FOX Out Foxes the Competition…Again

FOX News continues to bury its main cable news competitors – CNN and MSNBC.  It is not even close.  For the most part, FOX has a larger viewing audience than CNN and MSNBC combined.

What makes this even more remarkable is FOX triumphs even as virtually all the leftwing media attacks FOX on a daily basis.  They call the network with the broadest range of reporting – with the greatest balance – a right-wing propaganda machine.  Which is really rich when you consider that CNN and especially MSNBC have become propaganda machines for the radical left.

The viewing public has kept FOX at the top month-after-month, year-after-year.  Sean Hannity not only has kept his position in the top five shows in cable news – often as the number one show – but he is now the longest running show on cable, surpassing the 25-year run of Larry King.

FOX accounts for the top six rated shows with “The Five” as numero uno – drawing an audience of 3.5 million viewers.

In overall ratings, Fox was up 25 percent from April 2021 with an overall average of 1.5 million viewers.  MSNBC came in second with 668,000 viewers – a drop of 30 percent.  And the struggling CNN had 582,000 viewers – down 26 percent from a year ago.  FOX is running almost 50 percent more than CNN and MSNBC combined.

In Primetime, FOX holds an audience of 2.4 million (up 6%) against MSNBC’s 1.1 million (down 29%) and CNN’s 694,000 (down 33%).  In the all-important 25 to 54-year-old demographics, FOX’s primetime programming also dominates – with 248,000 younger viewers (up 16%).  CNN has 132,000 (down 35%) and MSNBC with 75,000 (down 46%).  Among the younger viewers, Tucker Carlson takes the number one position with “The Five” at number two.

Rachel Maddow has the top-rated show on MSNBC and ranks seventh in the ratings. However, Maddow will be giving up her five-day schedule for a once-a-week program in May.  The top spot for CNN is Anderson Cooper at sixteenth.

These figures demonstrate that leftwing programming has limited appeal among the American audience – and diminishing.  That small east coast bubble-encased media barons and news analysts have failed to reach the public because they have not accepted that their political culture is offensive to fly-over America.  They are not winning by brow-beating the American people into political and cultural submission.  The left’s policies are not what the center-right public embraces — and using biased propaganda and exaggerated fearmongering narratives to force the issues is not working.

Understandably, the mainstream media does not give these ratings a lot of coverage – and virtually no in-depth analysis.  The reason is obvious, of course.  But that is why the media establishment is confounded by the fact that Republicans and conservative policies and candidates fare much better than they assume. While FOX provides a range of news and features, MSNBC and CNN dish out arrogance and hubris on a platform of disinformation. 

These numbers should scare the hell out of the left.  They mean that the entire leftwing messaging platform is collapsing.  Eventually, the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world will have to abandon the strident leftwing bias or descend into the depths of total irrelevancy.

Whenever I cringe at the outrageously dishonest reporting and analysis that I see on several of the MSNBC/CNN shows, I take comfort knowing that I am one of the relatively few who are actually watching them – and not because I am a fan.  It is my professional obligation to my readers.  (See how much I am willing to suffer to provide readers with both sides of the issues?)    

Based on the current trajectory, FOX will continue to rise while MSNBC and CNN will be in a race to the bottom.  And that is a good thing for America.

So, there ‘tis.