Saturday, January 15, 2022

DirecTV Dropping Right-Wing OAN Channel




A favorite channel for the malignant loser has been One America News, or OAN. It's pure Trumpian cult worship and propaganda that makes the fluffers at Fox look like socialists by comparison. Now, according to reports, a major television provider DirecTV has decided to drop OAN from its programming, effective when their current contract ends in April. The significance in the move by DirecTV is that not only will the fringe channel be dropped from millions of homes, but the income lost by OAN will be significant:

"Reuters, citing sworn testimony that an OAN accountant gave in 2020, reported last year that 90% of the channel's revenue came from subscriber fees paid by AT&T-owned platforms, including DirecTV.

While DirecTV has since been spun off into a standalone company, AT&T (T) still owns 70% of it. (AT&T also owns CNN, though it is spinning off CNN parent company WarnerMedia in a deal with Discovery (DISCA) expected to be completed this year.)

It is unknown what proportion of the channel's revenue currently comes from DirecTV or how many households it will reach once DirecTV stops carrying it. But the network's website only lists a few other national carriers, Verizon FiOS most prominently among them."  (our emphasis)

OAN has been a leading disseminator of false information about the 2020 elections, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other matters that align with the malignant loser's undermining of democracy. DirecTV may have noticed the wind shifting against complicity with falsehood purveyors, somewhat like Twitter and Facebook have done to limit the spread of Trumpist disinformation -- as well as, potentially, their liability for the violent actions of the malignant loser's cultists. Now, Verizon FiOS needs to understand the dangers of carrying cancerous programming over its wires.

(photo illustration: Daily Beast/Getty)

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