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Fox News has attracted 125 new blue-chip advertisers since the US election, as Rupert Murdoch’s cable channels commanded the audience during Donald Trump’s second presidency.
Companies like Amazon, Ge Vernova, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix and UBS have recently aired ads for Fox News for the first time in at least two years.
“Historically, after the election, the network will see ratings dropping. When we saw the accelerated ratings, we saw new advertisers coming in,” Jeff Collins, president of AD Sales at Fox Corp, said in an interview.
The influx of advertisers is a departure from the first Trump administration, where some brands shunned more controversial programming in the network amid consumer backlash.
In 2018, former Fox host Tucker Carlson’s on-air comments pulled ads from his program to major brands such as T-Mobile about immigration, which has become the US “poor and dirty.”
Fox executives say the network has partly benefited from the decline in the wider traditional television universe. With viewers shifting online, Fox News is one of the few remaining places that brands can reach millions of viewers at once.
“The landscape has changed dramatically,” Collins said. “In today’s fragmented landscape, this audience is hard to ignore.”
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch noted the phenomenon at an investor meeting earlier this month.
“Because of the election results, many advertisers have rethinked their positioning in this country and understand that Fox News viewers are truly representing Central America.
From 2018 to 2020, some advertisers had a “no air” list of FOX news programs that they wanted to avoid, according to people near the company. These tended to be opinion shows, such as Tucker Carlson’s night program.
Consumer goods company Procter & Gamble, one of the largest advertisers in the United States, stopped running ads at Carlson’s nighttime shows, but returned to its slot in 2023 after being expelled from Fox. P&G said the ads will appear in a wide range of media offering a wide range of content.
“We are constantly monitoring the placement of our ads to ensure that media companies purchasing ads meet these standards and address potential issues directly with the right stakeholders,” the company said.
Fox executives say the audience is politically diverse. Collins, for example, said 60% of Democrats who saw Trump’s March speech to Congress on Cable News saw it on Fox News. “It’s been a big way to get back to times when advertisers haven’t run before,” he said.
Interviews with famous Foxes, including Ukrainian President Voldy Mie Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also attracted advertisers.
“This has become this noble cycle where we get the best interviews. It’s driving the growth of a bigger audience,” Collins said.
As TV audiences have shrunk elsewhere, Fox News has swallowed other networks, making up 70% of cable news audiences. The channel averaged 3 million viewers during prime time this year between 8pm and 11pm, but increased by nearly 50% compared to the same period a year ago.
Over the past few months, Fox News has rivaled broadcast television. This has traditionally attracted a large audience. From Trump’s inauguration on January 20th until March 10th, Fox News attracted 4mn viewers during Primetime hours, beating CBS’s 3.9mn and NBC’s 3.4mn.
The channel owned by Murdoch “provides a large, cost-effective (viewer) reach that remains the main goal of television advertisers,” says Nikhil Lai, senior analyst at Forrester.
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Top advertising analyst Brian Wieser believes the brand is warming up to Fox as part of America’s broader cultural and political change.
“In order to blunt, no one cares enough about the same issues they’ve been caring about in the past. There were advertisers who didn’t necessarily believe why they should stay away from such content, but they knew that was bad for their business. No one wanted a potential boycott.”
Lachlan Murdoch told investors this month: “The elections and election results examined Fox News’ position.”
Amazon and UBS declined to comment. JPMorgan, Netflix and Ge Vernova did not respond to requests for comment.
