Fox News Takes Ratings Hit

Apparently, trying to cheer on the GOP in the midterms is not good for your ratings.

If you’re inside the Fox News suites on Avenue of the Americas, you might want to look away from the latest Nielsen numbers.

Preliminary ratings reveal that Fox News is suffering a brutal drop in viewership, plunging to historic lows heading into November.

The network averaged 1.1 million total-day viewers in October—marking a steep 27% drop compared to the same time last year.

Worse yet for the sales department, the bleeding is even more severe in the advertiser-coveted Adults 25–54 demographic.In the demo, Fox News tumbled 32% year-over-year, pulling in a meager average of just 98,000 viewers. That puts the cable giant on track for its lowest-rated month in the key demo in a quarter-century.

To put that into perspective: the last time Fox News posted demo numbers this low, viewers were still rocking pagers and watching standard-definition CRT TVs.

Meanwhile, competitors are moving in the opposite direction, with CNN and MS NOW posting year-over-year gains.

The silver lining for Fox brass? Total-volume dominance. Even with more than a quarter of its audience vanished, Fox News still captures over 50% of the total cable news share and draws more overall eyeballs than CNN and MS NOW combined.

Still, owning the biggest slice of a rapidly shrinking pie—while shedding viewers in the demographic that pays the bills—is not where any network wants to be right before a major election cycle.