Palm Beach County’s Newsmax scores brief ratings win over Fox

As supporters of President Donald Trump continue searching for an information source that gives credence to the idea that he won re-election, upstart Newsmax scored a brief ratings victory over Fox News, the longtime favorite go-to channel for Republicans.

Newsmax, which is based in Boca Raton, had more viewers among a key demographic group for an hour Monday evening.

The big unknown is whether it’s a permanent shift or if conservatives will return to their more familiar viewing habits. The ratings data are mixed.

Monday’s hour

CNN Business, which reports extensively on the media industry, said Newsmax’s “Greg Kelly Reports” averaged 229,000 viewers in the 7 p.m. hour Monday night. Fox’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum” averaged 203,000 viewers in the group that appeals most to advertisers: people between 25

and 54 years old.

Viewership was much higher for the competing CNN show at the same time and somewhat higher for the 7 p.m. show on MSNBC.

Monday was the first time Newsmax has had a ratings win over Fox News Channel, CNN reported. (CNN is, of course, a competitor in the cable news world, though its programming doesn’t try to reach conservatives and Trump supporters the way the business models do at Fox News and Newsmax.)

Fox still ahead

So far, it’s a one-time occurrence — and it’s possible that the Newsmax surge may have already peaked.

Nielsen ratings show that Fox’s overall ratings are much higher than Newsmax’s. “Among viewers of all ages, Fox averaged 1.36 million viewers around the clock on Monday, while Newsmax averaged 316,000 viewers,” CNN reported.

Nielsen data show Newsmax didn’t do as well in the last week of November as it did earlier in the month. And Fox had higher ratings in the biggest Florida markets — Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa-St. Petersburg — as well as the West Palm Beach and Jacksonville markets.

Before the election, CNN reported that the Kelly program averaged 100,000 viewers; on Monday it had 949,000. Still, Fox’s “The Story” was far ahead of Newsmax’s program, for all of November, averaging more than 2.8 million viewers to Kelly’s 630,000. On Monday, Fox’s total viewership in the 7 p.m. hour was 1.6 million.

Viewership in flux

A big reason for the shift is Newsmax is providing something an audience wants: theories that back up Trump’s assertions that he won the election.

On Wednesday, for example, some of its coverage sought to discredit Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who refused to act to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, which gave him 16 electoral votes. In another segment on Wednesday, a Newsmax guest said the “Democrat party and radical leftists are miserable, terrible people.”

Fox, by contrast, has angered Trump and his supporters by not giving credence in its news programs to the assertions — that aren’t backed up with evidence — that the election was riddled with fraud. It was the earliest major news organization to declare that Joe Biden won Arizona, something that infuriated the president, a result that was borne out in the state’s certified results.

As a result, the president has used his Twitter platform to complain about Fox and tout Newsmax.

For all of 2020, Fox is the ratings leader, averaging more than 1.9 million viewers an hour, ahead of CNN and MSNBC and far ahead of Newsmax, which averaged 86,000.

And Fox was the most watched cable network in November, both for full day and primetime viewers. Fox said in a news release about the monthly ratings that it was the channel’s highest-rated primetime for both total viewers and in the 25-54 demographic — with more viewers than other news channels and more viewers than ABC, CBS and NBC.

Fox News Channel said its total viewership was up 22% and primetime viewership was up 41% in November 2020 compared to November 2019. It said the percentage increases were higher for viewers age 25 to 54.

Newsmax TV, which is hard to find for many viewers — at channel 1115 on many cable systems — has long sought a way to break out of Fox’s shadow.

Future

The Hollywood Reporter, which also covers the television industry, reported that Fox Corp. chief financial officer Steve Tomsic told analysts Tuesday that “We feel super confident about Fox News being able to compete in any environment going forward.”

During a webcast presentation to the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference Tomsic acknowledged competitors, including Newsmax and another littleknown pro-Trump channel, One America News Network.

“We don’t have a hubris bone in our body, so we don’t take lightly the potential for competition, whether it’s the existing sort of classic MSNBC or CNN, or the sort of emerging ones like Newsmax and OANN,” he said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Tomsic also said effectively competing with Fox would require outfits investments in news gathering and original platform and do more than hire evening hosts to compete with Fox’s primetime hosts.

Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said last month about half of its 250 employees work in Boca Raton and about half work in New York. Fox News Channel doesn’t disclose the size of its staff, but it is larger than Newsmax. Fox News Media’s LinkedIn page puts it in the category of 1,001 to 5,000 employees.

The Newsmax website started in 1998 and Newsmax TV launched in 2014. It’s become a home for some personalities who used to work at Fox News, including Rob Schmitt, who disappeared as the co-host of the early morning program “Fox & Friends First” in August and the duo “Diamond and Silk” whose show on the streaming platform Fox Nation was cancelled after what The Daily Beast reported was their promotion of “conspiracy theories and disinformation about the coronavirus.”

Another Newsmax personality is Sean Spicer, who was Trump’s widely ridiculed first press secretary.