DirecTV to Drop OAN Conservative News Channel

U.S. satellite broadcaster DirecTV said on Friday it will drop far-right channel One America News (OAN) from its service when its contract expires in April, in a blow to the popular news network.

Reuters reports OAN, which rose to prominence amid the triumph and tumult of the administration of then-President Donald Trump, has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

"We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires," a DirecTV spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

AT&T has a 70% stake in DirecTV, after last year spinning off the satellite service, now an independently managed company. The U.S. telecommunications company entered into a deal with Herring Networks Inc in 2017, which included OAN and a little-watched lifestyle channel, AWE. DirecTV began carrying the networks in April that year.

AT&T has been a crucial source of funds for OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, a Reuters investigation found last year. Ninety percent of OAN's revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.

OAN became one of Trump’s favorite channels while he was president. In 2020, he gave OAN a boost by tweeting one of its stories that maligned an elderly protester who was knocked down and injured by police on TV during a protest in Buffalo.

Bloomberg reports critics have called on TV distributors to stop carrying the network. In a November blog post, John Bergmayer, legal director at the advocacy group Public Knowledge, said that “OAN’s support for the ‘Big Lie’ that the 2020 election was stolen and the fact that it’s consistently giving airtime to conspiracy theories and misinformation on COVID-19, moves it from a participant in the marketplace of ideas to a peddler of toxic lies.”

Pay-TV providers like DirecTV have been dropping channels to lower their programming costs at a time when consumers are increasingly replacing traditional TV with lower cost streaming services.