Fox News Regains Its Footing - Horowitz

Fox News Regains Its Footing - Horowitz

Fox News finally appears to be regaining its footing, steadying its ratings and recovering its dominance with conservative viewers, after a shaky several months following the election, as evidenced by recent Nielsen ratings and national poll results.

Fox’s generally successful balancing act during the Trump presidency, between credible, if right veering hard news, and flat-out Trump fandom and embracing the worst of his conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods on many of its opinion shows, stopped working in the wake of the former president’s election defeat and his all-out effort to overturn the will of the voters through any means necessary. 

In the election’s aftermath, Fox ended up with the worst of both worlds.  A slice of strong Trump supporters stopped watching because of their anger at the Fox News decision desk early, and as it turned out, correct call of Arizona for Joe Biden, as well as the consistent push back from news anchors like Brett Baer on Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen.  At the same time, the promotion of the far-fetched and completely false conspiracy theory that the voting machine companies, Dominion and Smartmatic, systematically changed votes from Trump to Biden on some of its opinion shows have earned the network lawsuits totaling $4.3 billion that many legal observers believe will result in large pay-outs.  Also, the warm and uncritical embrace of Trump’s disgraceful coup attempt by Fox hosts, including Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, of which the slander of these companies was just one component, undermined some of the credibility gains that the network would have otherwise made with moderate and more persuadable viewers from their hard news coverage. The negative consequences of these hosts’ decisions to mislead their viewers and uncritically amplify Trump’s efforts to overturn the election were driven home on January 6.

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But with the Trump presidency behind us and his presence continuing to recede, Fox News has been able to find its footing, returning to its traditional role of providing highly critical news coverage and virulently negative opinion, whenever a Democrat occupies the White House.  After falling behind MSNBC and even CNN on many evenings in January and February, a strong March propelled Fox to hold on to its rating lead in prime time in the first quarter of this year with an average of 2.48 million total viewers.  This is still a significant decline in the audience from a year ago; the trends, however, are moving in a positive direction.

A recent national poll by Pew Research Group provides context for Fox’s recent rating recovery. The poll finds that Fox has succeeded in curbing the rise of the alternatives for conservative television news viewers, Newsmax and One American News(OAN), whose audiences grew from their championing of Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ campaign to overturn the election results. “About six-in-ten Republicans and those who lean Republican (62%) got political news in the past week from Fox News, compared with 21% who said they got news from Newsmax and 14% who did so from OAN,” reports Pew.

The poll underscores Fox’s reach beyond conservatives--- one of the network’s underreported strengths.: “In addition, while about three-in-ten Democrats and those who lean Democratic get political news from Fox, virtually none of them do from Newsmax and OAN.”  As Pew points out, “While Fox does well among its conservative Republican core audience, it is also used by substantial portions of Democrats and ideologically moderate and liberal Republicans.”

In an early February interview, when Fox was lagging in the ratings, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch outlined Fox’s commitment to returning to what has worked exceedingly well for it over the years.  “Center/right is exactly where we should be targeted. We don’t need to go further right,” said Murdoch.” We don’t believe America is further right. And we’re obviously not going to pivot left. All of our significant competitors are to the far left. So, we’ll stick where we are. … With that, we’ll see a return to our ratings dominance.”

This tried-and-true Fox formula by all indications appears to remain a winning one.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.