Hacker News Reader

Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

~1/3 of their annual revenue. Not nothing, but likely small enough that it’s just a cost of doing business and not a real deterrent. IMO.

View on HN

Annual revenue is not profit. This is the money earned without all the costs of running the business.

For instance, the total revenue was 171m in 2024. But the cost of revenue was 86m. Then you need to remove the operation expenses, that are 153m. So in 2024, the before taxes net income was a loss of 69 million.

In 2025 they are currently at -30m because it seems they cut in their Operating Expense. Explains some of the anchors leaving in 2024 (the impact of big cuts are often only felt the next year)

Here is a very important titbit:

> Newsmax and Newsmax Broadcasting LLC agreed to pay Dominion and its affiliates over three installments, starting with $27 million that was paid on Friday. Newsmax will pay $20 million on January 15 and another $20 million on January 15, 2027.

In other words, they are not able to pay out the 67m in 2025, and are paying it off over 3 years. Given the negative income it has, combined with the now extra payments for then next 3 years...

They are going to be cutting even more staff, what will affect their ability to generate revenue. It may look like a good deal, only 1/3 of their revenue, a 3 year payment plan. But its more of a survival plan.

Why did Dominion accept this? Because its guaranteed money. Dominion is not out to destroy newsmax, no, Dominion wants cheese and a dead newsmax means no cheese. But the effect will be hard on the newsmax, do not underestimate this. Let alone internally...

Some people will see this as a newsmax win, because most people do not know the difference between revenue. And why payment plans are not good indicator. But in reality, the company was already on a bankruptcy route, and its not going to get better. So unless somebody Musk steps in with major $$$ to buyout and finance them for a long time, ...

Well, Newsmax raised about $400 million this year in stock sales, so they can easily afford it.

This kind of comment comes up a lot On The Internet and it tells me that the commenter has never worked at a company that has lost a massive lawsuit. As someone who has worked at one of those companies, I can tell you that losing a suit like this will absolutely lead to huge operational changes to avoid it happening again.

Whether or not those changes actually change the "character" of the company is a different question (IMHO Newsmax is morally defunct and cannot be saved) but no company anywhere would just shrug something like this off as "the cost of doing business".

i think it's unclear whether newsmax is a "real" company or not. is there any indication that they're trying to make money, or are they trying to push their agenda? because they pretty clearly do have an agenda to push.

if they're a real company designed to make a profit, then sure, 1/3 of their annual revenue is plenty of incentive to make a real change, and could even be a company-ending event. If they're just a rich person's tool to influence public opinion, then whether or not $67m is a big enough number to make a dent depends on the pockets of their funders, not on the company's finances.

It's a publicly-traded company (and was private for 16 years prior to going public) so it seems likely that actually making money is at least somewhere on their list of priorities...

> no company anywhere would just shrug something like this off as "the cost of doing business".

Fox News did, they lost 10 times as much money and is more successful than ever BECAUSE they did it, so for them it's just "the cost of doing business" or even an "investment".

This would be true if the source of funding were the standard kind of corporate funding. But there’s reason to believe that the backing money behind this corporation does not care in the slightest and regards this sort of poultry fine as merely the cost of doing its particular business, which is also not a standard type of corporate business.

It's "paltry."

"What's $1,000? Mere chicken-feed. A poultry matter." (Groucho Marx)

Taken in isolation this might be true, but these types of relatively small monetary damage don't seem to provide a good deterrent in general. Newsmax (as well as fox etc) is still airing provably false or at best misleading information and classifying it as "opinion". e.g. the other country pays the tariffs.

On a more society scale, if the damage from outright lies about an election costs on the order of 67m, what's to deter any of the billionaires from funding orgs like Newsmax to help win elections by spreading lies? It's a fraction of what Musk spent for 2024.

I don't have a good answer though that doesn't also have abuse potential the other way.

Yeah, that’s fair. Settlements like this should include a complete change out of executive teams and BoD. Or something to try and fix the moral bankruptcy.

They've never turned a profit though, so this only adds to their financial problems.

I imagine they likely have insurance for things like this. Or at least I would, if my business model was largely based on libel.

Who would underwrite that?

They don't need to profit. They're funded by MAGAs to kill truth.

Agree that it should be more, but what sort of margins do you realize that 1/3 of _revenue_ seems small?

“Small enough” not “small”. Likely not enough to force a major change in the “morals” of the company.

Well it is only one year of revenue for an action they did across multiple years.

I'd like to see something that takes 50% of their revenue for 5 to 10 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com