OAN Host Dan Ball Declares War on AT&T and DirecTV

Dan Ball previews his OAN show on Twitter
(Image credit: One America News Network/Twitter)

One America News Network has declared war against AT&T's DirecTV and its board chairman, former FCC chairman Bill Kennard, following the distributor's decision to drop the channel from its lineup in April.

DirecTV, which was recently spun off by AT&T with the rest of the telecom giant's video assets but remains a majority owned by the company, has drawn flak for serving as OAN's biggest distributor and, as such, helping keep afloat a channel that has backed Donald Trump and his baseless claims of election fraud and rigged voting machines. 

Back in October, a Reuters report also revealed that AT&T had supported the fledgling news network, prompting critics to call for OAN's removal from DirecTV.

Dan Ball, host of OAN's Real America, slammed AT&T on his show January 17, but went beyond that to say that OAN was launching a campaign against the distributor and asking his viewers to dig up dirt on Kennard, which he said he would "love to see" and report.

Ball said he would hammer home the anti-AT&T message from now until the channel's contract with DirecTV is up in April.

Ball put up a graphic with Kennard's picture and AT&T's customer support phone number, asking viewers to call every day or e-mail the company to "raise hell" and "blow the phone lines up." ■

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.