Former President Donald Trump could win back millions of cable viewers ahead of Saturday’s rally in Texas, now that conservative news channel Newsmax is returning to DirecTV.
On Wednesday, Newsmax announced that its programming would come back to DirecTV—and the cable carrier’s streaming services, DirecTV Stream and U-verse—after a business deal was reached for multiyear distribution.
“When the two companies were initially unable to agree on financial terms to extend their carriage agreement,” a press release announcing the agreement said, DirecTV lost the rights to distribute the programming on January 25.
However, as of Wednesday, Newsmax will be available to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse “at no additional cost to customers, rejoining an expanded diversified news lineup” that now comprises six 24/7 networks: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and The First, the release said.
Notably, Newsmax is one of the few cable networks that still broadcast all of Trump’s rallies. As of the fourth quarter of 2022, DirecTV had around 13.1 million subscribers in the U.S.
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Although Newsmax had initially been critical of DirecTV for dropping the network and accused the carrier of being politically against conservative voices, Wednesday’s deal was praised by Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy.
“Newsmax recognizes and appreciates that DIRECTV clearly supports diverse voices, including conservative ones,” Ruddy said in a statement.
Bill Morrow, the chief executive of DirecTV, said the dispute was an “all too common” issue for the pay-TV industry and described the resolution as “a reflection of the free market at work.” The carrier had originally refused Newsmax’s request for millions of dollars, citing increased prices for consumers.
The announcement comes three days before Trump is set to hold a rally in Waco, Texas,—a highly symbolic move given that the Saturday event falls on the 30th anniversary of the Waco siege, in which more than 80 people died at a Branch Davidian compound. The event is largely remembered as a disastrous intervention by the federal government and has been used to push anti-government conspiracy theories.
Newsweek reached out by email to the Trump campaign for comment.
At one time, Fox News had been the only major network to carry Trump’s rallies, attracting an average of more than 7,661,000 million viewers in a slot that typically only saw 1.5 million.
As news outlets like Fox have begun reducing their Trump coverage, Newsmax has seen an opportunity to fill that void and boost its viewership by continuing to air the former president’s events. Newsmax, whose average prime-time ratings typically vary between 130,000 and 230,000 viewers, said one Iowa rally attracted 5 million viewers.
The DirecTV deal was reached amid additional pressure from Republican lawmakers, who signaled they were prepared to summon the carrier’s executives to Capitol Hill for a series of congressional hearings.
“We obviously have an issue with a lot of media companies silencing conservative thought and conservative speech,” Representative Bryon Donalds, a GOP member of the House Oversight Committee, told Newsmax last month. “The one thing we’re committed to is doing everything we can to put an end to it.”