Steve Bannon was deplatformed. An obscure media mogul keeps him on the air.

It brings his show into as many as 8 million homes hooked up to Dish satellite television, many in rural, conservative areas without reliable cable coverage.The rise of Real America’s Voice, built around Bannon and distant from the traditional power structures of cable television and talk radio, reveals how the country’s fractured media landscape has empowered unconventional actors following market incentives toward more and more extreme content.“We were told fairly regularly we were Trump propaganda,” said a former Real America’s Voice producer, who, like about a dozen other current and former employees of Sigg’s business, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. The show, broadcast live six days a week from Bannon’s Capitol Hill townhouse, is the gathering point for the pro-Trump movement — with Bannon embracing the role of a wartime general leading followers into 2022, or what he calls the “valley of decision.”“Breitbart was very powerful, but this is five times more powerful,” Bannon said in an interview with The Washington Post following a recent show, which featured four candidates courting Trump’s base and a tech entrepreneur-turned-critic of coronavirus vaccines.He credited the show’s reach to its little-known distribution partner. An internal email reviewed by The Post said correspondents lacked “TV 101 skills.” A former manager said he became incensed in the fall of 2020 after learning that the network was taking feeds from Fox News and other outlets without crediting them, calling Sigg and his fellow executives “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”But Bannon warned not to bet against Real America’s Voice. At the time called America’s Voice News, the network had a website by August 2018, according to an archived version.When “War Room” began in the fall of 2019, focusing on Trump’s impeachment, Sigg jumped at the chance to broadcast it, Bannon said. According to Bannon, Solomon arranged a White House meeting in which Trump said Sigg’s network, America’s Voice News, sounded too much like Voice of America, the U.S.-funded international broadcaster, inspiring executives to change the name.The network debuted in September 2020 as Real America’s Voice, available not just on Dish, according to a news release, but also on Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV and Google Play. In the days after, she received more than 400 messages from viewers asking how to reorient their political contributions, she told The Post, including from several donors who had given more than $1 million supporting Trump’s reelection efforts.Bannon said his audience depends on Sigg’s network and the show’s radio distribution. A spokeswoman for Pluto TV, which says it has more than 54 million monthly active users, said, “We do not partake in any editorial decisions or moderation.” A Google spokesman did not respond to a question about why Google-owned YouTube removed “War Room” even as it remains on Google Play through Real America’s Voice.Bannon leaves his show’s distribution to Sigg and the others at Real America’s Voice, he said, because they know the market.They have no other motives, he said, musing, “I’m not even sure they’re conservatives.”Alice Crites and Jennifer Oldham contributed to this report.The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy