The long-simmering rivalry between Fox News and Newsmax for the MAGA and conservative audience in the U.S. spilled into federal court this week, as Newsmax filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing its larger conservative rival of using exclusionary tactics to crush competition in right-leaning cable news.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claims Fox has abused its dominance for years by coercing pay-TV distributors into signing restrictive carriage agreements.
According to the complaint, those contracts either excluded Newsmax from affordable packages or pushed it into premium tiers, making it harder for the network to grow on platforms such as Hulu, Sling and Fubo. Newsmax also alleges Fox pressured high-profile guests to avoid appearances on its programs, ran online smear campaigns against the company, and even hired private investigators to target its executives.
In a statement, Newsmax charged that Fox "abused its dominance in the right-leaning pay-TV news market for years by coercing distributors into unfair carriage agreements designed to exclude or marginalize competitors like Newsmax." The company argued that the practices harmed not just its own bottom line but also consumer choice, saying millions of Americans had been denied access to a broader range of conservative viewpoints.
Fox, for its part, dismissed the case outright. "Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can't attract viewers," the network said in a statement.
A five year fight
The court fight is the latest escalation in a rivalry that intensified after the 2020 presidential election, when Fox's decision to call Arizona early for Joe Biden triggered backlash from parts of its conservative base. Disillusioned viewers briefly flocked to Newsmax, giving the smaller channel some of its strongest ratings in history. In December 2020, Newsmax's 7 p.m. program even edged out Fox's offering in the same slot by 26,000 viewers, a stunning moment in the cable news wars.
At the height of that surge, shows like Greg Kelly Reports pulled between 700,000 and 800,000 viewers, far above their usual averages. But the momentum proved fleeting. By 2022, Newsmax's primetime audience had slipped to an average of just 129,000 viewers, a drop of nearly 20 percent, while Fox continued to dominate the ratings charts.
Still, the challenger has repeatedly capitalized on moments of turmoil inside Fox. When Tucker Carlson abruptly exited the network in April 2023, Newsmax more than doubled its primetime viewership overnight and even outpaced CNN in certain time slots. But that "sugar high" did not last. By mid-2024, Newsmax's overall ratings had plunged again, with a particularly steep decline among viewers ages 25 to 54, the demographic most prized by advertisers.
Early 2025 brought signs of a rebound. The network reported its strongest growth in the 35-64 age group and said it was tying Fox in "prime engagement" among those viewers. That data, Newsmax argues, is proof that Fox still sees it as a real threat. In its legal filings, the company cited internal communications suggesting Fox executives were worried about Newsmax's rise after the 2020 election.
Now the two conservative networks are poised for a high-stakes legal battle that could reshape how pay-TV distributors handle partisan news outlets.
© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
