Following 'Censorship' Debate, Newsmax Will Return to DirecTV

pcmag.com:

UPDATE: DirecTV and Newsmax have reached a deal to return the channel to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and U-verse on March 23. Terms of the deal were not revealed, but DirecTV used its announcement(Opens in a new window) to complain about the state of TV carriage deals.

"This agreement marks DirecTV's latest successful resolution of a carriage dispute, an unfortunate but increasingly frequent occurrence involving nearly every pay TV and streaming provider attempting to keep rising consumer costs in check," the company says. "Over the past five years alone, the industry has endured no less than 140 distinct disputes pitting programmers or station groups against their primary distributors.

"DirecTV has resolved public disputes with approximately 50 programmers or station groups, typically lasting a few days or weeks, but routinely extending to several months in some instances."

In the weeks since Newsmax was dropped from DirecTV, GOP lawmakers argued(Opens in a new window) the move was political in nature and an "assault on free speech." But as DirecTV notes in its initial announcement to pull Newsmax from its lineup, DirecTV is not the only way to watch the channel. It's available for free on Newsmax’s own site, YouTube, and streaming platforms like Amazon Fire TV and Roku. 

Original Story 1/25:DirecTV has now minimized Newsmax, dropping the right-wing channel from its satellite and streaming services, citing Newsmax’s demands for higher carriage fees as cause to dump it.

“On multiple occasions, we made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network, but ultimately Newsmax’s demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base,”