By 2023, the Fox News Channel was a bloodied, broken mess. The month of April was especially brutal:
On April 18, 2023, Fox News settled its lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, paying the company over $787 million — one of the largest defamation payments in U.S. legal history — and was forced to admit that “certain claims” about Dominion were false.
Very embarrassing for a news organization.
Less than a week later, on April 24, Fox fired Tucker Carlson. At the time, he was FNC’s most popular host.
Suddenly, MSNBC was nipping at Fox's heels. The trajectory was clear: Fox News was down, MSNBC was up.
It might not have caught up to Fox News, but MSNBC had a very strong month from a Nielsen ratings perspective.
MSNBC is the fourth-most-watched basic cable network in primetime for April 2023. According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the network averaged 1.32 million total viewers in the daypart, only fewer than Fox News and playoffs-carrying TNT and ESPN. MSNBC also averaged 820,000 total day viewers in April, No. 2 on basic cable in total day, again only behind Fox News.
[…]
How’d MSNBC win? Its coverage of the arraignment of Donald Trump (week of April 3) delivered the network’s most-watched week since the Midterm Election in November 2022.
But Fox News's real vulnerability wasn’t from the left, but the right. For the first time in its history, the channel was in danger of being outflanked by other well-funded, farther-right outlets.
The seeds, you see, were planted three years earlier, during the 2020 election. Fox News called states early and often for Joe Biden, including disputed states like Arizona. Conservatives were outraged:
The president himself encouraged conservatives to switch off Fox News and jump ship to its right-leaning competitors:
Less than a week after Trump’s tweet, Newsmax did the impossible: For the first time ever, it actually beat Fox News in the ratings:
Newsmax TV has beaten Fox News on ratings for the first time, out-ranking its 7pm Monday night show by a narrow margin after Donald Trump actively encouraged his supporters to ditch Fox in favour of the conservative channel.
Newsmax overtook Fox News by 26,000 viewers in the key 25-to-54 age demographic, coveted by advertisers in the TV industry, during the 7pm programme slot.
Fox News was a creaky, slow-moving dinosaur, struggling to keep pace with the new generation of conservative competitors. When FNC first debuted on Oct. 7, 1996, it was the only conservative news outlet on TV. Other than talk radio, there really wasn’t anywhere else for conservatives to go.
Then, seemingly overnight, the media landscape completely changed.
By April 2023, gone were Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Greta Van Susteren, Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith, Ed Henry, Jonah Goldberg, Stephen Hayes, and a slew of other marquee names. Knocking on FNC’s penthouse door were Newsmax, OAN, The Daily Wire, Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, and half a dozen hungry, fiery upstarts.
(Full disclosure: PJ Media is part of the Salem Media Group, which includes Townhall.com, RedState, Hot Air, Bearing Arms, and twitchy — plus approximately 2,400 affiliates in the Salem Radio Network — as well as Salem Publishing.)
The Dominion settlement continues to influence Fox News’ editorial choices. At the risk of burying the lede, let’s break a little news today: Last year, I was told point-blank by a veteran Fox News producer that they’re now prohibited by management from accepting ANY pitches about voting fraud.
This producer’s exact words were: “…we don’t touch election fraud in any capacity.”
Fox News was teetering. Its rivals on the left and the right were ascending. And internally, the Murdoch family was mired in an ugly family dispute over “Succession.” The 94-year-old News Corp patriarch, media legend Rupert Murdoch, was battling with his sons over the future of Fox News.
It didn’t receive the media coverage it probably deserved, but the stakes were enormous: James Murdoch, one of Rupert’s children, had described Fox News as a “menace” to U.S. democracy — and his dear ol’ dad as a “misogynist.” James had also donated $615,000 to the Biden presidential campaign and signed an open letter endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
The writing was on the wall: If James Murdoch inherited Fox News, it would cease being a right-of-center network. That’s the reality of the news biz: What ownership wants, ownership gets.
Dark, dreary storm clouds had blanketed the heavens. The sun was setting on Fox News’ glorious run…
…right until it wasn’t.
Once again, the media landscape has changed overnight — and once again, Fox News is standing tall.
Even taller than CBS, ABC, and NBC, and leaving its so-called “category rivals” of CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, and others in the dust.
It was an astonishing turnaround, as Fox itself reports:
Fox News Channel finished the summer [of 2025] not only trouncing its cable news rivals but beating the three major broadcast networks in primetime.
According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News averaged 2.43 million total viewers Monday through Sunday in primetime since June 20, besting ABC's 2.38 million viewers, NBC's 2.21 million viewers and CBS' 2.03 million viewers.
In August, Fox News averaged 2.3 million total viewers in primetime. MSNBC ranked second with an average of 783,000 total viewers in primetime, while CNN trailed in third, averaging 444,000 total viewers.
Fox News was the only network of the three to expand its audience from August 2024, improving by 1% in total viewers, while MSNBC dropped 57% of its viewers and CNN lost 59% year-over-year.
To fully appreciate how dominant Fox News is, consider this:
FNC commanded 63% of the cable news share with viewers across total day and 65% in primetime, completely dismantling CNN and MSNBC who both lost half of their audience across both primetime and total day compared to August 2024. In fact, this month marked CNN’s second lowest-rated month ever with total day 25-54 demo, slumping to just 53,000 viewers. MSNBC had its lowest-rated August in the 25-54 demo across total day (46,000 viewers) and primetime (72,000 viewers) since 1997. FNC nabbed the top 163 cable news telecasts throughout the month and has now commanded the top 1,532 cable news telecasts post-election. FNC was also number one in cable news with Asians, Hispanics and upscale viewers throughout total day during August.
Meanwhile, Newsmax’s much-ballyhooed antitrust lawsuit against Fox News was filed on Sept. 3, 2025 — and was laughed out of court just one day later. (Newsmax said it would try again with an amended complaint.)
Even better, Fox News’ succession headache was finally resolved, and conservatives couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. Don’t just take my word for it; even NPR agreed:
Rupert Murdoch has pulled one final rabbit out of his hat. The 94-year-old media titan has ensured that his vast corporate empire — boasting Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post among other titles — will retain its quintessential conservative identity after his death.
Through a series of complex transactions, Murdoch and his son Lachlan — his intended heir — have struck a deal to buy out the shares of Lachlan's three eldest siblings: Prudence, Elisabeth and James. Lachlan is now set to control both his father's companies, Fox Corp. and News Corp., after the elder Murdoch's death. Each is to receive $1.1 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity, as precise details of the settlement have not been publicly disclosed. [emphasis added]
So what explains Fox News’ remarkable turnaround?
Its primetime lineup has remained (mostly) unchanged following the dark, dreary days of April 2023, so you can’t credit a singular on-air talent. Nor can I recall FNC breaking a seminal, blockbuster story that transcended the media landscape, which rules out a Woodward-and-Bernstein-style soap opera that captured large swaths of the TV audience.
No, the biggest change wasn’t which Fox News host was on the air or what story they pursued, but who they tried to ignore.
After the 2020 election, Fox News tried its best to spurn Donald Trump. Its cable TV rivals did not.
On average since January 2021, Trump has appeared on MSNBC (in stills or video snippets) about 338 minutes per month, more than twice as often as he has appeared on CNN and Fox News (which has the lowest average). Biden has appeared on Fox News an average of more than 1,000 minutes per month, well above the 650 to 675 minutes he has been seen on CNN and MSNBC, respectively. [emphasis added]
At one point, Fox News inexplicably kept Donald Trump off its airwaves for over 113 days in a row!
For a while, the channel really, truly tried to turn the page on Donald Trump. Murdoch’s two top U.S. newspapers, the NY Post and The Wall Street Journal, blasted Trump to smithereens in the summer of 2022. And by March 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) was being mentioned on Fox News 30+ more times a week than the ex-president! Back then, DeSantis was considered the heir apparent to the MAGA movement.
Seems like an awfully long time ago, doesn’t it?
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Fast forward to today: Fox News is 100% back in the Donald Trump business — and business has never been better. Instead of trying to push the conservative movement away from Trump, it listened to its audience and recalibrated.
And in the process, FNC shielded itself from being outflanked on the right by Newsmax and OAN, depriving the upstarts of oxygen. No longer are they nipping at its heels.
Between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2023, Fox News’ ratings spiked an unbelievable 56%. Growing a cable audience by over 50% during a time of cord-cutting is simply jaw-dropping, because the number of cable subscribers keeps dwindling: In 2020, there were 83.8 million cable subscribers. By 2023, there were 72.2. And today in 2025, there are only 66.1.
Yet Fox News’ ratings keep going up!
And once again, Fox News is king of conservative media.
You’ve gotta tip your hat. That’s impressive work.
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