The King of Trump TV thinks you’re stupid enough to buy it



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Newsmax has reversed the usual business dynamics of the media. The company is losing money on TV and doing it on the Internet, although Mr. Ruddy told me he expects “cable TV and OTT revenues to be more robust and consistent than online activities over the next 10 years ”.

Newsmax has built a strong and unusual business by reaching out to the 50-plus population that it described in the document shared with investors as “Boomers and Beyond”. The voice of the website, its large and lucrative mailing lists, and products, from books to magazines to vitamin supplements, have the tone of conservative direct mail. And it works: The company projected its 2018 revenue to be over $ 59 million, split between advertising, subscriptions, and e-commerce. (A sponsor of the app was selling health tips last week, asking, “Is the pandemic a lie?”)

Newsmax has raised funds to finance its television ambitions. Private equity from “a few investors,” Mr. Ruddy said, paid to modernize the studios and hire figures like Mr. Kelly and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer as hosts for the show. shows that replaced hours of documentaries on World War II, and carry conservative radio speakers including Howie Carr of Boston. The investors, he said, are domestic, despite a Politico report (picked up on Breitbart) indicating he was in talks to raise funds in Qatar. Mr Ruddy said he sent proposals to many sovereign wealth funds, among others, but did not accept foreign investments. He blames his former rival, Stephen Bannon, for pushing Qatari history, but those grudges are fleeting in the often-shifting alliances of the New Right: Mr. Bannon’s podcast, “War Room,” now also airs on Newsmax late at night. in Week.

Newsmax now needs to raise more money, or sell faster, if it is to continue improving its talent and the quality of its production to take advantage of Fox News – which has started nervously trying to keep guests from appearing on the network.

When I insisted on Mr. Ruddy on why he was telling his audience a story that he himself couldn’t really believe – that Mr. Trump won the election – he didn’t really stand up for it. Instead, he retorted that he was not the only one. “For two years the liberal media pushed this Russian hoax theory, and there seemed to be no justification at the end of the day and it was a pretty compelling and compelling story – controversial figures, things happened , sparks were flying, “he said.

Newsmax continues to tell an exciting story. On Friday night, Mr Kelly opened up about Joe Biden’s “alleged victory”, arranged a lengthy interview with Rudy Giuliani and then turned to an analyst who gave Mr Trump a “35 to 40 percent chance that he ‘he wins this victory’. 8pm host Grant Stinchfield announced that “momentum seems to be returning to the president’s favor” and interviewed Mr. Trump’s attorney, Jenna Ellis, and a Pennsylvania state senator trying to take over. state electoral certification.

Mr. Ruddy’s cynicism brings me back to the Conservative media’s sharpest attack on the mainstream media: Journalists think Conservatives are stupid. Tucker Carlson routinely tells his audience that the New York college graduate snobs who chair the mainstream media see the Conservatives as unsophisticated fraternities, deceived by disinformation, and not as people who actually believe in the ideas being pushed by Mr. Trump, as immigration should be. greatly reduced. These attacks on the media are often wrong, but the coastal media sometimes fail to understand unlike people from left to right, and sometimes they hang out with their audience.

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