NEWSMAX DETAILS ITS MONEY GRAB
Over the weekend, DirecTV extended an olive branch to Newsmax, offering to reinstate the cable channel on its lineup – but with a tiny condition.
No compensation.
Not content with an olive branch, Newsmax is demanding the whole tree, backed by Congressional Republicans who find it a safe space
Newsmax is evidently in desperate financial straits, and it expects DirecTV to bail it out.
That is the only conclusion one can draw from the number the conservative cable outlet put out as its price.
And it is anything but conservative.
And it demolishes the argument that this is about Big Bad Liberal Media muzzling conservative talk.
“Newsmax is seeking a very modest fee of about $1 a cable subscriber when we believe our market rate is $5, and it’s a key reason why hundreds of cable operators renewed with us last year,” Newsmax said in a statement.
Ummmmm….that works out to more than 13 million dollars a year at the $1 rate.
Pretty hefty for a channel that averaged only around 0.1% of total U.S. TV viewing last year?
One-tenth of one percent.
Quite an acceleration from $0, which is what it had been demanding from DirecTV in exchange for putting the little-watched channel on the lineup.
As for that “market rate” of $5 per subscriber.
That’s in the neighborhood of what FOX News gets.
With the tiniest, teeniest fraction of the audience that FOX News gets.