Some very interesting data on the emerging post-Trump competition between Fox and other right wing media hopefuls.
Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore
Quote:And Newsmax is one of many Fox challengers. One America News is not rated by Nielsen, which is normally a sign that a channel is very small, but the channel's owners say that their internal metrics show big post-election gains. Google searches for both Newsmax and One America News both spiked after Election Day.
Charles Herring, the president of OANN, said Friday that "a massive wave of former Fox News viewers have abandoned Fox and have found a home at OAN." He said some former Fox viewers "believe new pro left voices have infiltrated the network."
Other right-wing outlets include two streaming services: BlazeTV, with Glenn Beck and Mark Levin among the hosts, and The First TV, with Bill O'Reilly. One throughline of most of Fox's rivals: They employ former Fox talent.
We'll note that Sinclair isn't even mentioned here nor the thousands of ultra-low-budget crazies tossing content out onto Facebook or elsewhere.
It's difficult to see or predict how this plays out over the next years. Some observations:
- The huge amounts of money such entities can pull in tells us that it will continue.
- Trump's style or strategy of setting players at odds with one another so as to more easily blackmail them into absolute support for him is fracturing Fox's hegemony
- The new challengers to Fox are differentiating themselves with Fox by carrying even more paranoid-style content along with an elevated level of rabble rousing. Where Fox pushed Tea Party events, these modern competitors are far more likely to voice calls to "take up arms to protect liberty".
- The prior situation of 20 years ago where Fox, Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal comprised a triad that dominated right wing media and established a framework for right wing consensus is no longer the case. MAGA rallies now feature not only chants of "Fake Media" but also "Fox sucks".
- Big social media entities like Facebook, because they are not political operations but rather money-making enterprises which profit from isolating groups of citizens and feeding them whatever content they respond to, are clearly contributing to this dynamic of fracturing gate-keeper functions previously in place.
- The present situation where voices in this new right wing universe are calling for Republican voters to boycott the Georgia senatorial seats - a movement which McConnell, Koch and the GOP definitely would like to crush - points to how this can go very wrong for the establishment right.
If we're lucky, these trends will hasten the breakup of modern conservatism and the GOP, but I'm not counting on it.