NEW YORK (AP) – People who have recently run Fox News have reminisced their biggest nightmare.
Conservative Network News Max $67 million settlement After the 2020 election reminds Fox’s own $787.5 million, the system is in the Dominion voting system for false claims deal with the same company Over two years ago. A new legal paper submitted last month by the second company suing Smartmatic Fox also went back to the news and published an episode that you would like to forget.
Between the incredible payment to bypass the honour-loss trial and the revelation of how long Fox prevented him from telling his audience what he didn’t want to hear about Donald Trump’s defeat, many wondered whether his November 2020 action would damage Fox News or force him to turn around.
Not that much.
Fox News Channel is against gravity in its ratings and has been more popular with viewers this summer than ABC, CBS and NBC. That top character is adamantly supporter of Trump, who filled his second administration with former fox stars like Pete Hegses and Janine Piro. Many times, the White House heads to Fox to make news. Shortly after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump was sitting with Sean Hannity.
After reaching the Associated Press, FOX refused to make it available to anyone for this story.
There is no regret or surrender
What many on Fox share with the president is showing signs of widespread adoption given Newsmax’s sweeping following the August 11 settlement announcement.
Fox News averaged 2.63 million viewers in weekday primetime in the second quarter of 2025, an increase of 56% from the same period in 2023, the Nielsen company said. The increase has been somewhat bloated as Fox was a rating two years ago. Tucker Carlson’s firingadvances in code cutting means that networks that attract audiences are currently rare.
Nielsen said MSNBC’s primetime audience fell 21% over two years this spring, with CNN’s 538,000 viewers down 6%. Two years ago, 45% of people who watched one of the top three cable news networks at any time were adjusted to Fox. This year, its audience sharing jumped to 62%.
Clearly, Fox’s audience is more interested in following the Trump administration than the Joe Biden administration. Similarly, the Dominion case had little or no significant impact on the viewer.
“Fox’s audience didn’t actually see the verdict and say, ‘Oh, I can’t see it anymore,'” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Conservative Center for Media Studies. “I think the Fox audience saw that and said, ‘Yes, the left is coming after them.’ ”
Absorbs some hits and move on
Financially, the Dominion settlement is firm enough, with Newsmax spreading payments over three years. Much bigger fox There was greater ability To absorb that hit. Fox confirmed that the settlement can be deducted from income tax, and that insurance could potentially reduce payments. Meanwhile, Fox News is a profit engine and it’s even bigger. Axios reported earlier this year I was hoping the company would make it $5 billion for non-TV products, including books, podcasts, streaming, and more.
Carlson was the face of the network before being fired shortly after the settlement was announced, but Fox was always able to generate new stars. Carlson took over from Bill O’Reilly. He was fired In 2017, Fox launched “The Five.” The door has been displayed 2011. Jesse Watters now owns old slots from Carlson and O’Reilly.
However, it is difficult to underestimate the worries many people had about losing their audience shortly after the 2020 election. Trump and many of his fans were angry that the network declared Biden to be the winner of Arizona before most news outlets.
The internal messages and deposition interviews revealed in court documents related to Smartmatic’s lawsuit reveal much of the drama. Management criticized anchor Neil Kabuto for ordering his show to break away from Trump’s spokesman, Kaylee McKennanny when he began talking about election fraud. News reporters were disciplined to fact-check some of Trump’s claims. Many Fox’s audience expressed anger at hearing Trump have been revised and wanted to hear the theory of conspiracy.
Rice Left Fox 28 years after last December. McEnany He is co-host of Fox’s noon show “Outnanumbered.” Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trumpwill be holding a weekend show at Fox.
Former Fox political editor Chris Starwald was there Dismissed by Fox Shortly after the correct network call in Arizona, Fox identified a good programming strategy in Smartmatic Deposition. “The best way to capture an audience is to make them scare and fear something. To hate and resent others to try to keep your TV broadcasts up and to fear that they will change channels,” he said.
Fox also maintains its domination by playing the hardball shape claimed by Newsmax. In the lawsuit filed this weekviolates antitrust laws. Newsmax said Fox tried to block TV distributors from carrying their rivals, hired civil detectives, investigated Newsmax executives, and put pressure on guests to not appear on the network.
In response, Fox said, “Newsmax cannot escape from competitive failure in the market to chase headlines just because it can’t attract viewers.”
Newsmax once expressed regret over the reporting. There’s no more
Smartmatic said Fox never retracted or apologized in 2020 a program that the company had falsely proposed to be involved in changing the vote. This said the story could not be used to enforcers, and said the fraud charges committed by the president or his representatives deserve the report, and the network was based on the basis of free speech.
Newsmax has publicly expressed several regrets about post-election compensation twice. The network resolved a lawsuit with SmartMatic in 2024.
In a statement It was aired on Newsmax In December 2020, the network said “no evidence of Dominion or Smartmatic’s use or reprogrammed software that manipulated the votes in the 2020 elections has been provided.” Next April, Newsmax apologises To air false allegations that Dominion employee Eric Kumar operated a voting machine or tally for Trump’s damages in 2020.
Newsmax executive Gary Kanovsky wrote about the conspiracy theorist to his colleagues shortly after the election, according to court documents in the case.
However, Newsmax announced on August 11 that it did not apologise for making a settlement with Dominion. Network CEO Chris Raddy attacked the judge by saying, “Because he was not always sympathetic to Joe Biden, he “actually ended up confiscating our property.”
The network said, “Newsmax believed it was extremely important for them to hear both sides of the election conflict that took place in 2020.
What has changed? Newsmax grew and it went public two months after Trump took office again. It invites viewers members, who are dominated by Trump fans – to invest in the network.
“If you’re paying attention to your audience at Newsmax, you don’t want to give the impression that you’re bent,” Graham said.
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment on the AP. Follow him in http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
