Former President Donald Trump may no longer reach million of conservatives when he conducts rallies across the country in the lead to his Presidential bid.
Trump could lose access to a significant number of supporters because of cable carrier DirecTV’s decision to remove Newsmax, a conservative channel, from its syndication.
DirecTV made the announcement on Tuesday (January 24) after speculation that a move like that was under consideration.
According to DirecTV, the cable carrier had no choice but to drop the conservative channel from its list of channels after negotiations with the channel revealed the Newsmax package “would have led to significantly higher costs” that it would have passed on to its broad customer base.
The cable carrier has had to be more considerate of its spending, given that there has been a 47 percent customer base decline since ATT acquired the company in 2015.
Yet, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy has asserted the move is politically motivated, describing it as a “blatant act of political discrimination and censorship against Newsmax.”
The news is likely to be a devastating blow for Trump, for who the network has built its content around.
Despite Newsmax being around for decades, it — similarly to the recently established conservative network, One America News — averaged 130,000 and 230,000 nightly viewers. But, when other more conservative outlets, like Fox News, reduced their coverage of Trump, Newsmax stepped up to fill that void, increasing its number of nightly viewers.
One such instance was a 2021 Trump rally, which Newsmax claimed averaged 5 million viewers, eclipsing major networks’ figures.
