CNN’s Don Lemon dismissed the rising popularity of Newsmax, saying the network will never have the staying power of rival Fox News.
“Newsmax will be Newsmax, but it won’t be as powerful as Fox News,” Lemon said on air Tuesday. “It will never be as powerful as Fox News.”
Lemon predicted that Newsmax and other smaller networks will fade into obscurity “by March” and Fox News’s editorial tone will shift more toward the center in the post-Trump era.
“Fox News, here’s the thing that we’ve been dealing with: The other cable networks have had competition, right?” Lemon said. “The competition for people who said that they’re nonbiased, they’re in the middle, they’re independent. Fox News didn’t have any competition, because Fox News is the only far-right conservative network. Now they have some competition, so the playing field in some way is leveling. But it will moderate.”
A spokesperson for Fox News declined to comment on Lemon’s remarks. Newsmax did not immediately provide a comment.
Newsmax, which unlike Fox News has not projected President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, claimed its first ratings win over Fox News for an hour of viewing on Monday evening.
But Fox News has otherwise dominated cable news ratings, consistently beating out CNN and MSNBC.
On Monday, Fox News Host Martha MacCallum averaged 1.6 million viewers while Greg Kelly Reports had 949,000.
Fox News last month notched the highest-rated November in its history in prime time within the 25- to 54-year-old viewership demographic that advertisers cater to.
Lemon and his colleagues at CNN have often criticized Fox News hosts, saying they provide misleading information and propagate President Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations on a range of issues.
Trump has been critical of Fox News in recent months, saying at one point the network had forgotten he is “the golden goose” that has brought them ratings success. He has also praised Newsmax in recent months.
Daytime Nielsen ratings for the month of November show Fox News averaging nearly 2 million viewers and 344,000 in the 25-54 demographic, with MSNBC coming in second with 1.4 million viewers and CNN with 1.3 million.
Lemon said Trump will be “marginalized” in the media landscape after leaving office on Jan. 20.
“And Fox News will get back to something,” he said. “But it will be a shell of its former self. But it will be something very powerful.”