Smaller rival’s gains after election worried executives and hosts, but threat ebbed
Tucker Carlson was worried, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Fox News had declared late on Nov. 7, 2020, that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, and Mr. Carlson, one of the network’s star opinion hosts, was concerned about alienating Fox News viewers.
They might turn to News-max, he said, a small channel that had taken a hard-line stance, questioning whether Donald Trump had lost the election. “We’re playing with fire, for real,” Mr. Carlson wrote in a text message to his producer, according to court documents. “With Trump behind it, an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
That threat did materialize— but it didn’t last, as Newsmax’s viewership plateaued and then eventually fell.
Carlson’s message is part of a trove of internal Fox News communications made public in a defamation lawsuit the network is facing. Voting-machine company Dominion Voting Systems alleges in the suit that Fox News aired false claims that its technology rigged the 2020 election. The network was acting out of fear of losing viewers to other right-wing channels, Dominion said.
The documents show Mr. Carlson wasn’t alone: Other Fox hosts and executives were concerned that Newsmax was a gathering threat in the election’s aftermath. Fox has denied wrongdoing, saying that it simply reported on newsworthy claims and that Dominion has cherrypicked internal communications out of context.
Initial ratings data suggested there was some cause for concern. Newsmax typically had tiny ratings, yet during the fourth quarter of 2020—when the election took place—it averaged 242,000 prime-time viewers, a sixfold increase from the previous quarter, according to Nielsen data. Fox News still had much higher ratings, with around 3.5 million prime-time viewers, but took Newsmax’s encroachment on its turf seriously, the court documents show.
Newsmax even topped one million viewers during the 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. hour on Nov. 12, 2020. A smaller right-wing channel, Herring Networks Inc.’s One America News Network, also experienced ratings gains at the time.
Newsmax wasn’t able to sustain the gains, as Fox News made programming changes to win back viewers and the election- fraud story line faded.
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