What is newsmax

By Lisa Richwine , Helen Coster. MacCallum, however, won in overall viewers, and reclaimed her lead in both categories on Tuesday, suggesting the Newsmax gains may be fragile. Primetime viewership for the week that ended Dec.

Fox News, which also has declined from election-week highs, still averaged 2. The network had its highest-rated November in history, drawing 3. Primetime host Tucker Carlson averaged 5 million viewers for a second straight month, a record for cable television. Ruddy noted that, despite some dips, Newsmax is hovering high above pre-election levels. This was a change so momentous that even people in Europe took note. And there was another, bigger headache to come.

Even absent schadenfreude, it seems a particularly good time to be Christopher Ruddy. The founder of Fox competitor Newsmax, Ruddy has been tilling the ground of cable news since , when he added television to the offerings of the media company he started in But it may be technology, not politics, that ultimately decides the winner in the matchup between Newsmax and Fox.

As in talk radio, the audience is graying, and Newsmax and OAN could have a technological advantage because they came of age during a time of transition that is affecting all forms of conservative media. But Fox also has a solid advantage in its longevity and success stemming from a business model that caused other cable news channels to pivot. That leaves its competitors, both on the left and the right, mulling a perennial problem: how do you outfox Fox?

Breaking ranks with some conservatives and libertarians who refuse to wear masks during the pandemic, he asked the valet for a mask when exiting his car.

Ruddy has spoken respectfully of Bill Clinton, even likening him to Nelson Mandela in a article in Politico. Their journalists tend to be super smart. They do seem interested in truth, even though they have a liberal perspective.

We want to be a voice for them. For evidence, he can point to recent wins in viewership. That CNN, the first network in the hour news business, reports on the ratings of two of its rivals shows just how important conservative viewers are in the industry. Within five years, Fox was the dominant network, thanks to a business strategy that other networks soon emulated. It was basically the news. That's long gone pic. This approach was a hit for Newsmax in December and January, when Trump supporters felt burned by Fox News in the wake of its early but ultimately accurate call of Arizona for Joe Biden.

Those anti-Fox grievances were promoted by Trump, who helped Newsmax by live-tweeting the channel instead of Fox News before his Twitter banishment , of course , and even helping Newsmax best Fox News in the ratings in the key demographic.

Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. Fundamentally, what happened was on election night , Fox News called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, and they were ahead of a lot of other networks and outlets. There was a huge sense of betrayal in the conservative base, and particularly among Trump voters, that Fox News did that. And it sort of put Newsmax in this position of being this standard-bearer in cable news for the Trump movement.

And then as the months went on, that waned. And I think that what happened, fundamentally, is two things. One, during the winter, Newsmax was just perpetually pushing a whole swath of conspiracy theories related to the election. Newsmax guest Tom Fitton argues Donald Trump has already won because he was "winning" on election day pic.

And then, at noon on January 20 of , Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, and Donald Trump went to Florida, and that was over. And I think that, to steal a line from the movie Scarface , Newsmax had basically gotten high on its own supply, and their viewers were left holding nothing at the end of all that.

I think that played a major role. The second big factor that I think happened is that at its most basic level, Newsmax is incredibly dull and incredibly boring. Newsmax invites Mike Lindell, who advocated for a coup and spews dangerous conspiracy theories, on air. It didn't go well. There was a lot of reporting in December and January about Newsmax beating Fox News in a key demographic over an hour.

I would consider it to be unlikely. It is true that in December the Greg Kelly show did beat out Martha MacCallum one night, during the same hour — the 7 pm hour — which was a pretty remarkable accomplishment. Their ratings really, really spiked. I think that Fox News responded to that.