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Fox News Tumbled 24 Percent in Last Year

Fox News’s total audience fell 24 percent in the last year, from 1.7 million viewers to 1.3 million, and its key prime time audience - viewers age 25-54 - was down 7 percent in October compared to the same month last year.

Fox News, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in Oct., attributes the 2006 declines to a soft news year compared to 2005, which saw audience increases during events like Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami, writes Media Life.
Though the station is still the No. 1 cable news network by a long shot, the article points out that if the decline in big news stories was the only reason for the network’s decline, other cable networks would be down as well. And that’s not the case. CNN was down in total viewers and 25-54’s, but not as much as Fox, while Headline News and MSNBC were up in that demo last month by 18 and 19 percent respectively.
The conservative Fox News may, in fact, be suffering from the disenchantment among conservatives over the war and political scandals, according to the article. Jill Olmsted, associate professor of journalism at American University in Washington D.C., thinks viewers may have tired of Fox’s adamantly pro-Bush rhetoric.