When the national television ratings for Thursday night’s much awaited prime time “big boy” press conference with President Biden were released yesterday, the FOX News cable channel (FNC) beat all of the competition by a wide margin – both cable and broadcast channels – which covered the event.
The numbers were consistent with the ratings in recent months that saw FOX News continue to lead its cable news competitors seven days a week.
These results are interesting in light of the fact that FNC is the only conservative, or right of center, mainstream media outlet – TV or print – in the United States. It is also the only mainstream media close to being fair and balanced. The rest of the MSM, obviously CNN and MSNBC but also including PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and in print/online the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, etc., is without exception left of center if not in the vanguard of wokeness.
Yesterday FOX News distributed the following email news release.
FOX News Channel’s (FNC) coverage of President Joe Biden’s press conference on Thursday, July 11 was the highest-rated program in television from 7:30-8:30 PM/ET, averaging 5.7 million viewers and 835,000 in the 25-54 demo, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. In addition to topping cable news, FNC outpaced broadcast and all cable networks, including ABC, CBS and NBC, among others. Additionally, FNC solely held the largest share of the cable news audience (25%) throughout President Biden’s press conference.
In primetime, from 8-11 PM/ET, FNC drew in 4.2 million viewers and 597,000 in the 25-54 demo, easily outpacing CNN and MSNBC combined. During total day, FNC also outpaced all networks, averaging 2 million viewers and 256,000 in the younger 25-54 demo.
CABLE NEWS & BROADCAST COVERAGE
July 11, 2024 7:30-8:30 PM/ET
FNC - 5,669,000 P2+; 835,000 A25-54
CNN - 2,216,000 P2+; 439,000 A25-54
MSNBC - 2,524,000 P2+; 319,000 A25-54
ABC - 4,973,000 P2+; 879,000 A25-54
NBC - 3,552,000 P2+; 592,000 A25-54
CBS - 3,601,000 P2+; 611,000 A25-54
8-11 PM/ET
FNC – 4,237,000 P2+; 597,000 A25-54
CNN – 1,395,000 P2+; 297,000 A25-54
MSNBC – 1,771,000 P2+; 196,000 A25-54
In the chart above, attributed to Nielsen Media Research, the first number – P2+ – is persons aged two years old and older while A25-54 is the demographic of persons between the ages of 25 and 54 that is preferred by advertisers.
Screenshot Biden “Big Boy” News Conference July 11, 2024 // Courtesy and used with the permission of FOX News
Conservatives, and indeed people of any ideological bent, who have “cut the cord” or who are avoiding FOX News are missing something. An analysis of the coverage on the cable and broadcast channels on Thursday night confirms that assertion.
FNC’s live coverage after Biden’s presser ended at 8:29 p.m. ET Thursday was exceptional. Jesse Watters (8:29-9 p.m. ET), followed by Sean Hannity (9-10 p.m. EDT), were strikingly on the mark with their analysis and guests.
Meanwhile, at CNN, the talking heads alternated between Biden’s diehard defenders and Obama mouthpieces like David Axelrod who have turned on a dime since the disastrous June 27 debate and are now desperately trying to unseat Biden as the Democrat party presidential nominee. In other words, CNN, and MSNBC, as they have been since at least 2016, are purveyors of non-stop pro-Democrat Trump Derangement Syndrome spin.
Whenever I have defended FOX News here in the past, I have received many passionate critiques, with readers writing things like “I cut the cord five years ago because FOX News has turned left.” O.K., well, if you stopped watching it years ago, how do you know what the channel is up to now?
I am not without criticisms of FOX News.
In particular, the channel has recently experienced additional prime time success by moving Greg Gutfeld’s 11 p.m. ET late night comedy show to a prime time slot at 10 p.m.. This chat show is then replayed at 12 a.m. PT, as is another roundtable talk show, The Five, that is replayed at 9 p.m. PT. For viewers on the West coast, 7-8 p.m. (Gutfeld’s first airing), 9-10 p.m., and 12-1 a.m. are taken up with recorded lighter fare rather than substantive live news programs.
Most of the rest of the day, however, is solid information whether it is hosted by news department anchors or opinion hosts like Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham. The occasional Democrat contributors like Juan Williams and Richard Fowler, who comprise a tiny minority of FNC talking heads, are not as fire-breathing as their more radically left peers on CNN and MSNBC. To its credit, FNC, which after all is considered mainstream media, includes these Democrats in order to provide some semblance of balance and viewers’ access to left wing viewpoints.
A number of programs on FOX News are noteworthy standouts and, for me, appointment viewing. These include Life, Liberty & Levin, two weekend programs hosted by attorney, author and talk show host Mark Levin on Saturdays and Sundays at 8 p.m. ET. Levin’s show is the only long form interview program on any cable channel, limited to one or two guests. Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures (10 a.m. and 3 p.m. ET Sundays) is another excellent program with great guests, and is often the highest rated cable news show of the weekend on any news channel.
FOX News’s web site has emerged as a leading news portal, currently ranked #6 among all U.S. news sites by you.gov. In addition to articles, the site has a video section with pages dedicated to individual programs that feature lots of clips. If someone has a cable or satellite television subscription, it’s easy to create a free login and watch videos of complete recent programs.
In November 2018, FOX launched an online digital subscription service, FOX Nation. I wrote about its launch here. The site, which bills itself as “Shows, Documentaries, and Movies that Celebrate America,” has expanded its offerings and includes original first rate documentaries, news and discussion shows, classic feature motion pictures, and archives of recent FNC programs.
For the record, my endorsement of FOX News as something to pay attention to does not preclude my ongoing recommendation since the dawn of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s that people need to access a wide variety of news and information sources. But again, especially in terms of live breaking news, forthcoming political convention coverage, debate analysis, and other major events, on the highly accessible mainstream media FOX News cannot be beat.
Full disclosure: I was invited to be a guest twice on the FOX News channel, in November 2020 and February 2021. The videos are online here and here. Like most guests (with the exception of the channel’s paid contributors), I was not compensated for these appearances.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics and other topics for over five decades. His most recent interview on BBC Radio in the U.K. can be listened to here. His web page with links to his work and a bio is http://peter.media. Peter’s extensive American Thinker archive: http://tinyurl.com/pcathinker. His Twitter account is @pchowka.