Fox News Is Starting to Feel the Pain of Life After Trump
By: Charlotte Klein (Vanity Fair)
As Newsmax ekes out its first ratings win over Fox and CNN maintains a lead in Nielsen ratings for the first time in nearly two decades, the network is facing rare competition for its audience
My information comes from newspapers, blogs, ...
Never from cable news, which I haven't watched for five years.
The relentless repetition of the same news, 24/7, bores me.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The end of the Trump years is already weighing on Fox News, a network facing newfound competition in the cable news landscape it has dominated for years.
CNN and Newsmax are both gaining on Fox from different directions in the aftermath of the election, with CNN consistently surpassing Fox in Nielsen ratings for the first time since the period after 9/11, the Associated Press reports. Between the day after Election Day and Sunday, CNN averaged 1.73 million viewers, more than double a year ago, while Fox averaged 1.56 million; MSNBC, which Axios notes has seen a ratings uptick for some of its programs in recent weeks, averaged 1.53 million.
In addition to the threat posed by traditional rivals, Fox is now seeing competition on the right from Newsmax and One America News, right-wing cable channels willing to parrot Donald Trump 's election denialism claims and enjoying a massive boost in ratings and name recognition as a reward.
"Fox News' powerful primetime lineup," as Axios put it, "now has a two-front war," and on Monday, Newsmax viewership for a single show during an hour-long slot reportedly surpassed Fox viewership for that same slot for the first time ever.
Which is perhaps fueling the conundrum that the network now finds itself in: Fox is at once not radical enough for Trump loyalists on the right but too much a cult of denial for people who want to take the Biden administration seriously. Fox is split, as my colleague Caleb Ecarma notes, with some news anchors offering "moments of forced reality" that "are the exception, not the rule" as other hosts, such as Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs , are still holding out for a Trump win and fanning the flames of the president's baseless election-theft claims.
Trump loyalists have instead turned to alt-reality proponents such as Greg Kelly , who began his Tuesday night Newsmax program by telling viewers that "paths to victory remain" for Trump, according to CNN's Brian Stelter , who notes "Fox is still four times higher-rated than Newsmax at any given time of day" but is nevertheless "down from its pre-election highs while Newsmax is way up."
The ratings drop-off may also reflect the cable news fallout from Trump being voted out. As the tides have shifted, apparently so has incentive to tune in, now that Fox is no longer interlinked with Trump's policy moves. Without that power, the network, like Trump himself, could increasingly fade into irrelevance.
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Outfits like Newsmax and One America News simply do not have the effective to really cover news. They pour out opinion.
That's what their viewers want.
They are merely the cable TV version of the National Enquirer and appeal to the same audience of conservative tin foil hat wearers, anti-vaccers, Qanon nut balls and uneducated morons.
While I once found the National Enquirer covers harmless comedy to amuse those standing in line at the grocery store, now such "alternative news" filled with "alternative facts" coming from multiple outlets is causing real harm as they subversively attack truth and facts with lies, conspiracy theories and conjecture. Rational well educated Americans easily see through the bullshit but the gullible and poorly educated rubes cling to their fantasies because if they don't, their whole little world of thinking themselves smarter than the college educated and scientists comes crashing down around their irrational empty heads.
The Enquirer was absurd at the time, but everyone knew it. Reading the Enquirer was like watching pro wrestling.
It isn't the paper that has changed; it is the willful gullibility of the readers that has changed.
Tell that to John Edwards........................
They got one thing right in how many years of publishing?
Unless you really do believe that Elvis is the love child of Hillary and an alien from outer space
Oh I don't disagree with you. Even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut.
And about that Elvis thing. About as believable as this............
Now that there is funny I don't care who you are
Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs will try and make hay for the next few months with the "the election was stolen" by trotting out so-called experts and witnesses. They will eventually get bored and move on to attacking Biden.