After Being Dumped By Major Distributors, Far-Right OAN Still Finds a Home on Streaming

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Earlier this year, One America News was dropped by its key paid television distributors DirectTV and Verizon after an extensive pressure campaign.

But the fringe right-wing network still finds an audience through streaming platforms like Roku, Pluto TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV.

Verizon, which has more than 3 million cable subscribers, dropped the network in July after negotiations broke down to renew the network’s contract.

“Our negotiation with OAN has been a typical, business-as-usual carriage negotiation like those that routinely happen between content distributors and content providers,” Verizon said in a statement at the time, noting that OAN refused to agree to “fair terms” and was subsequently dropped.

In April, OAN was dropped by AT&T’s DirectTV, which boasts more than 15 million paid subscribers. The New York Times noted in late July that the loss of both Verizon and DirectTV would likely be a “death blow” to the network.

OAN, which is mainly known for its pro-Trump, far-right conspiracy theories, was launched in 2013 by right-wing businessman Robert Herring, who testified last October that AT&T executives had urged him to create the network and that 90 percent of its revenue came from DirectTV carriage fees.

While AT&T’s decision to drop the network was billed solely as a business decision, it came amid an outcry over OAN’s conspiracy laden coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued allegations the 2020 presidential election was stolen. OAN’s Chanel Rion became a regular fixture in the Trump White House and her friendly coverage of the administration led to Trump praising OAN while taking swipes at Fox News.

However, a month after losing its main cable carries, OAN is still on the air thanks to several streaming services.

That’s no small audience either: Nielsen reported that for the month of July, streaming platforms outpaced cable networks to claim the largest share of U.S. television viewing for the first time ever.

Pluto TV, the streaming service of ViacomCBS, had more than 70 million monthly active users in the second quarter of 2022, while Roku had more than 63.1 million users during the same quarter.

Meanwhile, Amazon announced at the beginning of the year that its Fire TV has sold over 150 million devices so far.

OAN can be downloaded on either a Roku or Fire TV, but the user must subscribe to watch the content. On Pluto TV, however, you can watch OAN for free either on a television or through your web browser.

Nandini Jammi is the co-founder of Check My Ads, an online disinformation watchdog. She told Mediaite that Pluto TV is providing an advertising revenue stream to OAN.

The network has other revenue streams as well.

OAN’s parent company, Herring Networks, has its own streaming service Klowd TV on which the network can be watched. Klowd TV, which also carries Alex Jones’s far-right conspiracy program InfoWars, is monetized both through paid subscriptions and has direct and reseller partnerships with all the major ad exchanges, Jammi said.

She pointed out that these exchanges operate under an innocuous brand called “AweTV.com” – a self-described 24/7 lifestyle and entertainment national cable channel.

Jammi explained that OAN “often obtains ad partnerships by obscuring its identity in the advertising supply chain.”

Meanwhile, OAN is still facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic voting systems for spreading conspiracy theories and false claims regarding the 2020 presidential election. The network retracted some claims back in May as part of a defamation settlement with two Georgia election workers.

Despite losing its cable distributors, OAN has made no effort to tap down on the incendiary and conspiracy-laden rhetoric that has so often landed to network in hot water. Just last week, a host on the network called for armed revolution and asked viewers are we really willing to “rely solely on elections?”

The host raged:

Why are we allowing these evil elites to dictate our lives? Why can’t we all man the hell up and fight back? I don’t know about you, but I think it’s somewhat ignorant to rely solely on elections to make these essential changes that our country so desperately needs when it’s become abundantly clear that our entire system is rigged and corrupt. Why don’t we, the people, get organized and take the power back?

Pluto TV and Roku did not respond to Mediaite’s requests for comment.

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