All Hope Is Not Lost for Fox News

Fox News has taken a lot of heat, much of it deserved, in Republican circles about how they handled their coverage not just of the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but also election night and the weeks that followed. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace has especially been a source of constant frustration for many on the right who once believed he was fair and balanced but who grew to see him last year as someone openly trying to curry favor with the Biden campaign.

It is those frustrations and then some that caused some conservatives to turn to alternative sources for news like Newsmax and OANN. As a result, Fox saw a period of declining ratings in November and December as the conservatives who felt they were letting them down said they’d had enough.

But the network’s star is starting to rise again almost as quickly as it fell:

On Friday the 15th, CNN averaged 2.84M primetime viewers, Fox averaged 2.7M.
On Fri 22nd, CNN averaged 2M viewers (- 29%) in primetime & Fox averaged 2.9M (+ 9%).
So, FNC went from losing to CNN by 145K to beating them by 917K in a single week… — CDG24 https://t.co/PmD0WvleYX

— johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) January 26, 2021

TV RATINGS: Friday, Jan. 22: America’s most watched cable news programs in total viewers were @maddow, @TuckerCarlson, @seanhannity, @Lawrence, @TheFive & @NicolleDWallace. https://t.co/4l2zfhQdzY pic.twitter.com/oooPl9lNVS

— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) January 26, 2021

What brought this on? Well, for starters, CNN – one of Fox News’ primary competitors – has seen their ratings start to slide as Trump left office:

Expect the ratings for CNN to continue to decline rapidly over the next several months to their lethargic, pre-Trump numbers. I expect the network and its anchors to become increasingly unhinged as this is happening, so for your safety it would be best not to engage with them. https://t.co/tumooMgpue

— a newsman (@a_newsman) January 25, 2021

It was clear that CNN's ratings were unsustainable. They are coming down pretty quickly. This is while many Fox shows have been pretty stable.
Whenever this impeachment stuff is done, Fox is likely to take number one back over. — CDG24 https://t.co/PmD0WvleYX

— johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) January 26, 2021

It stands to reason that CNN’s numbers would fall because, as Tucker Carlson noted last night, their “reason for existing has departed for Mar-a-Lago”:

Tucker Carlson: "CNN is staring down some pretty lean years ratings-wise now that their reason for existing has departed for Mar-a-Lago." pic.twitter.com/JucJhjxsOp

— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) January 26, 2021

But we all know that the viewers CNN lost over the last week or so didn’t all rush to Fox News to see what they were reporting. The catalyst for the reversal in ratings fortunes for Fox is very likely because there’s a new sheriff in town, and conservatives who left are returning to the fold to see Fox News reporters like their White House correspondent Peter Doocy going to the mat in press conferences with not only Biden press secretary Jen Psaki but Biden himself, asking questions that the hypocritical left-leaning journalists in the White House press corps wouldn’t dare to.

Examples include asking why Biden thought it was appropriate for him and his family to violate his EO on mask mandates on Inauguration Day and if we should be calling Joe Biden’s recently announced travel bans “xenophobic” as Biden did with Trump.

Doocy was also the only reporter Biden called on by name yesterday after Biden’s handlers had spent the majority of his first formal presser picking out the reporters who would get to ask him questions:

After taking five pre-selected questions from reporters, Biden calls an audible and takes a question from Fox's Peter Doocy because "he always has an edge to them, but I like him anyway."

Doocy asks about vaccination rates and then his assertion he can't shut down the virus pic.twitter.com/ZX8XPVc3EF

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 25, 2021

Naturally, the Usual Suspects on the left took issue with Biden having to actually take a question that didn’t involve something along the lines of “how will you go about bringing unity and healing?” Fox News veteran political analyst Brit Hume gave them the response they deserved:

Bad faith my a**. It led to Biden acknowledging that he misspoke, then proceeding to raise his oft-repeated vaccination goal of 100 million after it had become clear we were already on the way to achieving that when he took office. So much for @PDoocy being there “wasting time.” https://t.co/NYh5yhnri3

— Brit Hume (@brithume) January 25, 2021

Doocy’s not the only reporter at the network who has shown he’s got what it takes to ask the questions of Biden and his surrogates that we’ll rarely get from supposedly “seasoned” journalists, but he’s definitely a standout.

In addition to the straight-news reporters who have stepped up their game, there is also Fox News’ primetime lineup of solid opinion hosts like Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, who don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. Carlson, in particular, has been on fire the last few months and is poised to continue to give Democrats and Fox’s competition a lot of grief in the form of pointed commentary for years to come.

There’s a reason for the ongoing campaigns from CNN, Media Matters, and others on the left to get Fox banned, and it’s not due to any allegations of helping incite the Capitol rioters. They know that the network, in spite of its flaws, will continue to be a powerhouse over the next four years and a major thorn in the side of Democrats from Biden on down.

CNN and MSNBC have already declared in so many words that Dear Leader must not be subjected to anything remotely approaching a tough question, but Fox News clearly thinks differently. That’s what will continue bringing viewers back to Fox and why shutdown campaigns against them will ultimately fail.