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Newsmax sued fellow-conservative network Fox News in federal court on Wednesday, alleging “unlawful monopolization of the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market.”
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, says that the “Fox Corporation has long engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for U.S. right-leaning pay TV news, resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition, and Newsmax Broadcasting.”
Newsmax claims Fox News — the network famous for shows such as "Jesse Watters Primetime," "Hannity" and "The Five" — employs specific tactics to stifle competition, including imposing financial penalties on distributors for carrying other networks such as Newsmax and creating contractual barriers that purposefully exclude Newsmax.
Newsmax claims that were it not for Fox’s practices, “Newsmax would have achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property.”
The conservative news channel market has been dominated by Fox News for decades. But Newsmax, founded as a website in 1998 and later as a TV channel in 2014, as well as newer networks like OANN, which launched in 2013, have created more competition for the powerhouse among conservative viewers.
Fox News averages roughly 3 million total prime-time viewers, making it the most-watched cable news network. By contrast, Newsmax averages less than 300,000 prime-time viewers.
Fox News did not immediately respond to MSNBC’s request for comment, but in a statement to Variety, a Fox News Media spokesperson said: “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers.”