Fox News Has Millions More Viewers Than Any Rival. Did It Play Hardball to Get There?

Newsmax filed a lawsuit claiming that the Lachlan Murdoch-run news giant blocks competitors by coercing pay TV operators, threatening steep financial penalties if they add Newsmax.

Newsmax‘s spat with Fox over right-leaning viewers erupted into a high-stakes clash on Wednesday when the upstart right-wing cable news channel sued the legacy media outfit for allegedly violating antitrust laws, opening another front in the battle over the legality of tying and bundling.

In a lawsuit filed in Florida federal court, Newsmax alleges that Fox leverages its control of must-have channels to strongarm distributors into unfair terms. It points to a “coordinated, behind-the-scenes campaign” to suppress growth of the network that’s inflated the price of news.

“But for Fox’s anticompetitive behavior, 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,” states the complaint. “Fox’s campaign to stunt Newsmax’s business has delayed, for almost a decade, Newsmax’s growth in pay TV distribution.”

In a statement, a Fox 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.”

The lawsuit capitalizes on increasing skepticism around bundling and tying and whether they constitute anticompetitive behavior meant to illegally maintain monopolies. It comes amid shifts in the live pay TV ecosystem that’ve raised questions around whether antitrust law should play more of a role to promote competition.

For decades, Fox News has been the highest rated news channel in the U.S. In the first quarter of 2025, it averaged 2.2 million viewers on weekdays, more than double that of ESPN, according to the network. More than 13.6 million people tuned into its live coverage of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

After President Trump’s 2020 election loss, upstart challengers like Newsmax and One America News looked to woo the MAGA base, some of whom were upset at Fox News after President Trump denounced the network as disloyal. Around that time, ratings plunged as viewers fled to rival right-leaning channels, though that didn’t last long.

The lawsuit claims Fox News’ viewership is so big because the company “kept out” rivals.

In recent years, bundling requirements and tying have come under increasing scrutiny. But the cases in which they’ve been considered are mostly in the context of a distributor suing a content provider or provider-distributor hybrid. Consider Fubo’s antitrust lawsuit to block a joint venture from media giants teaming up to pool together their sports licensing rights to form a new streaming service. At the heart of that dispute: Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. leveraging their control of must-have sports to force distributors into carrying dozens of pricey, unpopular channels as a take-it-or-leave it condition. These anticompetitive terms, it said, undermine its business model because they lead to increased costs for consumers, who’re forced to pay for content they don’t watch.

The court ultimately granted Fubo’s bid for a temporary order blocking the joint venture. It didn’t rule on the legality of the longstanding bundling practices, which precedent suggests isn’t illegal, but said that it served as “crucial context,” finding that it had “been uniformly and systematically imposed on each distributor in the live pay TV industry except the joint venture.” Its conclusion was grounded in the companies granting, for the first time ever, an exclusive license for unbundled sports programming.

Regulators’ new merger guidelines issued in 2023 also touched on the practice, stating that deals can violate antitrust law if they entrench a monopoly through bundled products.

For Newsmax, the issue of whether it was harmed by Fox’s allegedly anticompetitive conduct will be an obstacle; It’s much easier to make the case that distributors or consumers bore the cost of inflated news prices.

To get around this, Newsmax argues that Fox blocks competitors by coercing pay TV operators, threatening steep financial penalties if they add Newsmax to their basic tier. It points to so-called “drag down” provisions that modify the terms of traditional carriage deals. They essentially provide that a distributor must carry certain specific lesser-watched Fox channels, like Fox Business or Fox Sports 2, in the same basic tier that Newsmax is carried as a condition of carrying its highly-rated channels. The upshot: Distributors are subject to potentially tens of millions in additional license fees to Fox for the low-demand channels

“In effect, Fox at times refuses to license its indispensable sports, news, and entertainment channels unless the distributor either excludes rival right-leaning news networks entirely, restricts their distribution by placing them in little-watched tiers, or otherwise agrees to put them at a competitive disadvantage,” writes Samuel J. Randall, a lawyer for Newsmax, in the complaint.

During renewal negotiations with Fubo, Newsmax was told that the streamer wouldn’t include its channels after Fox imposed terms that deter the company from adding competitors without incurring penalties, according to the complaint. Newsmax faced delays from being carried on Sling TV for the same reason, it said. The network isn’t currently included in either of the streamer’s base plan.

More broadly, Newsmax points to Fox’s ability to make outsized demands from distributors due to the legacy media outfit’s dominance.

Fox has a history of leveraging the threat of blackouts, particularly of highly-rated live sports, in carriage negotiations. In 2019, it pulled its channels from DISH just before the start of the NFL season. A year later, a dispute with Roku imperiled the streamer’s rights for the Super Bowl. And in 2022, Fox threatened to blackout much of its programming one day before broadcasting the U.S.-Netherlands Wolrd Cup match. T By timing negotiations around buzzy games, Fox mobilized its sports audience as pressure campaign of sorts, according to the complaint. Newsmax argues that Fox has wielded a similar playbook to keep it from growing, bullying distributors from carrying its channels by conditioning carriage deals on them agreeing not to carry competing right-leaning news channels.

The lawsuit claims violations of Florida antitrust laws. It seeks treble damages and a court order barring Fox, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, from reaching anticompetitive deals.

First there was Rush, and then came Fox News/Fox Business. The tracks they ran on were mostly parallel. People who never even heard of Rush Limbaugh were tuning in to FNC and noticed how the content was close to home, and how opinions and conclusions were at least similar to their own. Ditto heads found the same thing in Rush and his show when they started listening to talk radio long before 1996 and advent of the “Fair, Balanced and Unafraid” approach. I really miss those occasional Hannity segments with Rush on the Ditto Cam and I think Fox Biz had him on a few times...When Ailes and the EIB network got together on something it was truly remarkable and that would’ve coincided with peak FR as well.

Newsmax is far superior then Fox Murdoch ha made Fox CMM lite.

He’s pro democrat and hates Trump.

I remember Rush’s television programme had as its executive producer Roger Ailes. Fox News was the successor to the WYFF show after it ended in 1996. Roger Ailes was the “true north” of Rush and Fox News.

After his death, these deliberate films attacking Fox (and even the one on Amazon attacking Trump) targeted Ailes to destroy his legacy so history books will only write a pro-Obama view that destroys the Ailes/Limbaugh legacy.

I’d love to see a “Best of” special of the Rush TV shows. I think a lot of it would still ring true...Like about 98+ percent of it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.