DirecTV (T  ) has released a statement announcing that "following a routine internal review" it has decided to drop One America News Network (OAN) from its lineup of channels. OAN is a conservative outlet that became popular amongst Donald Trump's supporters during the 2020 election cycle after he repeatedly voiced his support for the news source.

OAN is one of two channels owned by Herring Networks Inc., alongside luxury lifestyle channel Wealth Entertainment. In April, DirecTV's contract with Herring is set to expire, and the provider will not be renewing. According to a DirecTV spokesperson, the decision to drop the channels was a financial one: channels have to appeal to a broad enough audience within DirecTV's customer base, and the company decided it wasn't in its best interest to continue with Herring.

One of DirecTV's major owners, AT&T, has received widespread backlash from experts and commentators who argue that the internet provider contributed to the perpetuation and increased popularity of Republican conspiracy theories.

"There is a huge difference between offering a conservative opinion and peddling conspiracy theories and falsehoods that threaten our democratic institutions," the legal director of the nonprofit group Public Knowledge, John Bergmayer, said in November. "OAN's support for the 'Big Lie' that the 2020 election was stolen and the fact that it's consistently giving airtime to conspiracy theories and misinformation on COVID-19, moves it from a participant in the marketplace of ideas to a peddler of toxic lies."

AT&T was blamed for the role that it played in getting OAN off of the ground. According to a 2021 Reuters investigation, 90% of OAN's revenue from its founding through 2020 had come from AT&T-related contracts, including those with DirecTV. OAN was founded in 2013 by Robert Herring Sr, who has also testified that the idea to create the channel came directly from AT&T.

"They told us they wanted a conservative network," Reuters quotes from a 2019 deposition of Herring. "They only had one, which was Fox News (FOXA  ), and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one."

When AT&T completed its acquisition of DirecTV in 2015, it stated that it would not be carrying any Herring programming, including OAN. In response, Herring sued the provider and won, resulting in the reinstatement of OAN to the DirecTV lineup in 2017.

AT&T doesn't just own DirecTV: it also owns OAN competitors like CNN and HBO.