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Newsmax TV is an American television channel owned by Newsmax described as Conservatism, pro-Trump, right-wing, and far-right. The network primarily focuses on political opinion-based talk shows. It carries a news/talk format throughout the day and night, with documentaries and films on weekends.
The channel was created by American journalist and Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy. It launched on June 16, 2014, to 35 million satellite subscribers through DirecTV and Dish Network. As of May 2019, the network reaches about 75 million cable homes and has wide Streaming media and digital media player/mobile device availability. The channel primarily broadcasts from Newsmax's studio on Manhattan's East Side in New York City, with headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida and Washington, D.C.
CEO Christopher Ruddy has compared the network to Fox News. In August 2020, The Washington Post described Newsmax as "a landing spot for cable news personalities in need of a new home", citing the network's hiring of Mark Halperin and Bill O'Reilly following their resignations from other networks due to allegations of sexual harassment. Similarly, Newsmax has hired many former Fox News program hosts, including Greg Kelly, Rob Schmitt, Bob Sellers, and Heather Childers.
Around the time of the channel launch, Businessweek Bloomberg profiled Ruddy and Newsmax in a feature story entitled "The Next Roger Ailes: Newsmax's Chris Ruddy Preps TV Rival to Fox News. Businessweek Bloomberg reported that Newsmax planned to build off its success as a digital media player to challenge Fox News in the traditional cable arena while developing a stake in the emerging streaming OTT business.
A Fast Company report in December 2020 suggested Newsmax was on a course to "dethrone" Fox with its streaming digital strategy by offering the channel for free to platforms like Roku, YouTube, Pluto TV, Xumo, Samsung TV Plus and others. "You wouldn't know it by looking at cable TV ratings, but Fox News has a problem on its hands," Fast Company wrote, noting that "When you factor in Newsmax's streaming audience, the race between the two right-wing news networks is closer than you might think."
On January 16, 2016, Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered debuted on the channel. The program ended after the first segment of the August 10, 2016, episode after Lynch announced that he would resign from the network and made comments defending Fox News and criticizing his network for its reporting of the Trump campaign and suggesting they were restricting his editorial control; he was escorted out from the network's New York studio during what would have been the first commercial break. It was replaced the next Monday with an hour-long video simulcast of radio's The Howie Carr Show from WRKO in Boston.
Beginning in 2020, the network significantly ramped up programming, adding evening shows with Greg Kelly, a former Fox News and local affiliate host, and Grant Stinchfield, a former NBC local correspondent and ex-NRA TV host. The network launched Spicer & Co. on March 3, 2020, featuring former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and co-host Lyndsay Keith, Historically, the network started out with a documentary-heavy lineup, but as of 2022, replays of daily and weekend shows make up the bulk of the network's late night programming, like most news channels.
After the election was won by Democrat Joe Biden, Newsmax struck a defiant tone, focusing on conspiracy theories and allegations of voter fraud as a way to attract Fox News viewers angered by what they saw as insufficient loyalty to Trump. Emily VanDerWerff of Vox reported that the outlet did not "go full arch-conservative" and "doesn't give airtime to QAnon paranoiacs", but that it "spent lots of time arguing that other media outlets jumped the gun in calling the election for Biden and that Trump still has a path to win this thing." Newsmax was thus positioned further to the right of Fox but less so than One America News Network, another conservative news channel that embraced a far-right editorial stance during and after the Trump administration.
CNN's Brian Stelter, in an on-air interview, asked Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy why the network chose to air "election denialism" and "bogus voter fraud stuff," to which Ruddy replied that the network featured all points of view and argued that all of the other major news outlets who had reported Biden's election win were "rushing."
Newsmax agreed to pay $40 million to Smartmatic and $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle defamation lawsuits brought by those companies over claims that voting machines were rigged during the 2020 election.
A small number of cable providers, including Breezeline (formerly Atlantic Broadband), dropped the channel in January 2022. The company stated that the decision was not based on the network's content, but because of Newsmax wanting to move to more traditional retransmission consent arrangements where providers pay to carry the network (rather than Newsmax paying providers to carry the channel), while simultaneously being available at no charge via YouTube and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platforms. Newsmax planned to discontinue its free online streams by the end of 2023.
As of October 2022, Newsmax was in a distant fourth place among the cable news channels, behind Fox News, CNN and MSNBC but ahead of NewsNation.
On January 25, 2023, Newsmax TV was removed from the satellite and streaming versions of DirecTV and U-verse after their carriage agreement expired; the network sought to convert from paying DirecTV for carriage to a retransmission consent arrangement. DirecTV subsequently replaced Newsmax TV with the competing conservative network The First TV. While DirecTV isn't required by law to carry cable news channels with differing political agendas, this particular carriage dispute invoked stroke rebukes from conservative lawmakers like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who characterised the dispute as "censorship." DirecTV and Newsmax settled their dispute on March 22, 2023.
Newsmax's retransmission consent agreement with DirecTV and others required it to wind down the free streaming simulcast of its cable news channel, which it did on November 1, 2023. In its place on free ad-supported streaming television providers, Newsmax launched "Newsmax2," which includes headline rundowns and shorter 'best-of' clips of Newsmax programming. Newsmax+ was then launched as a paid monthly subscription service, carrying the traditional feed now exclusive to paid television providers.
Weekends
The terms for DirecTV's new carriage deal for Newsmax TV required the network's remaining over-the-air affiliations and free online availability (outside some exceptions) to be withdrawn as of November 1, 2023, when that access ended and was replaced by a monthly subscription platform, Newsmax+, or TV Everywhere authentication with a paid television provider. Online providers and over-the-air stations began to carry a secondary channel, Newsmax2, featuring taped 'best-of' content with some simulcasting of the main channel's live schedule.
2021–present
Since the election, Newsmax has seen increasing viewership; according to Nielsen, Newsmax averaged 182,000 viewers in the week leading up to the election. In the week that followed, the average increased further with daily averages around 400,000 viewers, with Greg Kelly Reports and Spicer & Co. having attracted numbers in the 700,000–800,000 range. On December 7, 2020, Greg Kelly Reports beat its timeslot competitor on Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, in average key demographic viewership for the first time (229,000 to 203,000), while Stelter observed that overall the program "has nearly a million viewers on a good night".
On-air personalities
Program hosts
Weekdays
Correspondents and substitute anchors
Previous hosts
Newsmax2 personalities
Former over-the-air affiliations
Before the DirecTV dispute and the network added more live news hours outside of overnights, Newsmax TV historically made its feed available to free-to-air terrestrial television affiliates. Currently, only a county-owned translator network in Millard County, Utah, along with Alexandria, Minnesota's Selective TV system continue to carry the main channel over-the-air.
External links
Categories: Official Website, 2014 Establishments In The United States, Television Networks In The United States, English-language Television Stations In The United States, Conservative Television In The United States, Television Channels And Stations Established In 2014, Television News In The United States, 24-hour Television News Channels In The United States
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