Fox News Channel - Ratings and Reception

Ratings and Reception

FNC saw a large ratings jump during the early stages of the Iraq conflict. According to some reports, at the height of the conflict Fox News had as much as a 300-percent increase in viewership (averaging 3.3 million viewers daily).

In 2004, FNC's ratings for its broadcast of the Republican National Convention exceeded those of all three broadcast networks. During President George W. Bush's address, Fox News attracted 7.3 million viewers nationally; NBC, ABC, and CBS had a viewership of 5.9 million, 5.1 million and 5.0 million respectively.

In late 2005 and early 2006, FNC saw a brief decline in ratings. One decline was in the second quarter of 2006, when Fox News lost viewers for every prime-time program compared with the previous quarter. The audience for Special Report with Brit Hume, for example, dropped 19 percent. Several weeks later, in the wake of the North Korean missile crisis and the 2006 Lebanon War, Fox saw a surge in viewership and remained the #1-rated cable news channel. Fox produced eight of the top ten most-watched nightly cable news shows, with The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes finishing first and second respectively.

FNC ranked No. 8 for all cable channels in 2006, and No. 6 in 2007. The channel ranked No. 1 during the week of Barack Obama's election (November 3–9) in 2008, and reached the top spot again in January 2010 (during the week of the special Senate election in Massachusetts). Comparing Fox to its 24-hour-news-channel competitors, in May 2010 the channel drew an average daily prime-time audience of 1.8 million (versus 747,000 for MSNBC and 595,000 for CNN).

In September 2009, the Pew Research Center published a report on the public view of national news organizations. The report indicated that 72 percent of Republican Fox viewers rated the channel as "favorable", while 43 percent of Democratic viewers and 55 percent of all viewers shared that opinion. However, Fox had the highest "unfavorable" rating of all national outlets studied (25 percent of all viewers). The report went on to say, "partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007".

As of January 2011, Public Policy Polling reported that Fox News Channel was the second-most trusted television news network in the United States, with 42 percent of respondents reporting they trusted the network compared to other news channels (behind PBS at 50 percent and ahead of NBC at 41 percent, CNN at 40 percent, CBS at 36 percent and ABC at 35 percent). Fox News Channel is also ranked the most distrusted news channel in the U.S., with 46 percent of respondents reporting they distrust the network (behind PBS at 30 percent, NBC at 41 percent and CNN, CBS, and ABC each at 43 percent). This represented a combined 16-percent drop among respondents from the year before, and placed the channel fourth among Americans in trust-distrust (behind PBS, NBC, and CNN and ahead of CBS and ABC). Most of this drop was the result of an increase in distrust among moderates and liberals. While conservatives largely held the same view of the network as they did the year before (dropping from 75 to 72 percent), moderates and liberals increased their distrust of the network (from 48 to 60 percent among moderates, and 66 to 82 percent among liberals). Of the poll's respondents, 18 percent identified as liberal, 41 percent as moderate and 40 percent as conservative; 40 percent identified as Democratic, 37 percent as Republican and 23 percent as independent or "other".

On the night of October 22, 2012, Fox set a record for its highest-rated telecast ever, with 11.5 million viewers for the third U.S. presidential debate. In prime time the week before, Fox averaged almost 3.7 million viewers with a total day average of 1.66 million viewers.