Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Carol Masser, and one of the feature stories
Speaker 1: of the magazine this week is about one America news network,
Speaker 1: which started broadcasting in has spiraled into a fire NATO
Speaker 1: of MAGA friendly content since President Trump took office. The network,
Speaker 1: which is attempting to outflank Fox News in catering to
Speaker 1: the right well, has even clawed its way into the
Speaker 1: White House briefing room, where the President regularly calls on
Speaker 1: its reporters. Oh A N doesn't subscribe to Nielsen, so
Speaker 1: data about its audience size is something of a mystery. Kagan,
Speaker 1: the media research unit of S and P Global Market Intelligence,
Speaker 1: says the network reaches twenty three point one million pay
Speaker 1: TV subscribers. That's far fewer than news Max TV or
Speaker 1: Fox News, but O E N has nevertheless more than
Speaker 1: doubled its advertising revenue over the past two years to
Speaker 1: an estimated thirteen point three million dollars. As the election looms,
Speaker 1: O A N faces a crucial test cann of capitalize
Speaker 1: on the next act of its beloved protagonist, whether it's
Speaker 1: a second term or post presidency. Some industry observers have
Speaker 1: even speculated that if Trump loses, he could acquire herring
Speaker 1: Networks Incorporated. That's the little known company that owns O
Speaker 1: a N and turned the channel into his own TV
Speaker 1: network and the person who could determine whether O a
Speaker 1: N capitalizes on a Trump free agency. While it's Robert Herring, Sr.
Speaker 1: A largely unknown seventy nine year old former computer hardware entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: An audience of one oh a N has positioned itself
Speaker 1: as the Trump e ist channel on air and an
Speaker 1: eventual home for the president win or lose by Felix
Speaker 1: Gillette and Jerry Smith. Dan Ball, a host for One
Speaker 1: America News Network, looked disgusted. It was Tuesday, September and
Speaker 1: the first debate between President Trump and Joe Biden had
Speaker 1: just ended. Across social media, people were criticizing the model
Speaker 1: raider veteran Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who had struggled
Speaker 1: to control the proceedings. Now Ball wanted to take a
Speaker 1: whack for O a N, a slavishly pro Trump cable
Speaker 1: channel that's been positioning itself as more loyal to the
Speaker 1: MAGA cause than Fox News. Ball pulled out a box
Speaker 1: of tissues. I brought something with me for Chris Wallace.
Speaker 1: He said, Chris should use that to get the brown
Speaker 1: stuff off of his nose. For the next half hour,
Speaker 1: oh a N's panel of analysts piled on Wallace. They
Speaker 1: agreed had been incredibly favorable to Biden, failing to fact
Speaker 1: check his falsehoods, parroting Democratic talking points, and letting him
Speaker 1: interrupt an insult Trump. Still, the commentator said, Trump had
Speaker 1: performed admirably. He had better points to make and more
Speaker 1: specific facts. He was more natural on stage and stronger
Speaker 1: on the economy, voting, fraud, taxes, crime, and the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: By proxy, Fox News was the night's big loser. Ball
Speaker 1: noted that a lot of people think Fox lean's right.
Speaker 1: Not so much anymore. He said, you have an anchor
Speaker 1: right there who was obviously favoring the Democratic candidate. Since
Speaker 1: taking office, President Trump has ushered into Washington a baroque
Speaker 1: procession of luci political operatives and odd ball supplicants, unlike
Speaker 1: anything seen in prior administrations. In the news business, oh
Speaker 1: A N has been the single most jarring rave East.
Speaker 1: The network, which started broadcasting, has managed to claw its
Speaker 1: way out of the cable news hinterland of San Diego
Speaker 1: and into the White House briefing room. Trump regularly calls
Speaker 1: on its reporters and touts it on Twitter, holding it
Speaker 1: up as a worthy alternative to Fox. Oh a N
Speaker 1: doesn't subscribe to Nielsen, so data about its audience size
Speaker 1: is something of a mystery. Kagan, the media research unit
Speaker 1: of SMP Global Market Intelligence, says the network reaches twenty
Speaker 1: three point one million pay TV subscribers. That's far fewer
Speaker 1: than Newsmax TV at fifty eight point two million or
Speaker 1: Fox News at seventy eight point six million, but O
Speaker 1: a N has nevertheless more than doubled its advertising revenue
Speaker 1: over the past two years to an estimated thirteen point
Speaker 1: three million dollars. The channel is brimming with ads from
Speaker 1: companies hoping to sell things to Trump fans. On a
Speaker 1: recent afternoon, it featured commercials for Henry Repeating Arms, a
Speaker 1: shotgun and riflemaker, Trump Card, a documentary by conservative polemicist
Speaker 1: Denish de Suza, and my Lean pc dot com, a
Speaker 1: hard drive scrubbing service. Trump's affinity for the network is
Speaker 1: proving to be its own kind of currency, albeit one
Speaker 1: that might seem at risk of serious devaluation. As the
Speaker 1: election looms. O a N faces a crucial test. Can
Speaker 1: it capitalize on the next act of its beloved protagonist,
Speaker 1: whether it's a second term or a post presidency. Some
Speaker 1: industry observers have speculated that if Trump loses, he could
Speaker 1: acquire Herring net Works, the little known company that owns
Speaker 1: O a N, and turn the channel into his own
Speaker 1: TV network, siphoning off die hard MAGA heads and Q
Speaker 1: and On fanatics as Fox embraces whatever comes next from
Speaker 1: the establishment GOP. While it might be impossible to outflank
Speaker 1: primetime hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson on the right,
Speaker 1: Fox's daytime hours are filled with less partisan voices, potentially
Speaker 1: leaving an opening. Fox News, even under Roger Ales, had
Speaker 1: a track record of being very pro establishment, says Sam Nunberg,
Speaker 1: a former Trump campaign adviser, A major syndicated network for
Speaker 1: conservative news media would certainly have a tangible market to
Speaker 1: compete against Fox during the daytime. The person who could
Speaker 1: determine whether O a N capitalizes on a Trump free
Speaker 1: agency is Robert Herring, Sr. A largely unknown seventy nine
Speaker 1: year old former computer hardware entrepreneur. Herring didn't respond to
Speaker 1: interview requests, but conversations with more than twenty past employees
Speaker 1: paint him as an industrious, adaptive, paternalistic businessman who got
Speaker 1: into TV largely to chronicle the inspirational opulence of the
Speaker 1: unabashedly rich, and who, after a series of misfires, stumbled
Speaker 1: into Trump. Herring is a person, they say, who likes
Speaker 1: to trumpet expensive looking things as cheaply and loudly as possible.
Speaker 1: A Trump yacht parade come to life. In courting the President,
Speaker 1: Herring may hold one advantage over his bigger rivals. He's
Speaker 1: built a private family business that operates with little of
Speaker 1: the tiresome interference and quality controls typical of modern corporate
Speaker 1: and newsroom governance. At Herring Networks, there are no meddling
Speaker 1: board members, no second guessing investors, no hot shot executives,
Speaker 1: and definitely no fealty to pious journalistic ideals. The company
Speaker 1: is a fifedom designed to accommodate one man. Others might
Speaker 1: be able to offer Trump more dollars or a bigger audience,
Speaker 1: but Herring could give him something even more enticing, a
Speaker 1: company that feels like home. I don't quite have the
Speaker 1: money that Rupert Murdoch has, Harring once told the San
Speaker 1: Diego Business Journal, but I can do more with less
Speaker 1: than anybody in the world. In two thousand three, words
Speaker 1: spread through San Diego's small TV industry. Some rich guy
Speaker 1: was starting a new high definition network about upper crust lifestyles.
Speaker 1: Job Seekers were summoned to a cavernous building along Interstate five,
Speaker 1: where they met the visionary behind Wealth TV, a short,
Speaker 1: spry man with dazzling white veneers and dyed brown hair.
Speaker 1: Herring was born in Louisiana, but relocated with his family
Speaker 1: to California when he was young. Forced to drop out
Speaker 1: of school as a teenager, he built a fortune in
Speaker 1: circuit boards, selling one company Industrial Circuits for sixty million
Speaker 1: dollars and another, Herko Technology, for more than one hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars. In two thousand He lived in a mega
Speaker 1: mansion and owned a yacht. His employees called him Mr
Speaker 1: h The idea for Wealth TV, he explained, back in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, had come to him late at night
Speaker 1: while flipping fitfully among cable channels. He'd always enjoyed the
Speaker 1: show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the seminal nineties
Speaker 1: celebration of materialism. He'd even gotten to know it's longtime host,
Speaker 1: Robin Leach. I started thinking, what's this word wealth mean,
Speaker 1: Mr H said in an early promo, It's not money.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. It said an abundance of good.
Speaker 1: That to me sounded like a fantastic name for a
Speaker 1: TV station. Wealth TV was launched in June two thousand four,
Speaker 1: with a staff largely made up of recent college graduates.
Speaker 1: Mr H expected hires to write, produce, and star in
Speaker 1: their own shows. He involved himself in every facet of
Speaker 1: the business, generating ideas, reading scripts, and reviewing expense reports.
Speaker 1: Before long, Wealth TVs programming reflected his past with series
Speaker 1: about anti aging remedies and wellness, Wealth on Health, Sports, Cars,
Speaker 1: Wealth on Wheels, Yachts, Wealth on the Water, and other
Speaker 1: dow Dish playthings, boys toys. The house style was one
Speaker 1: part Late American Empire, one part Monte Carlo Bender, a
Speaker 1: former employee, recalls that everything on the network looked like
Speaker 1: the lobby of a Trump hotel. Another describes the aesthetic
Speaker 1: as women in bikinis throwing a football on the beach.
Speaker 1: The network's brand logo was a ritzy w morphed into
Speaker 1: the shape of a crown. At one point, Mr H
Speaker 1: ordered up a half hour program on a dating service
Speaker 1: called Siet Lana incorporated the business his employees soon learned
Speaker 1: through which he'd met his young third wife. Its namesake,
Speaker 1: siet Lana Novikova, was an entrepreneur who arranged dating tours
Speaker 1: of Russia for successful American men. The TV program included
Speaker 1: footage of a pool side soire at which a line
Speaker 1: of women's stood smiling, their low cut dresses numbered for
Speaker 1: easy identification. Men in slacks mingled nearby, assessing. Mr H
Speaker 1: got his first taste of the conservative limelight in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, during the legal battle over Terry Shivo, a
Speaker 1: woman in a prolonged vegetative state. He publicly offered her
Speaker 1: husband Michael, one million dollars to turn over guardianship to
Speaker 1: Terry's parents, who disapproved of Michael's plan to take her
Speaker 1: off life support. Shivo ignored him. Fox News did not.
Speaker 1: This is a very very generous offer, sir, that I
Speaker 1: think could save somebody's life, Hannedy said. At the time,
Speaker 1: Mr H was losing a lot of money on Wealth TV.
Speaker 1: Few major satellite or cable distributors were carrying it, and
Speaker 1: executives told the San Diego Union Tribune in two thousand
Speaker 1: six that the network had lost as much as sixty
Speaker 1: million dollars. It may break me, to be honest about it,
Speaker 1: Mr H told the paper. The mood at the studios
Speaker 1: grew increasingly strained. Every Tuesday morning, Mr H would gather
Speaker 1: production staff in the boardroom and ask each person what
Speaker 1: they were working on. When he was in a good mood,
Speaker 1: former staffers say the meetings could be pleasant, but when
Speaker 1: the boss was feeling on edge, as was often the case,
Speaker 1: he would tear into everyone, dropping what staffers began calling
Speaker 1: H bombs. A lot of the behavior felt unprofessional, says
Speaker 1: Stephen Alberts, a former Wealth TV producer. It seemed like
Speaker 1: there was no accountability. The attitude was always, well, we're
Speaker 1: a private company, we can do what we want. The
Speaker 1: building's interior was outfitted with security cameras, the better to
Speaker 1: spot workplace malingerers. Turnover was high, gallows, humor abundant. Mr
Speaker 1: H frequently fired employees, often in front of their colleagues.
Speaker 1: Former staffers say he also kept what he called a
Speaker 1: traitor's list of those who had left him for competitors.
Speaker 1: The Herring family was a source of much fascination among staff.
Speaker 1: The younger son, Charles, the company's president, was tight lipped
Speaker 1: and aloof around the employees. The older son, Bobby, who
Speaker 1: oversaw many day to day operations, was regarded as the
Speaker 1: warm one. He told staffers he'd been wild growing up
Speaker 1: and had struck out on his own before becoming a
Speaker 1: born again Christian and returning to the fold. Bobby gave
Speaker 1: the impression that he worked extra hard to win his
Speaker 1: father's approval, which wasn't always easy. Mr H frequently berated
Speaker 1: him in front of others. Former employees say that for
Speaker 1: a brief, uncomfortable spell, he disciplined his eldest son by
Speaker 1: making him perform janitorial duties. Bobby didn't respond to interview requests.
Speaker 1: In an emailed response to questions, Charles wrote that Bobby
Speaker 1: plays perhaps the most important role at the company, overseeing
Speaker 1: daily operations, and said it was untrue that his father
Speaker 1: kept a trader's list. Disgruntled former employees that don't have
Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge aren't the best sources, he wrote. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, Mr H started his first daily news show,
Speaker 1: Wealth International News, filling it mostly with repackaged wire service segments.
Speaker 1: It was anchored by Graham Ledger, a tanned, muscular San
Speaker 1: Diego newsman who had spent years at KFMB TV, the
Speaker 1: local CBS affiliate. Ledger was known behind the scenes at
Speaker 1: KFMB as a vocal conservative who would scour scripts for
Speaker 1: signs of liberal bias. He didn't respond to interview requests.
Speaker 1: Five years after his first foray into news, in the
Speaker 1: spring of Mr H announced he was starting a competitor
Speaker 1: to Fox News called One America News Network. O a N.
Speaker 1: Began broadcasting that July four. The network's logo was an
Speaker 1: eagle with wings outstretched. Talents descending the graphics were red,
Speaker 1: white and blue. News programming continued to revolve around dutiful
Speaker 1: setups of wire service segments, but now Mr H had
Speaker 1: an opinion side too. Ledger moved there and began hosting
Speaker 1: a show called The Daily Ledger, featuring his signature opening line,
Speaker 1: stand by the doors to the newsroom are locked and
Speaker 1: the PC police are not getting in. Oh a N.
Speaker 1: Like Wealth TV, struggled to attract major cable distributors. Stafford
Speaker 1: started calling the network One America snooze. In its efforts
Speaker 1: to gain notice. O a N brought in Sarah Palin
Speaker 1: for a guest hosting stint in the summer of At
Speaker 1: one point she did an obsequious interview with candidate Trump
Speaker 1: in which he praised his avant garde campaign and asked
Speaker 1: him where he got his guts when it came to
Speaker 1: schooling certain idiots in the mainstream media. Afterward, Charles Harring
Speaker 1: told CNN he wanted to hire Palin but couldn't yet
Speaker 1: afford what she is worth. Trump, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: was endlessly jab owning for free the perfect budgetarian stylistic
Speaker 1: fit for Mr. H. Soon O a N was gaining
Speaker 1: notice on the campaign trail by airing Trump rallies unabridged.
Speaker 1: Any Trump fan annoyed by the reality based political interjections
Speaker 1: of Fox reporters now had a genuine alternative. Once Trump
Speaker 1: gained office, O a N spiraled into a fire NATO
Speaker 1: of MAGA friendly content. According to former employees, Mr H
Speaker 1: involved himself deeply in the process, combing through right wing
Speaker 1: websites for ideas and assigning stories. At some point he
Speaker 1: dutifully performed the MAGA haj traveling to stay in the
Speaker 1: Trump International Hotel, Washington, d C, which he was a
Speaker 1: gas to find didn't subscribe to O A N. He
Speaker 1: duly complained on Twitter in twenty eighteen, Jonathan Harris, a
Speaker 1: former O A N producer, filed a discrimination and harassment
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Harring, Networks and Ledger. According to the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: Ledger would regularly berate, demean, and verbally abuse Harris over
Speaker 1: his liberal politics and his perspectives as an African American male.
Speaker 1: Harris claimed that when he filed a formal complaint about
Speaker 1: Ledgers allegedly assist behavior, Harring grew angry and fired him.
Speaker 1: In court documents, Herring and Ledger responded that the claims
Speaker 1: were without merit, but in early twenty a jury found
Speaker 1: in harris favor, awarding him one point one million dollars
Speaker 1: in compensatory and punitive damages. Several months later, Ledger left
Speaker 1: O A N ostensibly to spend more time with his podcast. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the network was playing host to various members of the
Speaker 1: Trump Demi Monde. Herring briefly hired former Trump campaign manager
Speaker 1: Corey Lewandowski as a political commentator, and oh A N
Speaker 1: aired several documentaries and specials involving Trump associates, including Carter Page,
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon, Michael Capputo, and Rudy Giuliani. The multi part
Speaker 1: series featuring Giuliani aired during Trump's impeachment hearings, advancing the
Speaker 1: false notion that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the U
Speaker 1: S presidential election, and on Hillary Clinton's not Trump's behalf.
Speaker 1: Over time, the line betwe the networks, commentators and news
Speaker 1: reporters all but disappeared. In OIAN hired Shanelle Ryan, a
Speaker 1: conservative illustrator, President Trump's most stalwart graphic warrior against leftism,
Speaker 1: for her website as its White House correspondent. She since
Speaker 1: emerged as the defiant, maskless face of the network's pandemic coverage,
Speaker 1: tangling over COVID safety protocols with the White House Correspondents Association,
Speaker 1: promoting the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in
Speaker 1: a North Carolina lab, and posing some memorably bizarre questions.
Speaker 1: Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose
Speaker 1: you are siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals and
Speaker 1: Latin gangs and cartels, she asked Trump in March. Ryan
Speaker 1: didn't respond to an interview request. All the while, O
Speaker 1: a N's reputation grew stronger among hardcore Trump fans and
Speaker 1: the people hoping to profit from them. In January, the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reported that Hick Equity Partners, an investment
Speaker 1: firm based in Dallas, was trying to assemble a bit
Speaker 1: of roughly two d and fifty million dollars to acquire
Speaker 1: Herring Networks. Even by Trump era standards, the deal had
Speaker 1: the air of a nepotistic feeding frenzy. According to the journal,
Speaker 1: Thomas Hicks Jr. Son of the firm's super wealthy founder,
Speaker 1: is friends with Donald Trump Jr. Son of the President,
Speaker 1: and was being backed by Doug Deson, son of billionaire
Speaker 1: Darwin Deeson. With the political season in full swing, expressed
Speaker 1: interest is on the rise, Charles Harring told the journal, Yet,
Speaker 1: our family didn't build our operations to sell it. A
Speaker 1: representative for Hicks Equity Partners declined to comment. Deeson didn't
Speaker 1: respond to an interview request. If Trump wins O a
Speaker 1: N would appear well positioned to capitalize further on its
Speaker 1: relationship with the president. Herring Networks, Inc. Is profitable, has
Speaker 1: no debt, and is growing, Charles Herring wrote to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week, adding that Undy is expected to be a
Speaker 1: strong year for the company, with record top and bottom
Speaker 1: line results, driven by increases in ad sales and digital
Speaker 1: deployments across numerous platforms. Even so, it faces a daunting
Speaker 1: set of challenges. The cable industry is rapidly contracting. Many
Speaker 1: beloved brands are losing large chunks of their audiences to
Speaker 1: streaming competitors, and unlike say Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns
Speaker 1: or operates nearly two hundred broadcast TV stations, it can
Speaker 1: inject with conservative views, mr H is dependent on satellite
Speaker 1: and cable TV providers. In recent years, those companies have
Speaker 1: been trimming away under performing channels to keep costs down.
Speaker 1: Oh A NDS frequent pleas to viewers to badger one
Speaker 1: cable company or another to pick it up haven't helped
Speaker 1: it get carriage from several of the giant pay TV providers,
Speaker 1: notably Comcast, Charter Communications, and Dish Network, and its largest
Speaker 1: distributor A T and T s Direct Tv is swift
Speaker 1: losing customers. Herring Networks does own a boutique streaming service
Speaker 1: called cloud Tv, but it currently provides subscribers with access
Speaker 1: only to a range of lesser known outlets, including O
Speaker 1: A N A w E A Wealth of Entertainment, the
Speaker 1: rebranded name of Wealth TV, the Nautical Channel, INFO Wars
Speaker 1: and horse TV. Ultimately, oh a N's best bet for
Speaker 1: winning wider distribution may depend on positioning itself around Trump's
Speaker 1: next act. John Klein, a former president of CNN US
Speaker 1: and current co chairman of the streaming company tap Media,
Speaker 1: points out that plenty of conservative consumers are still up
Speaker 1: for grabs. Just as political constituencies can splinter and reform
Speaker 1: around new candidates, so can TV audiences. You shouldn't assume
Speaker 1: the conservative audience is a monolith, he says. Years ago,
Speaker 1: Klein remembers when he was helping Palin launch a streaming channel.
Speaker 1: He reached out to Ales, then the head of Fox News,
Speaker 1: where Palin was a contributor. Ales was very concerned about
Speaker 1: being outflanked on the right, Klein recalls, he said, as
Speaker 1: long as you don't try to build a network to
Speaker 1: the right of me, I'm fine. If you do, I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to kill you. Ultimately, the Sarah Palin
Speaker 1: channel came and went as fast as her national political career.
Speaker 1: The Trump Show, by contrast, seems unlikely to fade so
Speaker 1: quickly to static. In May, during an appearance on O
Speaker 1: a N, Mr h said the network is preparing to
Speaker 1: expand and hire more people. Criticism of its reporting in
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, he averred, was a welcome sign of
Speaker 1: its growing stature. I kind of enjoy it, he said.
Speaker 1: What it really means is that we're making progress. They're
Speaker 1: worried that we're coming up. There's a lot of reporters
Speaker 1: out there that should spend more time really doing what
Speaker 1: our kids do, doing research and everything and trying to
Speaker 1: put out real news. And that's one of our feature
Speaker 1: stories this week by Felix to Let, media editor at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week. It is on the Trump loving network
Speaker 1: that has the potential to become his fallback plan. That
Speaker 1: story and more in Bloomberg Business Week. It's on newsstands,
Speaker 1: it's on the Bloomberg and it's also online at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure also to check out Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Radio on Bloomberg Radio that's Monday through Friday at
Speaker 1: two pm Wall Street Time, also on YouTube, Just search
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Global News, and also follow a podcast on
Speaker 1: Apple and at Bloomberg dot Com. I'm Carol Masser. Join
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Live on October twenty nine for the latest installment
Speaker 1: of invest Talks featuring Henry Kravis tapping into the expertise
Speaker 1: of the global investment firm KKRS co chairman and CEO.
Speaker 1: This conversation will cover topics ranging from the outlook for
Speaker 1: markets and US China policy, to diversity on Wall Street
Speaker 1: and leading through COVID. Join us on October twenty nine
Speaker 1: to hear what's on the horizon for the global economy.
Speaker 1: Register now at Bloomberg Live dot com slash invest Talks