Today, Explained - RIP OAN

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

A cable news network tailor-made for the former president is getting canceled. The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona chronicles the demise of One America News. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, fact-checked by Miles Bryan, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, edited by Matt Collette and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained  Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if there were a news network that didn't really care about facts? The Department of Justice has weaponized the FBI and is now actively targeting its political enemies. No, I'm not talking about Fox News. Before Biden became the masterpiece and senility he is today, he was a bona fide creep, a class A pervert. I'm talking about something even less factual. But we're labeled the crazy tinfoil hat wearing loonies for calling this out in the Pizzagate scandal. Coming up on today, explain the rise and fall of One America News and what it says about our conspiracy-fueled, fact-free information age. You can only go so far with conspiracy theorizing and telling lies before it's going to catch up to you because people are not going to want to do business with you anymore. Guess what I never thought I'd be talking about on national television? Gay penguins. And yet, here we are.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for him. Justin Baragona is a media reporter for The Daily Beast, and he has some personal experience with the folks at One American News. A few of the hosts aren't fans, neither is the owner. So, and many of their guests, specifically the Mudpillow guy. Okay, this is Justin Baragona. Three terrible reporters for the Daily Beast.

Aswin and Adam. And the other guy, Justin. Justin Borgamon. Justin Borgana. Borgana. Borgana. Justin Borgana. What a shameful person to our country.

So yes, I've gotten called out a few times on air by OAN folks who are not happy. And yep, Daily Beast and Media Matters and the rest of you a-holes out there can do an article on this. Justin became a persona non grata on OAN by writing about their distinct approach to the news. And more recently, their business woes. On the show today, he's going to tell us how OAN went from the former president's favorite fact-free broadcaster to getting, well, canceled. OAN is a conservative, quote-unquote, news network that began in 2013 and quickly drew attention for itself over the years by leaning further and further to the right of Fox News, jumping full on into the fever swamps of the Internet

and trying to mainstream that type of stuff. And eventually it got the attention of Trump and his audience that then became champions of OAN. Okay, a couple of questions. Go ahead, OAN. We'll take a few questions. Emerald, OAN. And I want to congratulate you on the network.

It's a great network. OAN. Yes, sir. Very good. I have two questions. Treat me very nicely. For those people who have trouble envisioning something more conservative than Fox News, can you help them understand how OAN could outfox Fox?

Oh, yeah. Because OAN doesn't really have any newsroom standards that a Fox News would have. They would grab onto any type of bubbling internet conspiracy that was out there and put it out to its viewers without checking on it first. Take the Parkland shooting, for example, back in 2018. They were out there putting out stories that David Hogg, outspoken advocate for gun safety, that he was running cover for his retired FBI agent father in the aftermath of the shooting. It's disgusting that these trolls are out there trying to make this about me and not

the people that were murdered. They didn't have any proof behind it other than maybe a Gateway Pundit story, which, again, we're talking about the fever swamps on the right. But then all of a sudden, it's starting to get more and more coverage out there on the internet. By Tuesday, the conspiracy went viral on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. The president's son, Donald Trump Jr.,

liked two tweets. When something like that happens, it just emboldens O.E.N. Moore to do more and more stories like that because all they're trying to do is get the attention of Trump world with these type of things. That MAGA base that feels like it's not getting enough from Fox News, that that's too establishment, that they're too scared of the deep state and all that, and that they aren't going to

go ahead and give you the real unburnished truth, which is these crazy conspiracy theories. It reminds us how important the mission is that we're on. And that's to speak truth to power, to hold the powerful elite accountable, and help save this amazing republic. What's the origin story of OAN? Where does this network come from? How does it establish itself on people's TVs in America?

Hello, my name is Robert Herring, and I'm owner and CEO of One America News Network. Robert Herring, who is the founder and the owner of the station, along with his sons, said that it was actually AT&T that came to him to fund a conservative network alternative. This would be a channel that they could offer their customers. And so what happened in 2013 is he announced the launch of it at CPAC that year. I have worked with AT&T in one capacity

or another starting when I was 20 years old. I started out as a chauffeur driving their executives around town. And later in life, this little news network that I built with my family and a small group of the hardest working individuals I know found its way into the AT&T channel lineup. So wait, AT&T would just go up to people and ask them to create deeply political infotainment networks? Apparently, they at least asked this guy to do this. And we do know that they were responsible for the vast amount of funding to OAN throughout the majority of its history. That without AT&T, this station would never have actually existed uh I mean Herring himself is a rich guy and he he could have bankrolled some of it but you know he needed one the funding structure behind AT&T to do this and he needed to be able to be on millions of television sets across the country to be able to make this work at the beginning.

Okay, so AT&T pitches this guy, Robert Herring, on creating an even more conservative quote-unquote news network. What happens next? At that time, then, OAN actually gets in bed with the Washington Times, which is a conservative newspaper out in Washington, somewhat reputable, at least in terms of right-wing media, and that OAN would run out of the Washington Times kind of pulled back. But that was the original idea, was that this was just going to be a somewhat reputable conservative news network. I mean, in those first couple years, during the day, you would have just very boring newsreads with an occasional opinion-ish type segment, and then you'd have your primetime shows that, you know, leaned a little bit more to the right. The only thing that actually stood out from OAN in those first couple years was Tommy Lahren. Four United States Marines are now dead. Climate change didn't kill them. Lack of free community

college didn't kill them. The income gap, wage inequality, nope, not those things either. Gay marriage, nope. Oh, white racism? Not that either. So what did? President Obama, if you won't say it, I will. Radical Islam. She was the big name for OAN back in like 2014, 2015. Well known for her sort of bite-sized rants about all culture war issues or hot button GOP talking points. She eventually moved on, probably just because One American News couldn't pay her what Glenn Beck over at The Blaze was going to pay her,

and then eventually what Fox News was going to pay her. That's what OAN was until Trump came along. If there's anything the Democrats want above all else, it's power. And who stands in their way? Trump supporters. Once you know that Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, they decide to just kind of follow his lead. And so they just start shamelessly pandering to him.

It's like a soulmate situation. It's like, here's an ostensible news network that isn't wild about facts, and here's a presidential candidate who's also not that wild about facts. Exactly. Basically, the first two or so years of Trump's presidency, he essentially ignored OAN. They were trying their hardest to get his attention. But he was like, whatever.

But then he got mad at Fox News. And then he starts talking about how great OAN and Newsmax are. Yeah, I really think the person that appealed to him best that really got him fully getting into OAN was Chanel Rion. Lefties are those twisted members of society who love criminals and desire chaos. Chanel Rion is probably the one person that any listener out there is going to associate with One America News at this point, because she also was a White House correspondent. And we remembered her from those COVID era press briefings where she was sort of Kaylee McEnany's like security blanket. Kaylee would constantly just let her ask her a question when everything started getting a little heated in the press room and then she needed a way to get out of that press briefing and knowing that Chanel would just softball one up to her. Do you consider the term Chinese food racist?

No. Because it's food that originates in China or it has Chinese... No, I don't think it's racist. On that note... I don't think it's racist at all. On that note, major left-wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives and they're claiming you're racist for making these claims about Chinese virus.

Part of the ascendancy of OAN within Trump world kind of goes along with the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump's first impeachment. First of all, I have to say that Chanel has performed a real public service in getting this information out. And then that's where we start seeing like, you know, they're peddling COVID-19 full-on disinformation. There's extensive evidence now that these shots are nothing more than a bioweapon designed by Benito Fauci in conjunction with the Chinese Communist Party to cripple America

and usher in what Geriatric Joe calls the New World Order. And then as we get closer to the election, and usher in what Geriatric Joe calls the New World Order. And then as we get closer to the election, they start ramping up what Trump was ramping up, which is this election is going to be stolen from him. That's in advance of the 2020 election. Yes. What does OAN do after the 2020 election

as Trump begins the Stop the Steal campaign. Donald Trump will prevail because once this is all laid bare in court, the trickery and secrets won't withstand the light of day. On air, they are just parroting everything that Trump and his legal team is out there saying, which is that, you know, there is obvious evidence of widespread voter fraud that stole all these states from Trump. We know it in Pennsylvania. We know it in Arizona. We know it in Nevada. We know it in Georgia, blah, blah, blah. That a big, you know, semi-truck of ballots was being shifted from New York to Pennsylvania.

And then also stating that like Smartmatic and Dominion, these were voting machines that were in league with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and China, and that they were flipping millions of votes for Biden. Dominion and two others dominate the voting technology market in America. This is a problem, especially if their Antifa-drenched engineers are hell-bent on deleting half of America's voice. They don't have the proof for it, but they're like, of course they are because we've got the algorithms or whatever. Solomon says that in order for the ratios to be that exact at clearly designated times,

computer software must have used an algorithm to change the votes. And they just say the word algorithm because they know that the audience doesn't understand what algorithm is. Brutal. Brutal. This whole time that this is happening, one of OAN's hosts is actually working as a legal advisor for him. That host is Christina Bob, who works on the Trump legal team as she is a host for OAN. At this point, there's just no veneer at all left. We're all in it for Trump. We're going to do what we need to do to keep them in office. We're going to push these baseless allegations and essentially what we call now the big lie as hard as we can.

Is Stop the Steal and their coverage of Stop the Steal peak OAN? It is peak OAN. We know it's peak OAN because at the January 6th insurrection, you actually saw an OAN flag being waved there because they know that OAN, they've got Trump's back. Coming up, OAN comes crashing down. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained.

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Call and subscribe today. Explained. So, Justin, we just talked about how January 6th stopped the steal. This conspiracy theory that Trump really was the winner of the election is peak OAN because they go all in. But funny enough, it also leads to their demise yeah and it totally leads to their demise just like the other networks newsmax and fox news that had found themselves pushing out basically lies about the voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic, they end up finding themselves on the receiving end of a billion-dollar lawsuit from those two companies.

A billion-dollar lawsuit? $1.6 billion to be exact. And because they were shamelessly pushing it more so than the other two networks, they felt like not only was OAN hit with it, but many of their hosts like Chanel Rion were named in those lawsuits. OAN, as you point out, continues to this day to give a platform to people like Mike Lindell, despite knowing or recklessly disregarding the truth about his lies and about how false everything he is saying about Dominion is. claims that these two election workers had brought in stolen ballots during the counting phase of the 2020 presidential election in Cobb County, they ended up having to settle that lawsuit. And they had to air an apology about that. A legal matter with this network and the two

election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement. At the same time, you've had a lot of left-leaning activists and media organizations like the liberal media watchdog Media Matters advocating for AT&T and DirecTV to drop OAN from its lineup. This year, even after all of the insurrection, all that violent stuff that you referenced before, well, AT&T renewed with One America News, knowing full well everything that they had done over the previous year. They didn't have to. They made that active decision. So AT&T, which was responsible for creating OAN and owns DirecTV, comes out earlier this year and says, you know what? We're good on OAN. Yes. In so many words, yes. The majority of the revenue comes from what we call carriage fees.

And that's how, you know, the cable provider, the television provider, the satellite provider, they, to offer you so many channels, it's so much money, you know, per month. Well, they split that out between the channels, depending on how big they feel one channel is for bringing in subscribers they get a bigger slice of the pie and oan was getting millions and millions of dollars a year just from 18t just off carriage fees they weren't getting much money anywhere else 90 of their revenue was coming from at t direct tv and it's largely through the carriage fees that they had negotiated. We would also like to ask you, our viewers, to please reach out to the cable provider in your area, whether it's Spectrum, Dish, or any of the other great providers, and let them know that you would like for them to carry One America News.

And you had a host, Dan Ball, urging viewers to dig up dirt on AT&T executives, specifically the chairman, in order to maybe blackmail them into keeping OAN on the air. If you've got any dirt on Mr. Kennard, I'd love to see it and put it on this program. You bring me concrete evidence of whatever it may be, cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wife, saying racial slurs towards white people.

Folks do that. Whatever it may be, find it for me, bring it, and we'll air it. Everybody's got dirty little sins and secrets they're hiding. None of that actually worked. And then in late July, Verizon just put a message to its subscribers out there a few days prior saying, you know, we're in negotiations with the herring network to continue to provide you with one american news and another uh channel that they have a few days later they release a statement saying yep we weren't able to reach negotiation we tried uh so they're gone on July 31st. But as this is all happening, OAN's losing employees left and right. So the only other thing is to lash out, is to gripe about how Verizon's a cancel culture company too,

and they're super woke and how dare they do this to us, just like AT&T and all the rest of the ultra libs that are trying to cancel everything that's even slightly conservative. That's basically, you just go scorched earth at that point on the airwaves. Although these threats to drop these conservative networks are always labeled as business decisions, we know it has something to do with viewership or profit. It almost always has to do with woke leadership, with these companies just caving in and left-wing pressure campaigns. But where are these airwaves even showing at this point? It's essentially just become an internet company, an online product. There's a couple of cable providers that even have it on their lineup and it's like 100 000 homes in alaska

have it you know that's where you could go see oan if you want to watch it on television they have a youtube account they're not going to post their content there because youtube demonetized oan back in late 2020 for peddling too much COVID-19 misinformation. So yeah, they could post their stuff there, but they're not going to get any ads. They're not going to get any revenue. So their only hope is to get people to subscribe to their app and maybe they could run some my pillow ads there buy gold ads maybe some supplements but these are super low paying ads so where does that leave the network is it dead or dying i'd call it dying you can't say it's dead yet if they could make it work on streaming maybe but the

business model was not set up that way the business model was centered around being a cable network. I mean, there is a lot of right-wing streaming options out there that are going to constantly just be beating them, whether it's from the Daily Wire, whether it's from the Blaze. I just don't know if they're going to be able to survive in this environment. It just feels like they're almost already a relic. And though OAN is dying, how are the ideas they promoted doing? The ideas that are promoted on OAN aren't going anywhere. They're out there. And they're out there full force.

You just have to look for them. A lot of times we're just deciding not to look at them, you know? And that's probably to our peril sometimes. There's tons of sites out there, media outlets, streaming channels, even some stuff that's on TV that's going to put out stuff that is similar-ish, if not the same as OAN. Justin Baragona is a media reporter for The Daily Beast. Our show today was produced by Avishai Artsy, edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Miles Bryan, and mixed and mastered by Paul Mounsey. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. Thank you.