Donald Trump has become a big problem for Fox News

As the results began to flood in on a bruising midterm election night for the Republicans, Donald Trump picked an unlikely scapegoat: Fox News.

The US president, evidently glued to Fox’s coverage, took aim at the channel’s polls and choice of guests in a slew of angry late-night posts on Truth Social.

“FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse,” he wrote.

At the same time, he hit the network with a dig about its viewership. “FoxNews Ratings are way down (27%!) because they’re spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats! All of those people who used to watch Fox, and no longer do, get it. It’s them, not me – My numbers are better than they have ever been.”

The comments came even as Trump called and texted into the Murdoch-owned news network, which has long been his biggest cheerleader and helped bring him to power. It underscores the complex, co-dependent relationship between the two.

The Democrats’ stunning midterms victory raises questions about Fox’s place in the media landscape, amid a sharp drop in ratings. Once an all-powerful force in US politics, its influence is fading.

A lame-duck Trump is ostensibly more bad news for the network. For all the talk of balance, no individual has come to embody Fox more than him. His bolshie and erratic behaviour has dominated the news agenda and provided news fodder for more than a third of the network’s life.

A spurred and vengeful Trump may present more fodder for the network, as will coverage of the wave of “far-Left” Democrats who have now come to power. But there is no guarantee that audiences will stick with them for these stories. Many have already jumped ship to YouTube or streamers.

For cable news networks, election nights are often compared to the Super Bowl as droves of viewers tune in for blow-by-blow updates. Fox even deployed a special chatbot providing real-time answers to audience questions.

The run-up to the midterms provided ample material, with Trump facing off against Barack Obama on the campaign trail in recent weeks.

Yet Fox’s ratings have been anything but blockbuster. Fox News attracted an average audience of 1.1 million in October, down 27 per cent compared with last year, according to official figures from Nielsen.

In primetime hours between 8pm and 11pm, Fox pulled in fewer than 1.7 million viewers, down from 2.3 million at the same time last year. The network looks set to record its worst-performing month for overall viewers since December 2023.

The decline has not escaped the attention of Fox bosses. Lachlan Murdoch, the 55-year-old scion whose ascension to the throne of the family empire was confirmed last year following a fraught succession battle, this week admitted that the network had been hit by “viewer fatigue”.

“It was a tremendous news cycle this time last year, which we’re [comparing] against,” he told investors, pointing to events in 2025, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Murdoch insisted this was a broader trend, rather than a reflection on Fox specifically.

“Those viewers are not going to any other news channel,” he said. “They’re not switching to MS Now or to CNN. They’re just fatigued and watching slightly less television overall.”

Yet these claims are undermined by viewing figures for CNN and MS Now – the network formerly known as MSNBC – which grew 19 per cent and 13 per cent in primetime respectively last month.

“Human nature is at play here, especially when it comes to political news consumption where people seek affirmation that ‘their side’ is right and winning when momentum is in their favour,” says Mike Proulx, an analyst at research and advisory firm Forrester.

“When that’s not the case, people can shut down and seek an escape from reality, which results in news avoidance.”

Fox remains the largest cable news network. The company argues that its rivals are growing from a low comparison last year and say the network enjoyed its highest-rating midterm year ever despite the slump.

A spokesman said: “Fox News has been the No.1 one network in cable news for a quarter of a century, throughout every administration since 2001.

“More recently, the network has expanded its dominance beyond linear, where it is not only the top-rated cable network on television, but dominates digital, streaming, social media and YouTube, generating nearly 4 billion YouTube video views this year alone.”

Nevertheless, the weakness during what should be a strong period for viewing figures points at a tougher future ahead.

Cable networks have for years been battling an exodus of audiences to streaming alternatives, known in the US as “cord-cutting”. Fox last year launched its own streaming service – Fox One – in an effort to counteract this trend.

Proulx says traditional TV had lost its grip on non-Boomer audiences. A recent survey showed that while 44 per cent of US Baby Boomers said traditional TV takes up most of their weekly entertainment time, that figure tumbles to 19 per cent of Gen X, 5 per cent of Millennials and only 3 per cent of Gen Z.

For Fox, these industry trends are exacerbated by its complex entanglement with Trump, an avid viewer of the channel.

Two prominent figures in the Trump administration – Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Jeanine Pirro, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia – are former Fox hosts. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s former White House press secretary, has joined Fox as a pundit and defended the president on election night.

‘It will be very quiet and boring when Trump’s gone.’

Media analyst

In turn, the US president has been a rich source of material.

Trump’s 2016 election victory delivered a record audience, which was beaten only by the 14.1 million people who tuned in during the 2020 vote, when Murdoch’s network infuriated the president with an early call for Joe Biden in Arizona.

Other events, including Trump’s impeachment and attempted assassination, have also delivered major spikes in the channel’s audience, in a phenomenon described as the “Trump bump”.

“My view would be, based upon a decade of Trump as president with the Biden interregnum, that he is fantastic for news media,” says analyst Alex DeGroote. “He sets the news agenda every day, whether you like him or hate him.”

This has been handsomely profitable for Fox, which reported $US350 million ($500 million) in political advertising revenue in its latest quarter, representing a record for the midterm period.

But Trump has blown hot and cold with his long-time ally Rupert Murdoch. A US judge last week dismissed Trump’s $US10 billion lawsuit against Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal over its reporting of a letter the president allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein.

Fox was forced to cough up nearly $US800 million in 2023 to settle a defamation lawsuit over its reporting of Trump’s stolen-election claims, showing the cost of unwavering support for the president.

With Trump now a lame duck, Fox’s ratings slump may worsen.

“I think the key question is: is this the beginning of a downward trend?” says DeGroote.

“He’s magnetic viewing, but we are closer to the end than the beginning, and it may well be that the second half of his presidency is less box-office than the first half.”

Conversely, if an angered Trump employs a scorched-earth policy it would create ever more headlines.

“I think you could make a case that we could be in for a real period of friction, which could lead to even more electric viewing and even more outlandish episodes,” says DeGroote.

The renewed power of the Democrats could also provide compulsive “hate-watching” for Fox’s core audience.

The network has repeatedly referred to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat firebrand who has become the first Muslim US senator after his victory in Michigan, as “far Left”.

More broadly, its coverage has painted a picture of a socialist takeover of the US left, with stories highlighting divisions within the Democratic Party over progressive policies such as abolishing ICE and the proposed Medicare for All.

Tom Emmer, the Republican House majority whip, summed up the position during an appearance on Fox Business’s The Bottom Line, saying: “There’s nothing democratic about socialism.”

Yet Republicans may watch these dramas play out elsewhere. Some of the network’s most outspoken former stars, including Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, have pursued their own shows on YouTube. Trump, who can reach his supporters directly via Truth Social, recently also launched his own channel on the streaming platform.

At the same time, Fox’s arch-rival on the other side of the political spectrum, CNN, is bracing for its own shake-up under the ownership of David Ellison, a Trump ally.

Industry watchers believe he could try to shift the editorial line of CNN. Ellison, who took control of the network following a $US100 billion merger between Paramount and Warner Bros, has already proven controversial for his editorial interference in CBS News.

Despite a calamitous night, Trump is not done yet. Nevertheless, with the end of his administration now in sight, bosses know the curtain will soon be coming down on the Trump show. It is a problem that Fox News executives must figure out how to confront.

“We’ll look back on this time in a few years and think it was the most extraordinary period ever,” says DeGroote.

“It will be very quiet and boring when Trump’s gone.”

Telegraph, London

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.