The post-Trump era has already been rough for Fox News, with the network’s primetime programming down 25% last week from what it was at the same time last year, according to Nielsen. It’s a particularly sharp decline given the flurry of news, with Donald Trump’s exit, Joe Biden’s inauguration and the beginning of a new administration to cover. As the Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona reports, those events did, however, seem to drive viewership for Fox’s rivals:
Fox started to feel the pain of life after Trump in December, when Newsmax eked out its first ratings win and CNN maintained a consistent Nielsen ratings lead for the first time in nearly two decades. Amid competition from major cable news networks, like CNN and MSNBC, and right-wing upstarts like Newsmax and OAN, Fox is apparently looking to double down on MAGA-aligned voices. The network recently added another hour of opinion programming at 7 p.m., with Trump-friendly host Maria Bartiromo filling the slot on Tuesday night, and is giving former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow a new daily show on Fox Business. The programming moves comes as Fox News fired political editor Chris Stirewalt, a respected figure in the network’s decision, along with other journalists in what one source described to the Daily Beast as an “ideological purge.”
Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary, seemed not far behind Kudlow after CREW on Tuesday revealed a financial form she filed earlier this month including an “employment agreement with Fox News, starting work in January.” McEnany ostensibly spent her final White House days auditioning for such a gig, appearing more than 20 times on the network after November’s election, the Washington Post notes. But following CREW’s report, the network disputed the former press secretary’s apparent career move, saying in a statement that “Kayleigh McEnany is not currently an employee or contributor at Fox News.” While Fox was in talks with McEnany about a potential on-air position, those discussions stopped after the Capitol attack on January 6, Politico reports. However, the revolving door between Fox News and Trumpworld is reportedly not permanently sealed off to McEnany: according to reporter Yashar Ali, the network is still open to hiring her in the future because it doesn’t “condone cancel culture.”
If the network balked at the prospect of welcoming another Trump defender following the insurrection, their talking heads Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have only ratcheted up the crazy, such as by spinning the heightened military presence in Washington for Biden’s inauguration—bolstered security in response to the pro-Trump extremists attacking the Capitol—into a new conspiracy theory about silencing conservatives.
Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch’s recent comments offer further indication of the network’s direction in the Biden era. Accepting a lifetime achievement award last week, Murdoch blasted “this awful woke orthodoxy” and “wave of censorship” plaguing news outlets. “This rigidly enforced conformity, aided and abetted by so-called social media, is a straitjacket on sensibility,” he said, echoing many a Fox host’s free expression cries following Trump’s ban from multiple social media platforms. Carlson even stood up Monday for QAnon, tying TV pundits’ criticism of the right-wing, extremist cult to dictators trying to control people’s minds.
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