Lachlan Murdoch says Fox News Media will continue to grow regardless of who wins the next presidential election between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The Fox Corp. executive chairman and CEO said Fox News has seen its ratings grow through administrations led by presidents from both political parties and expressed confidence in the future.
“If you look at Fox News, you look at how we’ve not only been strong, but we’ve grown ratings in multiple administrations from both political parties,” he said at a virtual Bank of America Conference on Thursday.
“So, [under Presidents] Clinton, Bush, Obama, we’ve continually … grown ratings.”
“As our ratings increase, our demographics, we have larger cohorts of different demographics,” he later added. “News always skews older, which is not something I’m particularly worried about, it’s logical. But now we have new viewers to advertise for, we have new categories of advertisers that never advertised in news before are now advertising on Fox News. So, I think advertising demand has been very strong.”
According to AdWeek in 2019, the average age for a Fox News viewer was 65 years old, as it is for MSNBC, while CNN’s average viewer age is 60.
Fox News had the most viewers this summer than any other year in its 24-year history, topping not only cable news rivals CNN and MSNBC, but broadcast networks CBS, NBC and ABC in prime time. It has averaged 3.5 million viewers since Memorial Day, according to Nielsen Media Research.
In the key 25-54 demographic advertisers covet most for the month of August, Fox News averaged 638,000 viewers in prime time, an increase of 70 percent when compared to the same month one year ago.
CNN was second in the category, averaging 454,000 in marking a 16 percent increase.
MSNBC also saw a notable increase in relatively younger viewers, averaging 357,000 while seeing a 61 percent increase when compared to August 2019.