7 October 2026 - 10:00am
Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes launched Fox News on 7 October 1996, so the network is old enough to be anxious about affording a family or a starter home. Spiritually, however, Fox already owns three houses and would like to know why its grandchildren can’t afford one. In other words, it’s a Millennial in age with the soul of a retired Boomer. Still, one wouldn’t bet on Fox News living until retirement age.
Obviously, it’s not ready for the hospice quite yet. In 2026, Fox remains the dominant cable news network and its audience has outsized influence, especially because it includes the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump. The network remains a magnificent machine for harvesting the attention of people who still own a cable subscription and landline, and who have strong opinions about the Clintons and Barack Obama. That’s a profitable business, and Fox has crushed CNN and MSNBC for the better part of two decades, in part because it was the singular alternative to mainstream liberal media.
For conservatives, there is the bad news: it’s averaging a touch over two million primetime viewers in the third quarter of this year, but only 183,000 were in the advertiser-coveted 25–54 demographic. This even fell nearly 25% from the same period last year. According to Nielsen, the average age of Fox News viewers is 69, meaning it’s winning the competition for an audience whose younger replacements are watching something else.
Meanwhile, the young Right actually goes elsewhere. Generation-Z and Millennial conservatives don’t come home and flip on The Five. Instead, they’re more likely watching a three-hour podcast with a comedian or a guy who sells testosterone supplements. They’re on TikTok, where a 22-year-old with a ring light and a hatred of woke has more reach than a Fox contributor with a Georgetown degree.
It’s telling that when Fox fired Tucker Carlson in 2023, he didn’t fade into obscurity. Instead, episodes of his independently produced Tucker Carlson Show averaged more than 56.8 million views across social media and podcast platforms as of April. Meanwhile, Fox’s primetime audience averaged 3.2 million viewers. Liberal media has no room to gloat. MSNOW and CNN are Fox for blue-state Boomers, and the young Left has decamped to Twitch and Substack in just the same way. Fox just happened to be the best at it, which is why it has the furthest to fall.
Then there’s the problem of what Fox is actually for. For its first two decades, it was the home of neocons and corporate-friendly establishment Republicans, the kind who loved tax cuts and free trade. But for the past decade, it has been a Trump network, whatever the awkward moments — Dominion’s $787.5 million settlement being the priciest. In fact, Fox has become so indebted to Trump that even his family members host shows on the network and comments from the President can lead to editorial change. But the Trump era is winding down, and nobody can say what comes next. Vance? Some Trump family scion?
You can see the anxiety in the programming. Lately, the network seems to be drifting back toward the old Paul Ryan playbook: young men should work harder, stop wasting money on $7 lattes, and put down the video games. This summer, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren acknowledged high prices before complaining that young people “all also get a daily iced coffee”. That message offers obvious pleasures to an older audience; it’s less compelling to a younger person who can’t afford rising rent and gas prices.
That leaves Fox facing two succession crises at once. Eventually, it must replace an ageing audience and organise itself around something other than Trump. To be fair, writing off Fox has been a losing bet for 30 years. The most likely scenario is that Fox News will be around in 2056 the way the Reader’s Digest is still around now — gathering dust in a doctor’s office somewhere.
