Dem
51
GOP
49
All the revelations about how Tucker Carlson, et al., despise their audience and think they are a bunch of ignorant yahoos who believe any garbage they are fed feed them hasn't affected Fox's ratings at all. For example, last week Fox marked the 100th consecutive week of being the top cable news network in the 25-54 age demographic. Data from Nielsen also show that despite all the recent headlines, viewership has remained constant.
There are two possibilities here. First, the Fox viewers' don't read newspapers, watch other TV networks, or get any news from the Internet so they don't know that Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity think they are fools. Second, they know and don't care as long as the "news" they are fed is what they want to hear. Philip Seib, a professor emeritus of journalism at USC, said: "That audience that Fox has, which is very similar to the core base of Donald Trump, is still going to want information. They're not going to switch to MSNBC or CNN." That appears to be true.
So far there is nothing out there suggesting that Fox is worried about losing part of its audience. Last week at an investor conference, Lachlan Murdoch, the top executive at Fox Corp., complimented Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and didn't suggest anything was wrong or needed to change. Indeed, as long as the ratings stay strong, Fox won't change. The applicable saying here is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And Fox doesn't think it's broke. (V)