The Fox Corporation confessed to its stakeholders that its flagship news network experienced a significant dip in ratings on Monday, citing "viewer fatigue" from coverage this year.
Libby Bandelin·Nov 3, 2026·5 min read
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The Fox Corporation confessed to its stakeholders that its flagship news network experienced a significant dip in ratings on Monday, citing “viewer fatigue” from coverage this year.
During a quarterly earnings call, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch acknowledged that “America’s News Channel” is experiencing a decline in year-over-year ratings, telling investors and financial analysts that viewers are watching less TV, not tuning into other competing networks, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
“Those viewers are not going to any other news channel,” Murdoch reportedly said according to the Post. “They’re not switching to MS NOW or to CNN.”
Fox News has a history of boasting high ratings — relative to other cable news outlets — and brought in 1.7 million prime-time viewers during the week of Oct. 19, while MS NOW and CNN stayed in the hundreds of thousands range, the Washington Post reported.
But even with these numbers Fox’s prime-time audience was down 23 percent compared to a year prior, and both MS NOW and CNN’s ratings have grown about 30 percent during that period according to recent Nielsen data published Oct. 30.
The cable TV giant is widely regarded as the main news platform for the GOP and the Trump administration. However, as Americans sour on the president with his approval ratings
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Fox News Ratings In Freefall — IJR
in the 30s heading into the 2026 midterms, Fox’s coverage over recent months might often appear to be at odds with everyday Americans’ experiences.
Then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt urged Generation Z voters to pull themselves up by their “bootstraps” during a July interview with Fox’s primetime personality Jesse Watters. The comments from the Trump administration’s chief spokeswoman at the time seemed to make light of the many economichardships young Americans are facing.
“I hate to say it, Gen Z and those younger than me have been raised with just silver spoons in their mouths,” Leavitt responded to Watters’ question about whether Gen Z is lazy for not voting for the GOP.
Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history, was born in 1997, which Pew Research Center defines as the first year of the generation.
She agreed and said Gen Z is used to “getting everything handed to them.”
“That’s not the values this country was built on,” she added. “It was built on meritocracy and hard work, pulling up your sleeves, pulling yourself up from your bootstraps, and achieving the American dream, and we need to protect it with all we’ve got.”
Other members of Gen Z blasted Leavitt for her remarks on the network at the time.
“Ironically, calling an entire generation lazy instead of addressing real problems with cost of living, housing, and employment … IS LAZY. It’s tough even for people that work hard, save, and have good jobs,” Nalin Haley, the 24-year-old son of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley posted on X the day after the then-press secretary made her remarks. “The goal of every generation is to leave it better than you found it. That’s simply not happening.”
Haley went on to say that despite his young age, the America he lives in now has become “unrecognizable.”
“I have yet to see Democrats or Republicans address this issue properly. Economically, they’re one and the same because they’re both controlled by elites and corporate interests. The party that actually starts listening to real everyday Americans first is the party of the future,” he wrote.
Generation Z may be earning a larger salary than their parents or grandparents did at their age, but inflation, cost-of-living expenses, and housing affordability crisis has produced unprecedented economy uncertainty, a September report in Fortune Magazine found.
Anxiety over the country’s current economic state, is not exclusive to the younger generation. More than 70 percent of Generation X fears for running out of money to support their families more than death, a report published Nov. 1 from Fortune found.
Nearly 90 percent of voters are concerned about the cost of gas, food, utilities, and healthcare and just under 8 in 10 voters said inflation is causing hardship for their families, according to an NBC News poll released Tuesday, before the day’s midterm elections.
More than half — 65% — say Trump’s policies have made the economy worse. Sixty-two percent said he’s responsible for high prices, according to the poll. Forty-four percent of voters said their finances are worse today than they were two years ago when Trump returned to office. Just 18% say they’re better off.
Trump’s economic policy and approach to cost of living was arguably the strongest issue that won him the vote, but now voters are expressing their frustration with the current economic state, the poll showed.
Seventy-five percent of the poll’s respondents said the nation’s economy is in rough shape and 65 percent said Trump’s policies have worsened conditions in the U.S. This is the opposite of how voters viewed the economy in 2018 during Trump’s first term when 68 percent of voters said the economy was in good shape.
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