The investment firm Hicks Equity Partners is looking to acquire the channel and is pitching other wealthy GOP donors to arrange a bid of roughly $250 million for the channel’s parent company, the people said. The firm is owned by the family of Thomas Hicks Jr., co-chairman of the Republican National Committee and a close friend of Donald Trump Jr.
The efforts come as Mr. Trump has periodically rebuked Fox News for being too critical—despite its opinion-show hosts’ general support of his administration—and has praised One America News Network. The channel’s opinion programming is known among its cable-news peers for its praise of Donald Trump and its advocacy for conservative causes.
One America News Network President Charles Herring said in an email that the network has become “a reliable news source for a national audience,” adding that the company has seen interest from potential suitors from time to time. “With the 2020 political season in full swing, expressed interest is on the rise,” he wrote. “Yet our family didn’t build our operations to sell it.”
One America News Network draws a fraction of the viewers of the cable news industry’s titans—including ratings leader Fox News, MSNBC and CNN—and isn’t widely distributed to American households. Prospective investors have been told a new owner could increase One America News’s reach by striking carriage deals with additional pay-TV companies.
Hicks Equity Partners is a subsidiary of Hicks Holdings, the Dallas family office controlled by the elder Thomas Hicks that invests the wealth of the Hicks family. It is in talks with roughly a dozen wealthy Republican donors about the deal.
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