Fox News has dominated the weekly rating now for 120 weeks.
But in the wake of the network cutting Tucker Carlson and his show in April, many viewers threw them over.
Now they are finding out that those actions may be resulting in serious consequences.
According to the Neilsen data, Fox has now tumbled out of first place.
Nielsen data regarding the week ending this past Sunday was shared on Twitter on Tuesday by A.J. Katz, a reporter specializing in the cable news business. According to the data, Fox’s primetime 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET viewership averaged 1,504,429. The average viewership for the more left-leaning MSNBC over the same time frame averaged 1,520,857, narrowly beating out the conservative network that has long been a leader in cable news viewership.
As Katz noted in a tweet, the data from last week marks the end of a lengthy streak of rating dominance for Fox News.
“Barring a last-second data reporting change, Fox’s 120-week-long winning streak in primetime appears to be over,” Katz wrote.
They’ve seen their viewership in Carlson’s former slot the 8 p.m. primetime slot drop by half, as they’ve tried to fill his slot with rotating hosts who aren’t him. But they’ve also lost viewership over their entire lineup.
AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
That’s going to hit them where they live — right in the pocketbook because that was likely to make it harder for them to negotiate higher fees from cable providers, in addition to the downgrade in the ratings.
MSNBC has also been picking up viewers from CNN as some of the liberal viewers were throwing a hissy fit at the network attempting to be more objective under the stewardship of CEO Chris Licht.
Katz said they probably would take back the lead next week, but their lead would be decreased.
What’s funny on top of that is Tucker Carlson has launched his own Twitter show that is completely smoking Fox in the numbers. Fox has filed a cease and desist order since they claim Carlson is still under contract with them. But Carlson claims that they are the ones in breach. Meanwhile, his Twitter show is raking in millions of views, far more than anything on Fox.
He’s had three episodes so far and they’ve raked in over 216 million views in total so far, covering controversial issues. His last episode concentrated on the Trump indictment. His attorney Harmeet Dhillon also said she would not be appearing on Fox anymore either and urged others to reconsider their choices about doing so as well until Fox changed its ways.
Fox is at a crossroads. They have some decisions to make. Do they stop trying to be like the other networks or go back to what got them to network dominance: offering an alternative, being other than the liberal media? They are bleeding viewers now who may never come back. If they are only the same, why should any conservative stay? Beyond that, it’s about free speech, as Dhillon said. If you do not stand with what your base does, don’t expect the base to stay around.