Friday night: Rachel Maddow scored 3.993 million viewers on MSNBC and trounced Sean Hannity on Fox, who had just 2.723 million. It’s a ratings massacre.
Fox News ratings continued to crash on Friday night after a terrible week that saw much of its audience either leave, fall asleep, or die. Whatever, they’re gone.
Tucker Carlson had the highest Fox ratings on Friday, with 3.1 million viewers at 8pm. He was tied, basically, with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
But after Carlson, Fox collapsed, particularly Hannity and Laura Ingraham’s shows. At 10pm, following Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell shmeared Ingraham.
Now this morning Fox News has fired a top staffer who presided over Election coverage back on November 3rd, and ousted another one. Chris Stirewalt and Bill Sammon were punished for correctly predicting early on election night that Arizona was lost to Donald Trump.
The New York Times also says that 20 people at Foxnews.com were laid off yesterday.
All of this is surprising. I’m often told that Lachlan and James Murdoch are pushing to mainstream Fox News because they’re embarrassed about its right wing bent. But all of this, plus Maria Bartiromo’s rewards for pushing Trump’s crazy election theories, indicate that Rupert Murdoch is prevailing and keeping Fox right on the fringe of lunacy. Rupert is afraid that Sinclair, Newsmax, and OANN are all coming for his nutty audience, and he wants to hold on to them. But the conservative right wing conspiracy theory audience is leaving, and fracturing into pieces.
