Fox News Fighting to Maintain Dominance
Image Courtesy of the New York Times
By Jack Rowing
For the past 19 years, Fox News has [insert verb here, triumphed?] as the country’s highest-rated cable news network. Its most valuable asset in this pursuit has always been its talking heads.
Personalities like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham have dominated the world of ratings. This scoreboard was largely set in stone up until November 2020.
On election night, Fox News called the state of Arizona earlier than its competitors at CNN and MSNBC. This, as well as other critical moments during the election disputes, drew the attention of President Donald Trump.
Trump went after Fox News, going so far as to quote another tweet, saying: “TIME TO MAKE OAN & NEWSMAX RICH. FOX IS DEAD TO ME!”
This is far from the first time that Fox News has experienced hostility from the President. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said that former Fox News correspondent Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out her whatever.”
This, along with other disagreements between Fox and Trump, led to the cancellation of a 2016 primary debate. He also criticized Fox over its hosting of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigeg town hall discussions.
What makes these new disagreements noteworthy is now, Trump has actively managed to remove Fox News from the top spot. Fox News fell to third place in January 2021, eclipsed by both CNN and MSNBC.
Fox’s fall from the top emerged as One America News and Newsmax both picked up viewership. For the first time ever in early December last year, Newsmax experienced a ratings victory over Fox News.
According to Pew Research center before the election, Fox News possessed the largest percentage of right wing cable television viewers by 30%. Coupled with the fact that only a quarter of Republicans in November believed that Donald Trump should concede the election, Fox’s rating losses range from astounding to seemingly inevitable.
CNN took the lead spot in Cable News during the week of the November election. Fox has had plenty of opinion hosts give credence to Trump’s claims of election fraud. While, its traditional news division has split over the issue. Political editor Chris Stirewalt was fired over the decision to announce Arizona as a Biden victory. Fox News cut away from Kayleigh McEnany’s White House press briefing, citing an inability to air her claims of election fraud in good conscience. Lou Dobbs recently aired an entire segment debunking claims of election fraud after a legal suit from Smartmatic, a company that manufactures voting machines. Newsmax ran a similar segment after facing a similar legal suit.
Fox News’ solution to its new ratings problem is to double down on what made it popular in the first place: talking heads. After shifting the shows around, Fox News announced its new lineup with one major change: a rotating set of talking heads were given the 7pm primetime slot. Expected to include a set of pro-Trump anchors, Fox News replaced its traditional news segment, The Story, hosted by Martha MacCallum.
Their attempts to regain their viewership base have appeared to have had moderate success. By the end of January, some Fox News segments tied with CNN, and other programs regained their top spot. Example. Whether this is thanks to their new lineup or the inevitability of the country moving on from Donald Trump remains to be seen.
