Newsmax CEO Says Not Actively Selling Company: Variety

(Bloomberg) -- Newsmax Media Inc. is not actively looking to sell itself, the company’s chief executive officer Christopher Ruddy said in an interview with Variety, while acknowledging that the politically conservative news outlet has had expressions of interest from “investors, investment banks and strategic players.”

Commenting on a Wall Street Journal report that private equity firm Hicks Equity Partners had held talks for an investment in Newsmax, Ruddy said there was “no deal” though he had spoken to the firm’s leader Thomas Hicks, “on and off through the past three years.”

Newsmax would be “open” to talking to President Donald Trump about a “weekly show” after he leaves the White House, Ruddy said, though adding the network plans to remain an independent news agency and “would never become ‘Trump TV’.”

Ruddy said Newsmax is focused on overtaking Fox News in the next 12 months. Trump is a known avid viewer of much of Fox News’s programming, with frequent call-ins to morning chat show ‘Fox & Friends,’ and late night retweets of items brought up on the network’s reliably conservative evening commentary shows.

However, Trump and his allies have soured on Fox in recent months as insufficiently loyal, and were said to be particularly incensed at Fox News’s early call that Arizona had voted for Joe Biden. Trump supporters at a weekend march in Washington, D.C., chanted “Fox News sucks,” a sign that Trump’s shifting opinion of Fox is starting to filter down to that base Newsmax hopes to court.

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