Fox News boss blames ‘viewer fatigue’ for massive ratings collapse

Fox chief executive Lachlan Murdoch admitted Monday that the network is losing viewers heading into the midterm elections, according to the Financial Times.

“We are seeing viewer fatigue,” Murdoch told investors on an earnings call. “They’re just fatigued and watching slightly less television.”

Fox News’ primetime ratings fell 28 percent in October compared with a year earlier, according to Nielsen. The network averaged fewer than 1.7 million viewers between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., down from 2.3 million in October 2025.

The decline ran across the whole schedule. Fox averaged 1.1 million viewers throughout the day, down 27 percent. Its most-watched show, “The Five,” averaged 2.7 million viewers, down from 3.7 million a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Fox’s rivals grew, as CNN’s primetime audience rose 19 percent to 598,000 viewers and MS NOW’s rose 13 percent to 925,000.

Murdoch said last year’s numbers had been boosted by Donald Trump’s inauguration and the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. He compared the current cycle to the 2006 midterms, when Republicans suffered heavy losses during George W. Bush’s second term.

“We’ve seen this playbook before,” Murdoch said.

Fox is still by far the most-watched cable news network. In October it drew more primetime viewers than CNN and MS NOW combined, and more than half of the total cable news audience. Murdoch also took a shot at his competitors: “We do compete with broadcast news as opposed to our cable news peers. You can’t really call them peers.”

A Fox News spokesperson pointed to the network’s digital reach, saying it has drawn 3.8 billion YouTube views this year, compared with nearly 3 billion for MS NOW.

Fewer viewers haven’t meant less money. Murdoch said Fox made a record for a midterm cycle in political advertising – more than $350 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30, with more than $250 million of it from the company’s local TV stations.

“This has clearly been a dramatically positive political revenue cycle across the board, and we’re the beneficiary of a lot of that,” he said.

The ratings slide comes as Trump has turned on the network, complaining at a rally Friday in Daytona Beach, Florida, about seeing Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Fox.

“Fox is giving Democrats more time than they give Republicans,” Trump said. “I’m working my a-- off, I’m doing rallies, and I come back, and I watch the opponent of the person I did the rally for. I’m not happy.”