Fox News Viewers Are Tired, Lachlan Murdoch Tells Investors
Fox News Channel is still the most-watched cable news channel in the United States, but its audience is shrinking, and Fox's chief executive says he knows why. Lachlan Murdoch told investors on Monday, 2 November 2026, that he has seen "viewer fatigue" at the channel.
Murdoch said the viewers who have left are not moving to rival news channels. They are, in his words, fatigued and watching slightly less television overall. He pointed to a year of hard news as a likely cause, naming the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as one of the difficult stories viewers have followed.
The numbers behind that comment are steep. According to preliminary figures from Nielsen, the company that measures how many people watch US television, Fox News averaged 1.1 million total-day viewers in October 2026. That is down 27%. "Total-day viewers" means the average audience across all hours of the day, and it is the broadest measure of a channel's size.
The drop is sharper among the 25-54 age group, which advertisers often watch closely because it is where many buyers sit. Fox News averaged 98,000 viewers in that group in October, down 32%. For the third quarter of 2026, which covers July to September, total-day viewership fell 16% and the 25-54 audience fell 24%.
Fox's own reporting suggests October could be the channel's weakest month for total-day viewers since December 2023. Murdoch did not dispute that picture. He said Fox News Media's executives have dealt with dips like this before and have a "playbook" for getting through them.
Monday's call also covered Fox Corporation's business as a whole. The company said World Cup broadcasts and political advertising lifted both profit and revenue in its first fiscal quarter, which runs from July to September. A fiscal quarter is a three-month slice of the company's financial year.
Fox's broader results have been strong. The company reported fiscal 2026 revenue of more than $17 billion, up 5%, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (a common measure of operating profit) of $3.9 billion, up 8% and a record. Those figures came from its August results and sit alongside a news channel whose audience is falling.
Murdoch also noted that Fox News regularly draws bigger audiences than the free broadcast networks, a point he has made before to investors. The new figures make that comparison harder to hold up as a simple headline, but Fox has not changed its view of the channel's standing.
For advertisers and cable distributors, the next question is whether the decline levels off. Murdoch's comments did not give a timetable for that, and Fox has not published a forecast for the channel's ratings.
