American boomers’ favourite TV network is trying new digital tricks
Illustration: Brett Ryder
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A s missiles rain down on the Middle East, Trey Yingst fires off salvos of news from his smartphone. The 32-year-old chief foreign correspondent of Fox News dons a flak jacket and stands on a Tel Aviv balcony to file reports several times a day. His main audience is on cable. But Mr Yingst has cultivated another set of viewers on TikTok, where he posts bulletins to 1m followers. He is such a prolific poster that viewers sometimes enquire after his safety when he has been offline for more than a few hours.
Fox is the undisputed king of American TV news. Long the tribune of conservative America, it has become so widely watched that it is also the most popular cable news channel among Democrats. As well as out-rating CNN and MS NOW, its main cable rivals, it sometimes beats even broadcast outlets like CBS News. Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought back advertisers, who are now less likely to see Fox as brand-threateningly right-wing. War has juiced viewership further. Fox News recently recorded its highest Saturday ratings in over 20 years.
Yet even in this commanding position, Fox exemplifies a problem in the TV -news business. Viewership is booming, but mainly among boomers. As its ads for pension annuities and erectile-dysfunction pills suggest, Fox News’s median cable viewer is pushing 70. The share of American homes with cable has fallen below half for the first time since the 1980s, as young people turn to streaming. With its focus on live programming, Fox has kept its linear- TV revenue growing, and has therefore been cautious about pushing digital alternatives. Fox Corporation (which offers sport and entertainment as well as news) made 92% of its revenue last year from linear tv, estimates Bernstein, a broker.
Fox is now trying to lure younger viewers, with new content and new distribution channels. Start with the programming. Young faces have been promoted: alongside the dashing Mr Yingst are millennials such as Peter Doocy and Lawrence Jones, and members of Gen Z like Brett Cooper. Sean Hannity, a long-serving presenter, has been coaxed into a pair of jeans for “Hang Out”, a podcast-style chatshow featuring youth-friendly guests such as Matthew Tkachuk, a hockey player. Fox has struck a licensing deal with “Ruthless”, a swaggering podcast whose slogan is “Keep the faith, hold the line and own the libs.” It is said to be negotiating a partnership with Kalshi, a prediction market popular with young men, to provide betting odds for news events.
As well as rejuvenating its output, Fox is putting its news in places where young audiences will find it. In August it launched a streaming service, Fox One. Sport is at its core, but about a third of the time spent on the app is on news, and those viewers who watch news use the platform three times as much as those who don’t, Fox says. Fox’s rights to this year’s football World Cup, to be held mainly in America, should tempt more young men to sign up.
In addition to building its own digital platform, Fox is also fishing for viewers on social media. There its audience is very different from the cable crowd: nearly half of Fox News’s viewers on TikTok are aged 18-34, it says. It is making some shows just for social media. Mr Hannity’s “Hang Out” is on YouTube and Spotify, not the Fox News TV channel. Social content brings in probably tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue. The bigger hope is that the audience will like what it sees enough to subscribe to Fox One or cable, where the big money is made.
Will the youth buy it? Fox’s chief advantage is that other TV -news brands are in disarray. MS NOW is suffering an identity crisis, recently changing its name from MSNBC after separating from NBC Universal. CNN ’s first streaming effort, four years ago, was canned after 30 days; the network now faces acquisition by Paramount, which is looking to cut costs. The new streaming players, Netflix, Amazon and Apple, have no intention of entering the news business at a fraught time in politics. Other digital players like the New York Times lack Fox’s experience in video.
Yet Fox faces conservative competition online of a sort it has not encountered in TV. Whereas its main cable competitors are liberal-leaning, online influencers bend to the right. A survey by the Pew Research Centre of 500 “news influencers” in 2024 found that self-described conservatives outnumbered liberals by a quarter. America’s influencer ecosystem is particularly strong: Americans are twice as likely as Britons to say they pay attention to news influencers, and can name three times more of them, according to a survey by Oxford’s Reuters Institute. It is telling that Mr Hannity’s new set, with its bare brick walls and neon sign, resembles that of Joe Rogan, a self-made podcaster with a colossal following.
Hounded
Competing with influencers on social media is a risky game. Algorithmic tweaks can vaporise traffic overnight. So can regulators: many countries are considering banning teens from social apps. Tech firms hoard audience data and send referral traffic reluctantly. And it is unclear how much news services benefit when their correspondents are social-media stars. Research shows that audiences are bad at attributing stories to the correct news brand when they have encountered them on their social feed. One man in a helmet on a Tel Aviv balcony looks much like the next.
The biggest danger for news outlets is that meeting viewers on social media simply trains them not to go anywhere else. News executives hope that youngsters will eventually grow into their parents’ viewing habits and subscribe to Fox or other news brands that they first encountered online. Craig Robertson of the Reuters Institute is sceptical. Even when youngsters turn on a tv, they treat it as a “big phone”, he says; YouTube accounts for more than a tenth of TV viewing time in America. Fox News is as good as ever at owning the libs. But it is getting harder to own the audience. ■
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