Wait, wasn’t Fox News supposed to be dead by now?
In April 2023, I read the obituaries. The company was reeling from a massive $787M defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. It clumsily and inexplicably fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s top star.
Ratings plummeted as conservative rival Newsmax pounced, tripling its viewership in Carlson’s timeslot. Fox shares took a hit on Wall Street.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, who’s made a career out of hating Fox, led the dance party on Fox’s grave. He predicted that Tucker’s “sudden ouster will have profound consequences for Fox News, for TV news and the Republican Party”.
Well, the consequences are in, and they’re profound indeed: Fox is absolutely crushing it, and the GOP runs the country.
In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, Fox is once again utterly dominating the cable news landscape. It averaged 1.57 million total-day viewers and 2.64 million primetime viewers last quarter, surpassing ratings for broadcast networks ABC and CBS. The top 13 cable news shows? All Fox.
Meanwhile, MSNBC and CNN have shed hundreds of thousands of viewers, with MSNBC’s primetime audience dropping 50% and CNN drawing only 337,000 total day viewers in the week after the election. Liberal viewers will lick their wounds and return, but Fox will still win for the foreseeable future.
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So what happened? Math.
They have a lot of talented people at Fox who all deserve a lot of credit, starting with Rupert Murdoch’s billion-dollar bet, and Roger Ailes’ genius in building the network from scratch. But underneath it all lies a simple reality: Fox is the lone conservative voice in a polarized television landscape. That’s an unbeatable structural advantage.
Picture a town split between steak lovers and BBQ aficionados. Plenty of steakhouses, but just one BBQ joint. Where do you think the crowds will be? The real shock is that competitors haven’t emerged.
But that’s exactly what happens with conservative cable news, where Fox has a virtual monopoly. Yes, Newsmax exists, but after a decade, it still produces mediocre television and even less impressive journalism. It briefly spiked when Carlson departed, but couldn’t sustain that momentum, and Fox recovered in the ratings by that summer.
Zoom out to the broader media landscape, and the ideological imbalance is even starker. Network news shows have gone beyond mere liberal bias into overt hostility toward conservative perspectives. But those tens of millions of conservative eyeballs have to go somewhere. Fox provides it.
In 2024, Trump was a regular on the network, and even their sit-down with Kamala Harris shattered records. That drew over 10 million viewers across multiple airings, the highest rated non-primetime cable news interview ever.
So despite the 2023 drama, Fox emerges as a kingmaker once more. Trapped in a declining cable business, despised by half the nation, the network nevertheless remains the preeminent platform for conservative politicians and ideas on television.
The partisans will keep raging, but the numbers tell the real story. Betting against Fox News is still a losing proposition.
Ken LaCorte writes about censorship, media malfeasance, uncomfortable questions, and honest insight for people curious how the world really works. Follow Ken on Substack
