The Fox News Channel has more competition for its conservative audience, this time from one of its own employees.
Sarah Palin is launching the Sarah Palin Channel, an online “news channel” that will “cut through the media's politically correct filter” and address “the issues that the mainstream media won't talk about.” Rupert Murdoch launched his Fox News Channel in similar fashion by decrying the alleged liberal bias of the media, and targeting his channel to a disaffected audience.
Palin is a Fox News contributor who has a rocky history with her employer. Earlier this month she called for President Obama's impeachment in an op-ed for Breitbart News. This came in apparent violation of her Fox contract, which reportedly “guarantees the cable-news leader exclusive rights to her work on television and on the Internet.” The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove reported that Palin's contract “allowed her to make a side deal for digital TV.”*
The Sarah Palin Channel is backed by TAPP, a company building “niche” digital channels and founded by former NBCU executive Jeff Gaspin and former CNN executive Jon Klein.
Palin's “news channel” joins an already crowded universe of networks attempting to whittle away at Fox News' Republican audience.
Glenn Beck launched TheBlaze after his messy 2011 exit from the Fox News Channel. Beck's network is accessible through Internet subscriptions, and several television operators. The Blaze and Palin's channel both offer subscription plans for roughly $10 a month or $100 a year.
In June conservative publisher Christopher Ruddy launched Newsmax TV online and on providers like DirecTV and the Dish Network. Bloomberg Businessweek wrote that Ruddy wants Newsmax TV to be “a kinder, gentler Fox” and that Ruddy “doesn't need to beat Fox News, he just needs to shave off a little of its audience--particularly those conservatives who feel Fox has drifted too far to the right. 'If we take 10 to 15 percent of the Fox audience,' he says, 'and they are making $1 billion a year, then we are going to be hugely profitable.'”
San Diego-based Herring Broadcasting and The Washington Times launched One America News Network in July 2013. It caters to viewers “with self-described independent, conservative & libertarian values.” Charles Herring, president of Herring Broadcasting, "said his network also would provide a platform for a broader spectrum of voices on the right than Fox now offers." One America has struggled to gain a foothold on cable networks, has a small social media presence (currently less than 4,000 Twitter followers), and lacks well-known conservative personalities.
RightNetwork, a network launched in 2010 by actor Kelsey Grammer and Philadelphia sports owner Ed Snider, failed in its mission to attract a Fox-like audience with programming featuring people like “Joe The Plumber.” It went defunct in 2011.
Other internet video ventures include Pajamas Media's Next Generation TV, a “multimedia platform” for millennials whose most visible personality is former Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields. The site gained notoriety when BuzzFeed reported that former Rep. Allen West (also a Fox News contributor) left the site “after an altercation with a female staffer in which he allegedly called her a 'Jewish American princess.'” Former Republican presidential candidates Ron Paul and Herman Cain (whose subscription model has “withered away”) also have their own video sites.
*This paragraph has been updated with new information from The Daily Beast.