Fox News lost the rating’s war in January. It also lost its #1 fan in the White House who carried the cable channel (and vice-versa) for the last four years. CNN reports:
Nielsen numbers for the month of January were released on Tuesday, and Fox ranked third in the three-horse cable news race for the first time since 2001. Furthermore, CNN was the No. 1 channel across all of cable.
Think about it this way: January was one of the biggest months of political news in a generation, yet Fox couldn’t capitalize. Instead of competing by promoting correspondents and putting news coverage front and center, the network prioritized ever more outrageous, ever more extreme opinion.
Behind the scenes at Fox News this is reportedly a daily conversation. Would becoming even more extreme help ratings? Or would finding a middle ground help? So far, they appear to be going with the former. For instance, the viewing at the Capitol for police officer Brian Sicknick shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but Fox made it one by not carrying it when it was happening during Sean Hannity’s show.
The Washington Post writes that “Since Donald Trump’s election loss in November, Sean Hannity seems to have been working through a process, live and on camera.”
For a few weeks, it manifested as the denial shared by his fellow believers in the ex-president’s unsupported claims of election fraud. After the inauguration of the new president, Hannity pivoted to the next stage — anger — as he lashed out at “the weak, the frail, the cognitively struggling Biden.” More recently, he has displayed something closer to depression, as he engages his viewers in a session of public mourning.
Hannity even told Laura Ingraham, “My heart’s troubled… It’s aching for my country right now.”
TV news analyst Andrew Tyndall told the Daily Beast: “Fox has been rudderless since Ailes left… They’ve been living on an inherited formula and haven’t adjusted with the times… They’ve been particularly unable to replicate Ailes’ discipline in straddling both sides of the divide—being a journalistic organization and being a propaganda organization. He managed to finesse that, and his successors have not.”