Fox News Ratings Reportedly Plummet After Joe Biden Named President-Elect
Fox News is reportedly suffering from plummeting ratings after several outlets — including its own political analysis team — declared former Vice President Joe Biden to be the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election.
“Fox News’s audience plummeted yesterday after Biden became president-elect. During the Biden/Harris speeches, Fox had three million viewers, the lowest total of any network,” noted Michael Grynbaum in an “Updates” column in The New York Times.
The report comes after Fox had the highest ratings in primetime coverage on November 3, with an estimated 13.7 million total viewers. Fox not only beat all other rival television stations, but also set a record for the most-watched election night coverage in cable-news history, per Deadline.
The network’s numbers were still relatively strong on Wednesday, despite the fact that Trump’s chances at winning reelection appeared to be dwindling. Rival channel CNN ironically performed the best that night, winning the second-highest viewership in the the station’s history.
Fox News’s falling viewership reportedly continued throughout the week, and it remains to be seen whether the conservative-leaning network will suffer even more of a decline if Biden is certified as the winner and sworn into office come January.
Earlier this past week, Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation, warned investors that he predicted that ratings for all politically-focused news would fall after the election — no matter who ultimately ended up winning the presidency.
“I would expect that as we enter a more normal news cycle, which will happen eventually, that appetite for news will shift,” he said in a phone call with investors, per Variety.
Murdoch added that his company’s goal in the future would be less focused on the number of viewers and instead concentrate on the percentage of viewers.
“Appetite for news is out of our control,” he stated.
“What we aim to control is share. We have through 18 years of administrations, we have maintained our number-one position through all of that,” he continued. “The news cycle will moderate, [but] we fully expect to be number one and maintain share around that.”
However, the channel has earned the ire of many of its loyal audience members after calling the state of Arizona in the early evening of November 3 to Biden. As was previously reported by The Inquisitr, the move reportedly angered President Trump so much that he called Rupert Murdoch to complain.
Historically, every presidential race brings brings a spike in viewership for news outlets. In fact, the five biggest cable-news operations in the United States — Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Fox Business Network — are projected by market-research firms to make more than $3.1 billion in advertising in 2020 alone.
