Newsmax TV, which recently surpassed Bloomberg Television and C-SPAN in several key ratings, is growing rapidly and more is yet to come, CEO Christopher Ruddy said Thursday.
"We're going to have a big announcement soon on a major talent," Ruddy told "The Chris Salcedo Show," noting the network, which is now in 70 million homes nationwide, has grown by nearly 200% since last summer.
"You know, sometimes people like to build something and have it perfect when it comes out. My style is actually to build it over time. And you know the old saying: 'Build and they will come.' Let people see us build it, let them see our mistakes and how we fix them and how we grow."
He added Salcedo's own ratings grew to the point his show was moved from a morning program to the 5 p.m. ET hour.
Greg Kelly, who is a "huge talent" from Fox News and its former White House correspondent, now has an "absolutely first-class show" on the network, Ruddy said.
"Newsmax is here to stay, and we're growing and we love the fact that our audience is tuning in," Ruddy said.
Further, the network is "filling a niche" left open from there being so many liberal-leaning cable news channels.
"Most people under 30 say they get their news from the Comedy Channel," he said. "It is all liberal anti-Trump stuff.
"I just think we need more conservative voices, not less," he added.
"Newsmax is in the field where Fox News is," he said. "We're appealing to that heartland audience in America. We think Fox is great. Actually, I don't have a problem with Fox. I think Fox is changing. I think it's a lot different than it was 10 years ago.
"The media has always tended to be liberal," said Ruddy, who noted he recently served on the Knight Commission on public trust in the media.
But he added poll numbers concerning trust have essentially collapsed over the past 20 years.
"Liberals and Democrats still have the same trust in the media they did 30 years ago," he said. "It's among people on the center-right where they used to have 70% trust now they only have 25% of confidence in the media.
"Even the Shorenstein study out of Harvard, which is a liberal group, said that the amount of negative press against the president was unheard of, unprecedented."
Meanwhile, Americans are "a lot smarter than CNN and MSNBC" give them credit for, Ruddy said.
"Hillary [Clinton] did the same thing," he said. "She called the people out there in middle American flyover territory [as deplorables]. They came out in record numbers for Trump in the 2016 election. Let them laugh and look down their noses at ordinary people."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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