After the police killing of George Floyd, both DirecTV and its parent company, AT&T, made statements across social media claiming to support racial justice, including “advancing equal justice reforms” for Black Americans and promising to “continue to learn and listen” to their experiences with racism. DirecTV even promoted racial justice programming titled after some of Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” to promote “discussion on systemic racism in our society.” But these messages are a stark contrast to the racist lies spread on right-wing cable outlet One America News — programming that DirecTV and AT&T financially support.
Like most pay-TV contracts, DirecTV pays OAN subscription fees, also known as carriage fees, in exchange for the conservative network being available to DirecTV customers, whose subscription costs pay for OAN. The network reportedly relies on these subscriber fees — not ad revenue, which at Fox has proven vulnerable to controversy — as its primary funding source. DirecTV is also OAN’s largest distributor, making the service a vital lifeline for the up-and-coming network with an “almost pre-web” online presence and only a fraction of the audience of Fox News.
OAN claims its distribution reaches 35 million viewers compared to Fox News’ 84 million, though a spring 2019 Nielsen attempt to quantify OAN ratings (since the network does not subscribe to Nielsen) with data from some large metro areas found an average of 14,000 nightly viewers, compared to Fox’s 631,000. With OAN’s reported 13.6 million DirecTV subscribers, at a rate of 15 cents per subscriber per month, OAN would cost DirecTV $24,480,000 every year. Continue reading.