Newsmax is seeking to take away Fox News viewers amid criticism, notably from President Trump, about its election coverage.
The network, founded 22 years ago, is promoting itself as the only “major news outlet” not to project Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race. Like Trump, it says the outcome remains unknown and that Fox News, like other news outlets, called it prematurely.
“At this time, Newsmax is not calling Joe Biden the winner. The election remains very close and Pres. Trump continues to contest results in several states. All votes should be counted. The media should not make the determination of the winner under these circumstances,” the network said in a statement this week.
There was no mention of Fox News, but journalists at Newsmax are taking potshots at the industry leader amid allegations that its coverage is hostile to the president.
Newsmax’s White House correspondent Emerald Robinson tweeted on Wednesday, “Fox has hired a crisis management team to handle PR for their ratings crisis.” But a well-informed source told the Washington Examiner that this claim is “completely false” and just “the latest conspiracy theory by Newsmax.”
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, a friend of Trump’s, offers his network as an alternative to Fox News, where Trump often appears in person or by phone. “I certainly would love to have Donald Trump on Newsmax a lot, whether he’s president or not,” Ruddy said during a recent CNN interview.
Newsmax’s self-promotion parallels Trump’s attacks on Fox News, including with criticism of Chris Wallace, who anchored the first presidential debate, of polling before the election that predicted he’d lose, and of contributors who are critical of him. His frustration with the news side of Fox News reached a crescendo when it became the first outlet to project Biden as the winner of Arizona. Campaign officials reached out to the network behind the scenes, according to the Washington Post, and publicly demanded that Fox News retract the call.
On Saturday, Fox News and other outlets also projected Biden as the winner in Pennsylvania and, therefore, the president-elect. Trump has not conceded and is challenging the count in several battleground states.
Fox News’s opinion personalities have promoted claims of election irregularities, while the news side has reported that the allegations lack corroborating evidence.
“@FoxNews daytime ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there,” Trump tweeted on Thursday. “They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”
The numbers don’t support the president’s dig at Fox News. The network’s daytime ratings in October were 57% higher than its ratings in October 2019.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Fox News of abandoning its base.
“You do not turn on your base. You do not turn on your audience unless you’ve had some kind of — you just don’t. You don’t do it for the sake of the approval of your enemies,” he said on his show Monday.
Former Fox News staff are stoking the fire. Eric Bolling, a former host who joined the Sinclair Broadcast Group, urged his million-plus Twitter followers to “check out” Newsmax as well as One America News Network, another controversial pro-Trump TV outlet, because “conservatives are very upset with Fox.” He cited its decision desk and a “stunt” by Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto, who cut away from coverage of a press conference in which Trump officials discussed allegations of voter fraud.
In June, Newsmax’s average prime-time audience was 64,000 viewers a night, according to Nielsen’s media ratings, while Fox News’s audience was over 4 million viewers. But, this Monday, Newsmax averaged 347,000 viewers, and on Tuesday, this grew to 437,000, according to CNN’s Reliable Sources. Fox News’s prime-time lineup averaged 3.8 million viewers on Monday.
Fox News generally ignores Newsmax, but it did respond to a recent report by the network about Jeanine Pirro, citing “sources close to the network.”
Newsmax TV’s panel breaks down the Fox News / Judge Jeanine Pirro situation. https://t.co/VlT7z8drtO pic.twitter.com/QL80YskhsS
— Newsmax (@newsmax) November 9, 2020
Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt, one of several former Fox News employees at the smaller network, claimed Pirro’s Saturday evening show was suspended because “she made a very strong defense of Trump.” A Fox News representative told the Washington Examiner that Saturday programming was changed to accommodate election coverage and Biden’s “victory” speech.
In an interview on Newsmax on Monday, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney who is also leading Trump’s legal battles, said there’s a “very good chance” the president was tuning in to Newsmax.
