Fox News ratings tumble

Its audience is down 24 percent from a year ago

By Kevin Downey
MediaLife Magazine

October was the 10th anniversary of Fox News, and in that 10 years it has risen to the No. 1 cable news network, riding on the tagline "Fair and Balanced."

Yet Fox News is showing serious signs of aging, led by steep audience declines.

Fox News’s total audience fell 24 percent in the past year, to 1.3 million viewers from 1.7 million, and its key primetime audience, viewers ages 25-54, was down 7 percent in October on a year-to-year basis, to an average 363,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data.

In third quarter, Fox News suffered a 38 percent decline in 25-54s, to 409,000. In second quarter, that audience was down 22 percent and in first quarter it slid 28 percent. It is still No. 1 by a long shot.

Fox attributes the 2006 declines to a soft news year compared to 2005, which saw audiences shoot up during events like Hurricane Katrina, the Asian tsunami and the death of Pope John Paul II.

Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox News, tells Media Life: "The numbers that everybody goes by are year-to-year numbers, and 2005 was an incredible year for news compared to 2006."

But Fox's problems go deeper than that. If it was just the dearth of big stories this year, all the other cable networks would be down as well. Two were actually up in October.

(There is more, here.)