OPINION:
Fox Corp. wants to buy Roku for $22 billion. This is not just a merger; it is also a weapon.
For consumers, it means fewer choices, more commercials and higher prices. For Fox’s competitors, it means buried apps, discriminatory terms and lost viewers.
Roku already reaches more than half of America’s broadband households. Its operating system and home screen decide what those families see when the TV turns on.
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Fox bought Tubi in 2020. Roku owns The Roku Channel. They are the two largest free, ad-supported streaming services in America.
Under the Fox roof, Fox would control a massive ad business, the gateway to every competing network and the viewing data of more than 100 million households.
Consider the harm to consumers. A family with a Roku television cannot change the system that runs it. Even with a Fire TV Stick or Apple TV plugged in, Roku’s software can still watch what they stream.
After this deal, the company that controls their screen owns Fox News, Fox Sports and Tubi and has every reason to put its own products first. That means Tubi is in the top row and Netflix is three clicks down. It means Fox News is in the “Live TV” guide, and Newsmax is buried in search.
It means more commercials on the free channels, because the rival that kept them honest is now a sister company. The family pays in time, ads and at the register.
Next, the free rival disappears. Tubi and The Roku Channel together draw more television viewers than Amazon Prime Video, and today they compete. Under Fox, they would stop. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that he expects to keep the services “separate.”
So what? Separate names are not separate competitors, and nothing stops more commercials, fewer free titles or new charges.
Then there is Fox’s advertising tax. “Open programmatic” is the automated auction where streaming ads are bought. Roku sells approximately 32% of that market in North America, according to the most recent data. Add Tubi and Fox Sports, and one company sells the ad, owns the data that targets it and controls the screen that decides whether a competitor’s app is ever opened.
A seller that big charges more. Advertisers pay it. Consumers pay it back at the checkout counter.
Conservative outlets know this squeeze. The big ad agencies ran woke “brand safety” rules that starved right-leaning media of ad dollars until the Federal Trade Commission forced Omnicom, WPP, Publicis and Dentsu under consent orders.
No matter. Real America’s Voice is still frozen out. Give Fox Roku’s ad desk and the squeeze moves from agency to seller.
Roku’s operating system also sees every app on the set: what is watched, by whom and for how long. Fox calls this “first-party data,” a core asset of the deal. So although Fox will know what Netflix, Peacock and Newsmax viewers watch, Netflix, Peacock and Newsmax will know nothing about Fox’s viewers. That is not a level field. It is Big Brother behind a one-way mirror.
Consider Newsmax’s allegations in an antitrust lawsuit filed against Fox in federal court last year. Fox conditions access to Fox News on distributors agreeing not to carry conservative channels such as Newsmax and pressures guests not to appear. If a distributor wants Newsmax, Fox requires it to carry Fox Business or FS2 in its top tiers, at a cost of tens of millions.
Today, Fox attacks with contracts. With Roku, it would own the distributor — and Roku is a proven predator.
In 2020, Roku kept HBO Max and Peacock off its platform to extract terms, blocked Charter’s Spectrum app and dropped Fox’s own apps days before the Super Bowl. In 2021, it pulled YouTube TV. An audit of its home screen found that The Roku Channel held 26 of the 30 “Featured Free” slots, and the “Live TV” row listed only Roku’s own streams.
Roku built that machinery with no news channel to favor. Fox, on the other hand, has every reason to play favorites. Two proven predators, one roof. Massive harm.
Section 7 of the Clayton Act bars any acquisition whose effect “may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.” The government need not prove abuse, only that the merger makes abuse likely. It does.
The case is in good hands at the Justice Department. The department could go to court to block the deal.
It could also divest Tubi to an independent buyer. Take Roku’s operating system, home screen, search and app store out of Fox’s hands. Wall off competitors’ viewing, advertising and business data from Fox’s programming and ad operations. Bar discriminatory placement, retaliatory carriage terms and tying that forces a rival network or advertiser to buy Fox products for fair access. Guarantee every app on Roku at closing its carriage and ranking.
Then lock in any conditions as a federal consent decree, with the states as co-plaintiffs and install a monitor with full access to the records, algorithms and contracts needed to detect discrimination and the power to seek immediate court enforcement. No automatic sunset. No quiet waivers. No changes without a judge and a chance for the states to object.
The Justice Department has used each of these tools before. If Fox cannot live with enforceable conditions, the merger should not happen.
Ironically, Fox assumes that the Trump administration still considers it an ally. Yet since mid-July alone, under Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, Fox ordered its talent not to promote or discuss President Trump’s primetime address on election security, joined CNN in pulling the White House pool camera, stopped carrying Mr. Trump’s rallies live, force-feeds its viewers polls that the president calls “terrible,” bans senior White House officials from its air and took one of the president’s favorite anchors, Maria Bartiromo, off the air.
Meanwhile, Fox Business spews its anti-tariff propaganda from dawn to dusk, from Dagen McDowell and Charlie Gasparino to Stuart Varney through Larry Kudlow. On Fox News, it is RINO TV from Brian Kilmeade, Bill Hemmer, John Roberts and Kayleigh McEnany through Karl Rove, Martha MacCallum, Shannon Bream and Bret Baier — until the Laura Ingraham-Jesse Watters-Sean Hannity MAGA cavalry saves prime time.
As Mr. Trump likes to say, let’s see what happens. To MAGA, less Fox is more.
• Peter Navarro is the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing and author of “Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison.”
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