Producers at Fox News have been instructed to monitor which of their guests appear on the network’s new rival, NewsMax, and advising them to stop appearing on the network, a veiled threat that doing so may jeopardize their appearances on Fox, CNN’s Brian Stelter reports.
NewsMax and One America News Network, two low-rent competitors to the glitzy Fox News, have become the favorites of lame duck president Donald Trump and his horde of MAGA adherents because the two upstarts have fully embraced Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Fox News, on the other hand, angered Trump by calling Arizona for now President-elect Joe Biden on Election Night and also naming Biden the winner of the election.
NewsMax has been the major beneficiary of Trump’s ire. Some of its shows have seen a jump in audience size by tenfold, while Fox News shows have seen a steady erosion of their audiences since Election Day. Since November 3rd, both CNN and MSNBC shows have topped Fox News programs on various days. CNN has been beating Fox in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic for three weeks.
According to Stelter’s reporting, Charles Herring, the president of OANN, said Friday that “a massive wave of former Fox News viewers have abandoned Fox and have found a home at OAN.” He said some former Fox viewers “believe new pro left voices have infiltrated the network.”