The satellite pay-TV service DirecTV will drop One America News Network (OAN) when the right-wing channel's current transport deal expires, likely a critical hit for OAN's viewership and finances.
About 90% of the right-wing network's revenue came from a contract with AT & T's TV platforms, including DirecTV and U-verse, Reuters reported in October 2021, citing sworn 2020 testimony from an OAN auditor. DirecTV is the network's largest distributor, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"We informed Herring Networks that after a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires," DirecTV said in a statement to USA TODAY.
A DirecTV spokesman would not say when the OAN parent company Herring Networks' contract with DirecTV expires. But Bloomberg, which first reported on DirecTV's plan to drop OAN, said the contract ends in early April.
OAN and Henning Networks did not immediately respond to a request for comment on USA TODAY.
OAN will also be dropped from DirecTV Stream, the live TV subscription service launched as AT&T TV in 2020.
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The network began airing on DirecTV in April 2017. Many transportation agreements run over a 5-year period.
OAN has been criticized for continuing to question President Biden's victory in the 2020 election, The New York Times reported, and has also maintained that the troublemakers in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol were activists with the left-wing Antifa movement .
In his story on the network on November 23, 2021, the Times noted that OAN correspondent Pearson Sharp said in a report on March 28: "There is still serious doubt as to who is actually the president."
The former president said in an interview on OAN Friday: "I got 75 million votes ... I got more votes than any sitting president in our nation's history. I do not believe he got 80 million votes. OK?"
DirecTV has also had its problems. In February 2021, AT&T separated the service it acquired for $ 48.5 billion in 2015. DirecTV's subscriber numbers dropped from $ 20.5 million in mid-2015 to $ 15.4 million for all AT&T pay-TV services six years later, according to Leichtman Research.
AT&T currently owns 70% of the separate company that is now DirecTV; The private equity company TPG owns 30 per cent.
And merger talks between DirecTV and Dish Network, the other major satellite pay-TV service, have resurfaced, The New York Post reported. The two have previously discussed the merger, but federal regulatory concerns kept the talks from picking up speed.
But this time could be different, with consumer acceptance and emphasis on streaming TV. A potential merger has a better chance now than in the past, according to LightShed Partners, a television, media and technology industry research firm. "We believe that regulatory risks today are not high given the state of the pay-TV market," they said in their 2022 industry forecast list.
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.
