Newsmax filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Fox News, accusing the right-leaning outlet of acting as a monopoly and pushing out its competitors.

“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,” alleged the complaint.

Fox News hit back in a statement saying, “Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers.”

Newsmax’s suit accused Fox of three specific tactics it allegedly uses to push out competitors. “Fox employs at least three anticompetitive means to exclude competing providers of right-leaning video content from the market. First, Fox imposes explicit or tacit ‘no-carry’ provisions on distributors, conditioning access to its commercially critical content on distributors’ concession not to carry other right-leaning news channels like Newsmax and others.”

“Second, it imposes financial penalties on distributors if they carry Newsmax or others by requiring the distributors to carry and pay high fees for Fox’s little-watched channels like Fox Business. Third, Fox inserts a suite of other contractual barriers into its carriage agreements intended to prevent Newsmax and others from competing. These tactics constitute unlawful restraints of trade and flow directly from Fox’s unlawful monopolization of the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market,” read the suit.

Newsmax is seeking an injunction to stop Fox from continuing its allegedly exclusionary contracts with distributors and wants three times the amount of damages it believes it sustained as a result of being suppressed.

Fox News has long dominated the cable news ratings, and its show The Five is one of the most-watched programs on television. Newsmax has seen its audience grow in recent years, following a sudden but temporary spike in ratings following the 2020 presidential election, but it remains far behind in viewers compared to Fox, MSNBC, and CNN.

This is a breaking story and has been updated.

The post JUST IN: Newsmax Sues Fox News Alleging Monopoly Abuses first appeared on Mediaite.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/QYstUa5