As the Conservative Political Action Conference wound down over the weekend, one thing became clear: Fox News is squarely in the crosshairs of Trumpworld. Former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser, Steve Bannon, tore into the network during his address, while Trump himself took to his Truth Social platform Monday to blast Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch over Dominion court documents showing he does not believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

While headlines related to a so-called “soft Trump ban” on the network and revelations that many hosts, executives, and producers did not necessarily believe some of the allegations related to the 2020 election being fraudulent have irked the likes of Bannon and led to escalating attacks on the network from Trump, Fox News’s viewers don’t seem to mind.

The network, which just capped a two-year winning streak, has only seen its ratings improve in February as Dominion Voting Systems’ court filing became public and grabbed headlines.

One of the biggest headlines to drop in mid-February from the unsealed Dominion court filings – part of the company’s $1.6 billion defamation suit – was that Tucker Carlson called Donald Trump “a demonic force” in a text to his producer on the night of Jan. 6th. Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, Fox News’s other two main prime time hosts, also made headlines over their private disavowal of 2020 election conspiracies and Trump allies like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. The latest bombshell from Dominion included a text message in which Carlson said, “I hate him passionately” — in reference to Trump.

The negative press attention, which led to blaring headlines this one on rival CNN, “Fox News has been exposed as a dishonest organization terrified of its own audience,” not only did not impact ratings, but coincided with an uptick in viewership.

Month-over-month ratings, comparing January 2023 to February 2023, showed an increase of 7 percent in total average viewers and 9 percent in the key 25-54 age demographic. Moreover, the prime time hosts saw an even bigger jump in their audience, up 16 percent in total viewers and 25 percent in the demo for February compared to January.

Additionally, any suggestion that Fox News may have lost some ratings juice when Trump’s “soft ban” apparently began back in September of 2022 is completely misplaced. Trump, who once called himself Fox News’s “golden goose,” has also been mentioned less on the network and his regular surrogates appear less as well. Fox News ended 2022 as the only one of the three major networks to show year-over-year growth, which is quite a feat given the headwinds facing the news industry.

Fox News’s total day average of 1.49 million total viewers during 2022 was a 12% increase from the previous year. In the demo, Fox was up 3% with a total day average of 231,000 viewers for the year.

For comparison, Fox’s closest rival MSNBC ended the year in second place with 733,000 average total day viewers, a decrease of 27% from the year before. In the demo, MSNBC landed in a solid third place with only 83,000 average day demo viewers – a 35% decrease.

Notably, according to data from Nielsen/MRI Fusion, Fox News in 2022 attracted both the largest younger audience and the most politically diverse in cable news as more Democrats, Republicans, and Independents watched Fox than CNN or MSNBC, both in the demo and in terms of total viewers – another data point which coincided with less screen time for Trump on Fox.

Fox News also skipped covering Trump rallies during the 2022 midterm elections and while Newsmax, which did cover the rallies with extensive coverage, did see brief spikes in the ratings, viewers never stuck around to watch the actual programming.

Fox did air Trump’s lengthy CPAC speech on Saturday night, which brought in an average of 1.54 million viewers. While the speech clearly drew in extra eyeballs, it wasn’t a massive ratings bonanza for the network, which regularly averages over 1 million viewers on Saturday night with news programming and a replay of Gutfeld! – the weekday late-night show. Sean Hannity also played some of a recent radio interview with Trump last Thursday on his show, a sign Trump may be resurfacing a bit on the network.

Trump’s attacks on the network, which have gone as far as to claim Fox News is “aiding & abetting the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA” also have shown no impact in the ratings.

The week of February 27th to March 5th, when Trump launched that scathing attack, marked the 100th consecutive week Fox News dominated the cable news ratings in the demo. For the week, Fox News not only crushed MSNBC and CNN, but also led on all of basic cable, beating ratings juggernauts like ESPN.

So, while Bannon at CPAC may land bombastic lines like, “Murdoch, you’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president. Well, we’ve deemed that you’re not going to have a network,” the ratings show Fox News is far from any danger of losing its network.

Dominion’s lawsuit may be the bigger threat, but as of now Trump has yet to attack Fox News’s popular prime time lineup over any revelations from the court filings. While Dominion’s lawsuit lays out in gory detail Fox’s pivot toward embracing Trump’s election fraud claims, despite the network’s early and accurate calls for Joe Biden on election night, the gambit has clearly paid off from a purely ratings perspective. Fox’s audience not only stuck with the network, but has by all measures grown and become more loyal.

The post Fox News Ratings Are Up Since Dominion Bombshells and Attacks From Trump first appeared on Mediaite.

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