Newsmax. It is not true.
DirecTV takes MSNBC because MSNBC is part of Comcast, and Comcast insists DirecTV take MSNBC if it wants to take CNBC, USA, the Golf Channel, SyFy, E!, Bravo, Telemundo, and more. DirecTV gets all or pays a premium for a smaller selection.
DirecTV takes CNN because CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which also owns Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, OWN, Food Network, Cooking Channel, HGTV, HBO, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Turner Classic Movies, and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim among others. DirecTV gets all or pays a premium for a smaller selection.
DirecTV takes Fox News because Fox News is the most watched cable channel coupled with Fox Business and Fox Sports and a host of local TV channels that provide content regionally into DirecTV.
Newsmax has Newsmax, which provided free content to DirecTV. It has nothing to offer but itself. When Newsmax decided to charge for its content, DirecTV replaced Newsmax with its conservative competitor, The First, which has Bill O’Reilly.
DirecTV has been owned by AT&T, which is spinning off DirecTV as the cable provider is a costly, debt-ridden burden. DirecTV will not pay for content if it does not have to. It found Newsmax demanding payment and The First offering itself for free.
I have gotten some hate mail from a few listeners insisting it really is censorship, but it truly is not, no matter how loudly people scream about it. It is appalling so many members of Congress were willing also to scream censorship when it truly was a financial decision by a struggling cable operator suffering as more and more people cut the cord.
I assure you, if it were really censorship, they would not have traded Newsmax for Bill O’Reilly, but that is what they did because The First does not charge DirecTV to carry it.
That leads me to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, a company and individual I greatly respect.