The victory was won on Monday evening by a crowd of spectators who were disappointed with the election results. “Greg Kelly Reports” on Newsmax, “The Story with Martha’s All Kills” on Fox, rated by 25- to 54-year-old demographers.
The margin was narrow – Kelly averaged 229,000 viewers in the demo and McCullum averaged 203,000 – but it is still a landmark in the cable news industry.
Prior to the election, Newsmax was not considered Fox’s fiercest competitor; It was largely canceled as one of the handful of Wannabe Challengers.
But the loss of President Trump on November 3 changed the cable TV calculus. Viewers who were disappointed when Fox admitted the truth of Trump’s loss explored other options. Trump encouraged them to try Newsmax.
Newsmax – and Kelly in particular offered a safe haven in which Biden was not called a presidential-elect and Trump has not yet been defeated.
His evening program includes lengthy, pro-Trump, kind of anti-media comments, usually found later in the evening on Fox. And a certain subset of viewers is paying him back for it. Kelly’s show is usually Newsmax’s highest rated show of the day.
“We’re here to stay,” Newsmax CEO Christopher Rdy said Tuesday evening. “Ratings show that.”
False News is rated four times higher than Newsmax at any time of the day. Among viewers of all ages, Fox averaged 1.36 million viewers around the clock on Monday, while Newsmax averaged 316,000 viewers.
But Fox is below its pre-election highs while Newsmax is ahead.
Take Kelly’s Hour: Before the election, her show had barely a beat. The 25-54 demo at 7pm had barely 10,000 viewers and 100,000 viewers, according to Nielsen data.
Good Night now has about a million viewers per hour, and Monday was good: 949,000 viewers.
Ruddy pointed out that Newsmax TV also broadcasts live on various platforms, so there is an additional audience that is not measured by Nielsen.
At 7 p.m., Newsmax ranks third overall behind CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront,” which averaged 333,000 viewers at Monday’s demo, and MSNBC’s “The Redout” at 300,000.
The 25-54 demo is important because most ads on cable news networks are bought and sold using demographic ratings.
Newsmax seems to be cutting Fox’s demo performance at some other time of the day, though, it’s hard to say for sure.
At 4pm on Monday, for example, the demo of “The Howie Care Show” on Newsmax averaged 101,000, while the demo of “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on Fox averaged 148,000.
An hour later, the gap between the two channels was wider: “The Chris Salisado Show” on Newsmax averaged 120,000 while “The Five” on Fox averaged 303,000.
What is the main difference? “The Five” is a sharp right-wing talk show while Cavuto’s 4-hour evening is less ideological. Fox’s more opinionated shows continue to outperform its newscasts, even when the newscasts are full of well-meaning guests and storylines.
Newsmax becomes the maximum in talk shows, not newscasts. In the coming weeks, Ruddy said, Newsmax will continue to expand its programming schedule, including a 10 a.m. program on Fox, led by early morning host Rob Smith.
Ruddy still has options to consider for the 9 a.m. hours.
It must be emphasized that Fox is still far ahead of Newsmax by almost every imaginable metric.
But Fox is accustomed to being No. 1 in the 25-54 demo so losing to Newsmax even for an hour a day is a serious shock.
Steve Tomsick, chief financial officer of Fox Corp., addressed the competition at a financial conference early Tuesday. He mentioned Newsmax and One America News by name.
“I think when people think about a contest, they have a knee side effect, they should think ‘we need to have two or three things to go head to head with us.’ “Business is a lot bigger than that,” Tomsick said, including news coverage and digital properties.
He described Fox News as a business that “is standing the test of time, and every time there are doubts about what the future looks like, we are pierced and another hit has reached a high level.”
“So,” he said, “we are confident that Fox News will be able to participate in any environment going forward.”
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