The morning before the 2024 US presidential election, Fox Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch looked undeniably cheerful during a call with Wall Street analysts.
Declaring it a “record” quarter for Fox’s political revenue, Murdoch spoke at length about the lucrative nature of the quarter. election was for his family’s business. “I apologize to everyone who enjoyed football this weekend and was bombarded with political ads,” he joked from the New York headquarters, where he will watch the election results.
Murdoch has reason to be optimistic.
Fox News has been besieged by threats in recent years: calls from angry people supporters of Donald Trump to abandon a network they thought had become insufficiently loyal, multibillion-dollar lawsuits over its role in spreading election disinformation, the loss of its biggest star, Tucker Carlson, and the accelerating collapse of television by cable. Defying all odds, Fox News came out strong.
“During this election cycle, Americans have turned to Fox News more than any other service,” Murdoch said Monday, running through the numbers to illustrate the enduring dominance of the cable channel founded by his father in 1996.
In its most recent quarter, Fox News was the most popular U.S. cable channel and the second most-watched channel on all of U.S. television, behind NBC, which broadcast the Paris Olympics. In the three months ended at the end of September, its parent company’s profits doubled. Fox shares have soared nearly 50 percent this year, valuing the group at more than $18 billion.
Fox’s success contrasts with a broader media landscape that is faltering.
While the 2016 “Trump bump” generated record audiences across the news industry, the impact of the 2024 race has been more mixed. A select group – including Fox and the New York Times – continued to thrive. However, other traditional media companies face a bleaker situation.
MSNBC, the liberal-leaning cable channel that has positioned itself as the resistance network against Trump, was described last week by its owner Comcast as one of the “most mature companies” it could turn into a corporation distinct.
The Washington Post’s audience has declined from its 2016 peaks. In recent weeks, the Post reportedly lost more than 250,000 subscribers, or about 10% of its customer base, after its owner, Jeff Bezos, ended the newspaper’s planned support for Kamala Harris. The Los Angeles Times also faced backlash from its readers when its billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, did the same.
Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder of Salesforce, is reportedly in talks to sell Time magazine for a loss of $40 million to a Greek media group run by a shipping heir.
Although Harris’ dramatic elevation to Democratic nominee has helped fuel interest in this election, Americans are fatigued by the news, according to recent reports. studies. Audiences have spread across a dizzying number of platforms, with traditional media competing with TikTok and podcasters for their attention.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to portray the media as the enemy. At a rally on Sunday, he said he would not mind if an assassination attempt were to “pull through» the pen presses to attach it.
“The common information culture is fragmenting and will continue to fragment. Which means no entity, person, organization (or) voice will dominate again,” said Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. “If Walter Cronkite was the right man in America, there will be no other right man or woman in the media.”
It will likely be the most expensive US election in history, with the Harris and Trump campaigns collectively spending some $2 billion on advertising, according to the Financial Times Ad Tracker. Much of that money goes to local free-to-air TV stations – which Murdoch described on Monday as “our election heroes” in terms of revenue.
But in the world of pay TV, where Fox News operates, the long-term transition from cable reached a critical point this year. In August, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, two of America’s biggest television companies, gave a grim assessment: Their cable channels were worth $15 billion less than they thought. Cable channels have become “anchors around the necks” of media companies, said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed.
“We cannot overemphasize the radical transformation of public habits. There have been exponential changes over the last eight years,” said Jonathan Klein, CNN president from 2004 to 2010.
Fox’s resilience comes even after the network infuriated some of its core Republican-voting audience in 2020, when it was the first news organization to call Arizona in favor of Trump’s rival Joe Biden.
The backlash has worried top Fox executives, as revealed in documents filed last year in a defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by voting technology company Dominion. A day after the vote, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott texted Murdoch: “AZ’s call was damaging but we will put our stars up and plant flags to let viewers know we hear and respect them,” according to the documents. Fox paid nearly $800 million to settle the Dominion lawsuit.
Fox responded to the Arizona call, and Arnon Mishkin, who is leading the election calls, told the FT he didn’t think the controversy had put any extra pressure on him this time.
This unusual US election cycle featured only one debate between Harris and Trump, broadcast on Disney’s ABC. But Fox News obtained interviews with both candidates and their running mates, Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Fox’s interview with Harris, touted by Murdoch on Monday, attracted 7.8 million viewers — higher than his interviews on other networks, but lower than the 8.5 million who tuned in to Biden’s interview on ABC in July.
Heyward said Fox’s “clearly defined identity” helped it buck broader trends in its industry. “Fox has a very well-defined value proposition and an older audience. It is therefore well positioned to continue to succeed.
MoffettNathanson analysts wrote Monday: “While most of Fox is still in the declining world of linear (television), its narrow focus on sports and news places it in islands of stability and even of growth. »
Fox News is expected to generate $3.1 billion in operating revenue this year, up from $2.5 billion in 2016, but below the record $3.3 billion earned in 2022, according to S&P Global estimates Market Intelligence.
Even for Fox, this year’s presidential race hasn’t reached the ratings peaks of 2020, when the news cycle was hyper-charged by the coronavirus pandemic.
Fox averaged 2.8 million viewers between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. during prime time in October, compared to 4.9 million in the same month in 2020 and 3.1 million in 2016.
MSNBC averaged 1.4 million prime-time viewers in October, down from 2.7 million in 2020, while CNN attracted 830,000, down sharply from 2.4 million in 2020.
The industry now faces the question of whether its electoral boost will end once the news cycle calms down again. “I think you’re going to see things get back to reality pretty quickly,” Heyward predicted.
Murdoch on Monday seemed undeterred.
“What will happen tomorrow? I don’t know,” he said. However, he added: “I don’t think it would affect us. . . in the markets in which we operate, we are seeing tremendous growth and health.
