Fox News’ audience is falling year over year, and Lachlan Murdoch says viewers are not moving to rival cable networks.
During Fox Corporation’s quarterly earnings call, the CEO told investors and analysts that people are watching less television. The Washington Post reported his explanation, including his assertion that the missing audience was not moving to MS NOW or CNN. That makes the decline more than a simple fight for viewers between cable news brands.
Fox still drew about 1.7 million prime-time viewers during the week of Oct. 19, according to Washington Post reporting cited in the article. MS NOW and CNN both remained in the hundreds of thousands. But Fox’s prime-time audience was down 23 percent from the same period a year earlier, while Nielsen data published Oct. 30 showed the two rivals had each grown about 30 percent.
So Fox continues to lead on raw audience size, but its advantage is becoming less secure. Murdoch’s comments suggest the immediate problem is not that a rival captured Fox viewers. The bigger concern is that some viewers may be leaving the cable-news habit altogether.
That pressure arrives as Fox remains widely regarded as a central news outlet for the Republican Party and the Trump administration. The article also places the ratings slide against President Trump’s approval ratings in the 30s ahead of the 2026 midterms, arguing that some recent coverage could appear disconnected from the daily experiences of Americans.
One example involved then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who spoke with Jesse Watters in July about younger voters. Asked whether Gen Z was lazy for not voting Republican, Leavitt said the generation had been raised with “silver spoons” and was used to receiving things without earning them. She then defended hard work, merit, and the American dream.
The remarks triggered pushback from other Gen Z voices. Nalin Haley, the son of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, argued that labeling an entire generation avoids harder questions around living costs, housing, and jobs. He said young Americans can work hard and still face an economy that feels increasingly unfamiliar, and he criticized both parties for failing to address the problem properly.
Ironically, calling an entire generation lazy instead of addressing real problems with cost of living, housing, and employment…IS LAZY. It’s tough even for people that work hard, save, and have good jobs.
The goal of every generation is to leave it better than you found it.… https://t.co/xH6BzlPdmt
— Nalin Haley (@Nalin_Haley) July 3, 2026
The broader economic picture complicates that debate. A Fortune report cited in the article said Gen Z may earn more than earlier generations did at the same age, yet inflation, housing costs, and everyday expenses have created major uncertainty. The coverage also says worries extend beyond young people, with Generation X concerned about supporting their families and voters focused on gas, food, utilities, and health care.
Why It Matters
Fox’s challenge is both a ratings problem and a connection problem. Murdoch’s explanation points to people watching less television, which would make the issue broader than Fox alone. Yet the comparison with MS NOW and CNN complicates that account because those outlets gained viewers during the same period. That leaves Fox facing a question about changing media habits and whether its coverage still matches what its audience is experiencing. For a network with such a prominent place in conservative politics, that distinction affects more than a quarterly business result.
The economic examples sharpen the stakes. The people discussed in the article are not just debating political labels; they are dealing with housing, employment, inflation, and the cost of basic needs. If coverage treats those pressures as a personal failure, it can deepen the distance between a media brand and the people it hopes to retain. The open question is whether Fox’s audience decline reflects broad television fatigue, dissatisfaction with specific coverage, or both. That answer could shape how the network responds and how viewers decide where to get news, but the article does not settle it.
Source: The Liberty Daily
