Fox News Ratings In Freefall

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 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 economic hardships 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.