• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

The battle of the conservative-leaning 24/7 cable news networks is heating up: Upstart Newsmax has filed a lawsuit against Fox News Channel for anticompetitive behavior.

Newsmax accuses Fox of imposing a "no-carry" agreement with pay TV distributors that agree to carry "right-leaning news channels."

And if they do, financial penalties will be imposed on them if they "carry Newsmax or others." That would reveal itself in distributors having to pay for other "little-watched" Fox Corp. channels like Fox Business.

"Fox inserts a suite of other contractual barriers into its carriage agreements intended to prevent Newsmax and others from competing," Newsmax said.

In responding to the lawsuit, Fox says: "Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers."

In return, Newsmax came back with: "If Newsmax was such a ratings failure, why has Fox spent so much time, energy, and resources to suppress us, block us, and denigrate us? The answer is obvious. Also please note that Fox in its statement does not deny any of our serious allegations."

In a CNN interview, Chris Ruddy, founder and chief executive officer of Newsmax, says:

"Fox News and its various parent companies through the years have acted pretty badly to other companies and other people. I think they have a pretty strong track record of unethical and improper behavior."

In another statement, Ruddy, said "Fox may have profited from exclusionary contracts and intimidation tactics for years, but those days are over."

Newsmax touts that it is the fourth-largest 24/7 news network in terms of viewership. The devil is in the details -- Fox News Channel averaged 2.3 million viewers in prime time and 1.5 million in total day viewing.

In contrast, Newsmax has 203,000 prime-time viewers and 137,000 in daytime. That means Newsmax delivers roughly 10% of the audience that Fox News does now.

So is Newsmax successful or not? It may be a good idea to analyze a trend line.

Alarm bells initially rang for Fox News Channel at the beginning of the Biden Administration, when Newsmax made its mark -- and for a short period, witnessed sharply rising prime time/total day ratings.

During the period from November 16-22, 2020, Newsmax prime-time viewers soared to 495,000, according to Nielsen.

In the weeks that followed, the numbers fell to around 191,000 for the period from December 28-January 3, 2021.

Five years later, Newsmax's prime-time numbers -- for August -- sit at 203,000.

Proponents would say that if it weren’t for Fox's contractual agreements, those numbers would be higher. If Newsmax had some evidence, that would surely be revealing.

Critics might say it's because of the quality of content, breaking news stories and deep, revealing opinion content. Perhaps it should go further, seeing how "right-leaning" news channels are defined.

Does that mean more stories being aired supporting the current Trump Administration -- and less for Democrat-backed issues and initiatives?

We need a more detailed, revealing scorecard.