The Blue Wave Drowns Fox News's Ratings

When it comes to cable news, viewer loyalty is famously fickle, and nothing sends an audience scrambling for the remote quite like watching their preferred political team take a beating. That painful reality played out in full force on Election Night, delivering a brutal ratings gut-punch to the folks over at 1211 Avenue of the Americas.

According to the latest Nielsen numbers highlighted by Newsmax, Fox News experienced a staggering 40-plus percent plunge in primetime viewership compared to the 2022 midterms. Back four years ago, FNC pulled in an imposing average of roughly 7.4 million viewers. Fast forward to Tuesday evening, and as early returns made it abundantly clear that a Democratic sweep was unfolding nationwide, conservative viewers apparently couldn’t turn their TV sets off fast enough.

While Fox News managed to squeak out a modest lead in total primetime viewers over its cable rivals, trailing behind broadcast leaders NBC and ABC, the underlying metrics were downright ugly. The real carnage came in the coveted adults 25–54 advertising demographic, where CNN essentially ran circles around Fox. CNN nearly doubled Fox’s key demo numbers during primetime, pulling in 1.51 million younger viewers to Fox’s meager 771,000.

The sharp drop highlights an ironclad rule in the TV news business: viewers tune in when they expect good news and flee the moment the scoreboard turns against them. Conservative hosts and executives might try to spin the total cable win, but bleeding more than four out of every ten viewers on the biggest political night of the cycle has to sting. When the electoral wave rolled in blue, Fox’s typically dominant ratings washed right out to a big blue sea.