After DirecTV dropped former president Donald Trump’s favorite news network, One America News, last spring, the far-right outlet will now broadcast for free into local television antennas after signing a deal with a company apparently willing to host conspiracy theories.
This morning, OAN announced a new agreement with sub-channel provider Major Market Broadcast to launch its new variant, OAN Plus, on the over-the-air channel WSWF in Orlando, as well as WTBT in Tampa.
Besides these stations, OAN will also broadcast across 18 other low-power channels owned by Major Market Broadcast, which claims its network of stations reaches over 15 million viewers nationally.
“The Major Market Broadcasting portfolio of broadcast stations is robust and it provides us with some exciting new and powerful market coverage,” said Alex Kopacz, EVP of Content Distribution and Strategy at OAN, in a statement. “The OAN brand will clearly resonate strongly in 2023 around the presidential election cycle, so launching the channel in these top markets now truly offers a major boost to our voice.”
During the last election cycle, OAN and hosts Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb were sued by voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic in a series of defamation lawsuits.
The company, which is owned by Herring Network, Inc, was “in a race to the bottom with Fox and other outlets such as Newsmax to spread false and manufactured stories about election fraud,” stated the lawsuit.
OAN was later dropped by DirecTV on April 4, after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol resulted in pressure from lawmakers and advocacy groups to stop carrying the network.
The embattled company was also later dropped by Frontier and Verizon.
Besides verifiably false election-based conspiracy theories, OAN has also dabbled in climate change denial, Christian Nationalist propaganda, Russian propaganda and transphobia, to name a few.
This story was first published at our sister publication Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.