Angelo Carusone explains the money behind the AT&T deal with OAN: “AT&T just kind of parachuted in and said here's your golden ticket”
Carusone: OAN “kind of became exclusive to AT&T. So if you are a person who doesn't like Fox and you are in the fever swamps...You switch to AT&T in order to get it”
Published
Citation From the October 6, 2021, edition of MSNBC's The ReidOut
JOY REID (HOST): You mention the fact that they -- that AT&T basically guaranteed that they could still be, you know, relevant and they could still be profitable without ads. They run few commercials, according to Reuters, compared to its competitors its reliance on these fees from cable from DirectTV, etcetera instead of commercials. It inoculates them from advertiser boycotts faced by counterparts like Fox News. So there's no way to boycott them because they don't have any ads.
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): That's right. And, I mean, you know, Fox works the same system. Fox's is disproportionally high, that is how they are able to operate so much with impunity. It sort of ties into your last segment like why is Tucker so bad. In large part it's because Fox News doesn't need any commercials either. They would have a 90% profit margin even if they didn't have commercials. What makes this story so significant is that Fox News basically worked the system, they did it over the course of 15 years, it was this intentional strategy.
In this case, AT&T just kind of parachuted in and said here's your golden ticket. And what's worse is they signed a deal that basically said to One America News and this is how it shows they were invested in One America News' success, the terms of their deal, one renew automatically unless they pull out. Which means that this year, even after all of the insurrection and all that violent stuff that you referenced before, 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. And second, it says if you ever sign another deal with a cable provider it must be on our terms which are really high. And what that basically meant is it kept One America News from getting a lot of pickup and the way that they offset that was by giving them more money. But what that means is that it kind of became exclusive to AT&T. So if you are a person who doesn't like Fox and you are in the fever swamps --
REID: Wow.
CARUSONE: You switch to AT&T in order to get it.