TV Ratings: Fox’s Tucker Carlson Firing Is Boosting Newsmax

In the days after the 2020 presidential election, Newsmax looked to be breaking out. The small conservative cable news channel saw its ratings surge after some partisan viewers soured on Fox News for accurately predicting that Joe Biden would win the pivotal state of Arizona. But Newsmax’s gains were fleeting, and Fox quickly lured its viewers back.

Now, The Washington Post reports Newsmax is gaining again — and once again, it has come at the expense of Fox. After Fox fired star host Tucker Carlson, Newsmax’s ratings surged. One month later, they remain unusually high.

While the biggest beneficiary has been Newsmax’s 8 p.m. host Eric Bolling, a former Fox News personality whose ratings have increased by 142 percent in the time slot once dominated by Carlson, the entire prime-time lineups for both channels are showing the effects of a viewer migration.

Fox still maintains a large advantage over Newsmax, with an average 1.6 million total viewers in prime time to Newsmax’s 383,000. But it’s lost more than half its usual 8 p.m. viewers through several weeks of temporary replacement hosts — including morning show host Brian Kilmeade and former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany — none of whom have come close to matching Carlson’s numbers.

In the four weeks before Carlson’s firing, Bolling’s Newsmax show averaged 202,000 total viewers. Since Carlson was ousted, Newsmax has averaged 489,000 viewers, according to Nielsen ratings data obtained by The Washington Post. Carlson’s show on Fox averaged 3.27 million in his last four weeks as a host. The hosts who have replaced him at 8 p.m. have averaged just 1.49 million.

Even Carlson’s fellow prime-time stars who have stayed with the network are suffering weaker ratings. In the past month, Fox’s overall prime-time ratings have declined by 39 percent — from an average of 2.6 million viewers to 1.6 million — while Newsmax’s prime-time ratings have increased by 135 percent.

Newsmax’s surge comes amid an overall scramble in cable news viewership that has also been marked by sharp declines for CNN. For three consecutive nights last week, Bolling pulled more viewers than the rival offering hosted by CNN’s veteran anchor Anderson Cooper, arguably the biggest star on the network. Before Carlson’s firing, Newsmax rarely came close to matching CNN at 8 p.m.