thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
OAN is a conservative news network that makes Fox look like a bunch of liberal pansies. They're also on the verge of losing all broadcast relevance.

This is a very strange story. They were initially heavily funded by the CEO of AT&T, which owns DirecTV. He wanted to use them as a proxy to fight some FCC rulings that he didn't like. And OAN took on a life of their own. They were carried by DirecTV. This is known as a carriage contract. And when OAN's carriage contract with DirecTV expired, DirecTV dropped them, largely because of the amount of vitriol they were spewing, especially with Covid denial and election lies.

From the article, "OAN host Dan Ball called the DirecTV nonrenewal "censorship at its best" and urged viewers to "call AT&T's support line. Complain, raise hell, email, phone call daily, every hour, set the alarm on your phone, blow the phone lines up, demand they keep OAN.""

Nice people.

OAN is being sued by both Dominion Voting and Smartmatic for their continuing to broadcast claims that the 2020 presidential election was thrown by rigged voting machines after being repeatedly warned that their statements were defamatory.

So DirecTV stops beaming OAN into homes across the country. DirecTV is a company on their own rights and can make their own decisions as to whom they broadcast. I recall reading that OAN's ratings weren't all that great, and with their legal problems, I imagine DirecTV didn't want to get embroiled in the suits for carrying their programming.

OAN sued DirecTV, and now a judge has thrown out all of their claims, save one, and that is that DirecTV breached contract confidentiality by announcing when the OAN contract was up. That might get OAN some money when that's settled, but nothing like the advertising revenue that they lost when they were dropped as DirecTV was their largest carrier. They were also carried by Verizion's FIOS TV service, and were also dropped.

With the exception of some very small cable TV networks, the only place to watch OAN is from their web site.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/01/oan-loses-key-ruling-in-suit-claiming-directv-broke-deal-by-dropping-network/

Date: 2023-01-18 12:32 am (UTC)
dewline: (amusement)
From: [personal profile] dewline
Good riddance to OAN, then! May their fall continue to corporate oblivion!

Date: 2023-01-18 01:16 am (UTC)
disneydream06: (Disney Surprised)
From: [personal profile] disneydream06
Poor OAN.
Of course ATT holds some of the blame for setting them on us.
Well, not me, I don't have Direct. lol...

I was flipping through our cable menu last night and realized that they dropped one of the CBS channels that we have.
Hugs, Jon

Date: 2023-01-20 07:27 am (UTC)
disneydream06: (Disney Angry)
From: [personal profile] disneydream06
My cable company does the same thing in the middle of the night.
Our services all go down. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not working, but I am up all night and need entertainment. lol...
Now that dad is not home, I will eventually drop the house phone, probably, and I really need to cut back on the cable services we have, and don't use half of them. UGH!!!
Some times it sucks to be the King of Procrastination. :o

Date: 2023-01-26 06:49 am (UTC)
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
From: [personal profile] silveradept
Getting dropped is the nicest thing that could happen to them. There's probably a lot more terrible things we could decide to do to them for what they've said on the airwaves.

January 2026

S M T W T F S
    1 23
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jan. 2nd, 2026 09:14 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios