Fox News' Place In An Obama World

(MarketWatch)  This is the first installment in a three-part series by MarketWatch media columnist Jon Friedman examining the prospects for the three major cable-news operations entering a Barack Obama presidency.

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In the aftermath of Sen. Barack Obama's stirring victory over John McCain, I've been hearing speculation about another potentially eye-opening event: the end of Fox News Channel's reign as the king of cable news.

The logic goes that because a left-leaning Obama is now in power, Fox will be in decline. Some people say that the voters who swept the Illinois senator into office will reflect his liberal views and turn away from Fox. I'd suggest three words of caution:

Not so fast.

News Corp. unit Fox is No. 1 today in the cable ratings, and has been for nearly seven years. (News Corp. also owns MarketWatch, the publisher of this column.) There are three main reasons to suspect that it can stay there:

Fox can take comfort in knowing that its core audience of politically conservative Americans is loyal to the point of being rabid. That won't change one bit, even with a Democrat in the White House.

Under Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News since its inception, the unit has never been complacent, and it won't start coasting now.

Fox, which loves to portray itself as the underdog, can now rally the troops to a fever pitch by reverting to its favorite public posture: The Outsider.

Fox should have a relatively easy time of maintaining its core viewers, who trend to the right. Even as Obama raced past McCain during the campaign, Fox was able to maintain its position of dominance in the cable ratings.

As TVWeek recently noted, Fox marked its 12th anniversary in October with a major ratings victory that catapulted it to be the second-most watched basic cable network in prime-time for the month.

In recent weeks, Fox has fortified its ranks. It re-signed Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. It recruited Glenn Beck, who had been with CNN's Headline News division.

History on its side

Remember, the upstart Fox News Channel rose to prominence during Bill Clinton's presidency. Under the leadership of Ailes, Fox News brilliantly identified a large audience of millions of disenfranchised American voters, the underlying key to its ability to sprint past CNN when that Time Warner unit looked indestructible.

Fox News was launched in 1996, just as Clinton was about to embark on a second term in the White House. It was a time when Bob Dole was the public face of the Republican Party and even amid popularity of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, the G.O.P. seemed hopelessly mired in mediocrity after back-to-back resounding wins by Clinton.

People sometimes forget how much of an obstacle Fox had to over come in those days. CNN had established a huge, winning image during the first invasion of Iraq in 1991. In the ensuing years, CNN more or less lived off its reputation. CNN had no idea that Fox would prove to be so ambitious, and capable of blowing past it in the ratings.

Ailes' formula was brilliant in its execution: appeal to voters who felt voiceless and were turned off by Bill and Hillary Clinton's policies and values.

Viewer retention

But today, Fox's path may not be as smooth. On Election Night from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., according to Nielsen Media Research, CNN topped Fox, 12.3 million viewers to 9 million.

Fox, which takes pride in having a consistently high retention rate of viewers, was still able to turn in its second-highest prime time result in total viewers and its highest 25-to-54 demographic ever.

Then again, it may be a mistake to draw long-standing conclusions from the results of one night. Remember, copies of newspapers flew off the shelves immediately following the historic Obama victory, but that didn't change anything about the doleful state of the newspaper industry.

Yes, it will be a challenge to continue to stay on top. Fox has done it before.
By Jon Friedman

[palmstorm]

Rush Limbaugh is, at this moment, promoting hatred and national racial discord by repeating the bad behavior of bloggers as they respond to current stories on the internet. The role of Fairness is to put reasonable regulations on paid commercial broadcasters who may behave badly, not on private citizens who vent unpaid on the net. That is another matter that should not be used by broadcasters to justify their viewpoint. It''s time for public figures who have enjoyed 20 years of deregulation in the broadcasting arena to answer for their claims, and to take their hands off the dump button so that the attacked and holders of responsible counterpoint can fully express their views in the national public square that is broadcasting.

[lexclouseau]

I stopped watching Fox News in June of 2003. Used to watch their morning show, Fox and Friends. Are they still starting each half hour segment of that show with some blonde SHOUTING that "Weapons of Mass Destruction MAY have been found in Iraq"? Or did they get the memo that the Iraq War wasn''t really about WMDs, afterall?

[scottyusa]

Fox is number one becuase it is the best news network. DUH

[usclimey]

Oh really? Embracing communism right off the bat are you? Suppress the media because it doesn''''t tell you what you want to hear. If it doesn''''t pander to your ego, and if it tries to put at least a bit of information out about your candidates true character...just shouldn''''t be on the air.

btw, there''''s a Fairness Doctrine already in place...it''''s called the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Posted by FromTexwLove

From what I''ve seen, the only use the Right has for the 1st Amendment is to hide behind it while throwing their lies around. I don''t have any problems with the right having its own propaganda station, I''d just prefer it if they lied a lot less. Oh yeah, and got rid of Limpbone - he''s done more to tear this country apart than any five mainstream media outlets.

[usclimey]

Comrades, when do you start the book burnings and smashing shop windows? Those evil, evil people who own their own business!!

Posted by Xlib

The only person I''ve heard of recently who wants to ban books is your beloved Santa Sarah. The great thing about being liberal is the live and let live aspect. Everyone is allowed their view no matter how laughable it is.

[palmstorm]

Fairness in its original form applied to broadcasting, not print, because of limited spectrum. Given the new technologies, there will inevitably be an equitable 21st century version that allows for counterpoint and for the attacked to respond. Yes, I read newspapers, but print has not been limited historically by anything analagous to spectrum.

[lagerhead5]

"...the rest of us who are more educated READ a newspaper."

Yea, because every educated person like this genius knows that the newspapers NEVER slant their news to fit any agenda. Give me a break! Journalists are journalists regardless of the medium. Either they are unbiased or they are not. That doesn''t change just because their medium is print.

[palmstorm]

Fairness is a founding broadcasting principle in this country. Restore it and be done with the incessant packaging and repackaging of hate. Take the utterers'' dirty hands off the dump button and allow full counterpoint! With this vote, Americans have repudiated 8 years of attacks on the constitution by government. They also repudiated 20 years of electronic attacks on persons, science, education, and progress. Don''t you get it Fox, Hannity, O''Reilly, Premiere Broadcasting, Clear Channel, Levin, and Limbaugh, YOU lost it for your cause with your trash talk, and now you struggle in a panic to blame others and flounder for a new angle of attack. WE ARE TIRED of one-way visionless dark broadcasting!!

[tmittelstaed]

Faux Noise will always have viewers. The reason why is simple - only ignorant redneck persons get their actual news from TV news, the rest of us who are more educated READ a newspaper. And the human species has been trying to eliminate ignorance since it first became civilized, without success.

[babooph]

When O''Reilly was a child,I bet his mother had to tie a porkchop on his neck to get the dog to play with him.