Live from Virginia Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed CEO and President of Newsmax, Chris Ruddy to the show.
During the show, Ruddy described how he’s structured Newsmax TV and Newsmax Magazine citing that the mainstream media was dominated by liberal cable news and programs. He pointed out that as FOX News steers left as indicated by President Trump that it has left a void for people to find conservative news that was not managed by the corporate advertising czars.
Fredericks: Joining us now is Chris Ruddy. He’s the Chairman and CEO of Newsmax. Hey, Chris, great to have you with us well.
Rudy: Well, John, with that introduction I don’t even need to come on. I just need to take a bow. I think by now you know, the president is absolutely right. Fox News is not what it used to be. And it’s very sad. The president used those words. I mean you can’t talk about George Soros, Newt Gingrich.
The House speaker was reprimanded by two hosts that nobody ever really knows. Dick Morris said that Victoria Toensing, Joseph diGenova, that they were all asked to not go on FOX anymore if they ever talk about George Soros. Newsmax is not afraid to do that. FOX confirmed this story that the President called our troops’ dead servicemen suckers and losers.
Which even general Kelly’s chief of staff, a guy named Zack Fuentes, said was a lie. So you know, you have to wonder what is going on at FOX? And I’ll tell you, Newsmax stands with our president. And I think that’s why our ratings are booming. We’re up to 10 million people.
We were just at three million a few months back. And a lot of people are tuning in. They don’t even need cable, which is amazing. You can go on all these free devices, or on your app, and just download the Newsmax app from your smartphone. And people are gonna weigh on their voting with their feed for Newsmax.
Fredericks: Well here’s what you’ve done, Chris Rudy. You’ve done three things. Number one, you’ve created a news and information cable channel that’s straight up. That’s not going to be afraid of going against George Soros. Not really putting their finger in the wind trying to judge who might win the next election.
Not fear of some advertiser getting upset because of something that someone says. So that’s number one. The second thing you’ve done is you’ve been able to have the visionary foresight to break the mold and put this on free formats. A lot of people are afraid to do that because their revenue comes from the cable subscriptions.
But you’re ahead of this, you know that that’s going away eventually, right? People can just stop paying for that. Eventually, you’re on the free platform. Your viewership is going up. And the third thing you’ve done is, Chris, at the end of the day, content is king. You’ve got great content. And so you’ve kind of, to me, you’ve figured out the trifecta here. That’s why you guys are so unbelievably successful.
Ruddy: Well you know when you look at it, Fox News, which owns half the cable news market, it’s the only thing on the right side that’s a major player. Newsmax is now emerging quickly in that area. and you’re right. There’s a lot of FOX that is not free on all on these free platforms. Newsmax is.
We’re getting about eight million viewers a month according to the data on all these free platforms. So we’re well-superseding Fox there. So we’re becoming, I think, we’re a juggernaut. And I think the problem is, you know, there are so many liberal channels. Think about all the major networks. All the major cable channels.
There are 11 cable news and information channels, even comedy channels are a news channel now for millennial’s. And that’s all liberal. They’re all liberal except for FOXÂ and Newsmax. And FOXÂ is going the way of a lot of other channels. So, you know, I think the country’s better served with more voices not less. And that’s why Newsmax TV has been, I think, just growing like crazy.
Fredericks: Your revenue model is sustainable for the future, which is why you want traditional advertisers. Advertisers want to be involved in order for their ads to serve up. And so yeah you don’t get the revenue, the subscription revenue when it’s free, but you’re going to get the ad revenue pouring in because people want those kinds of numbers.
They want to be able to reach that audience. That’s the same model that we have. Everybody said, you know, look it’s the same thing when I started this on a tiny little scale everybody said it would fail. You know you couldn’t do this. You couldn’t do that. You had to have paid subscriptions.
You had to do all this stuff. You have to get outside money donors. Look, if you do the right thing, advertisers will come because they have one entrance, one interest. They want to sell services or their product. And they can do that if you can get people to watch. That’s what I think you guys have done.
Ruddy: Well and we have Newsmax Magazine, I might add, if anybody is interested they can call 800-Newsmax and they can also get a free copy of the new book Blitz, which is David Horowitz’s book. As you know this is the best book, President Trump calls it the hot book of the election season.
Horowitz is, as you know, a former radical liberal. He’s a Jewish thinker. He’s a radical liberal, and he’s become conservative. And he’s predicting Donald Trump is going to win a landslide. He predicted the riots over the summer in Blitz. He said that they were going to start up a race war before the election. It all happened.
He said they’re going to go after our national monuments. It happened. And he is saying that this election is the most pivotal election in our time. Now interestingly enough, David Horowitz is a New York Times bestseller. I know you’ve had him on, a lot, and other people have. FOX News won’t touch him. Newsmax has, and that’s why we’re promoting his book Blitz. With Newsmax Magazine you can get it for free by calling 800-Newsmax.
Fredericks: We’re live in New York City today. You’ve got a big studio here. Tell us a little bit about your plans in New York City and how has your team been able to react to the shutdown and the pandemic and everything else going on, Chris?
Ruddy: Well our headquarters for TV is in New York. It is booming up there for us, even though the rest of New York is quiet and silent. As you know, the mayor does not want to put the city back online because he thinks it helps Trump. There’s no other explanation. There’s very hardly any COVID. The restaurants even aren’t open indoors yet.
I mean it’s really crazy stuff going on. And Newsmax, our team has been operating through the pandemic. And we’ve been breaking a lot of stories. Our ratings have been going up. And we’ve been covering the coronavirus well beyond any of the other major networks. We have medical doctors on all the time talking about the best safety issues.
Giving people both sides on some of these stories they’re getting. You know Sweden has had tremendous success and they never started masking everyone in society. They never went into an official lockdown. They never closed down clothing stores, bars, restaurants, or cafes. They took normal conservative steps with social distancing and other public health debt.
And their numbers are lower than most of the other numbers in Europe. So it shows you that this is like a lot of hype that’s been pushed by the media. And people need to be careful because it does affect older people. There needs to be sensitivity to that. But if you’re 40 years old, in good health, then you don’t have anything to worry about with this virus.
Fredericks: Chris, what is in between now and January for Newsmax? What’s your number one objective? What do you want to see happen with your company?
Ruddy: I think right now the number one thing is to give the American people the truth they need in this election. And we don’t have to be pro Donald Trump or anti-Donald Trump or Biden. We just need to tell the truth because Donald Trump has an incredible record.
You know our cover story for October Newsmax Magazine, which is read by about a half-million people is Promises Kept. It’s a picture of Donald Trump. No other president has fulfilled his campaign pledges like this president. And I think he wants to get the job done in the second term. I think he deserves a second term.
Listen to the full show here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3C1McWcBi8&feature=youtu.be
