Fox News’ Ratings Take a Beating as They Distance Themselves From Trump

Viewers of Fox News, Donald Trump included, have been noticing a distinct shift in the network’s coverage of American politics in the last several years, and they’ve been warning the media giant that a reckoning could soon be coming for them.

The shift has been incredibly pronounced over the course of the last several months as Fox consistently railed against Donald Trump’s electoral doubts and the MAGA movement as a whole.

The company is now bearing the brunt of those decisions.

Fox News Channel, which ended 2020 as the most-watched network in all of basic cable, finished third among cable news channels last week as power shifted in the U.S. Senate and rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Nielsen data showed on Tuesday.

AT&T Inc’s CNN topped cable networks with roughly 2.8 million viewers per day from Jan. 4 through Sunday, and 4.2 million in primetime, according to the ratings data.

For that same period, Comcast Corp’s MSNBC attracted 2.3 million per day and 3.8 million in primetime. Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp, drew about 1.7 million per day and 3.2 million in primetime.

And, as if there was a need for more evidence of the Trump bump…

Newsmax, a smaller rival that has been promoted by President Trump, said it saw record ratings in primetime of 443,000 for the week. Its total day ratings averaged 294,000. Newsmax does not provide full-time news coverage on weekends.

Some have suggested that Donald Trump himself could be jumping into the news game, possibly eyeing a role at an existing network, or, even more boldly, considering launching his own network.