It would appear that the Fox ratings have merely returned to their normal, pre-election levels. As for influence, the cable news channels may not attract as many viewers as the traditional networks do for their nightly newscasts, but they do seem to set the terms of the political dialogue in the country.
Fox News ratings down, but not disastrous
By DYLAN BYERS
Politico
12/31/12 3:17 PM EST
Nielsen ratings for Fox News programs "Hannity" and "The O'Reilly Factor," in the thousands.
Like most news outlets, Fox News has taken a post-election ratings hit -- but it's not as dire as some would have you believe.
Don Kaplan of New York Daily News reports that Fox News host Sean Hannity "lost around half of his audience in the weeks after the election, while his Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly... retained around 70% of his audience."
The official numbers, which Nielsen provided to POLITICO upon request, go through the week of Nov. 19 and show "Hannity" (9 p.m. ET) finishing with 1.952 million viewers, down from a 3.6 million high in the week before the election. Ratings for "The O'Reilly Factor" (8 p.m. ET) fell from 4.135 million in the week prior to the election to 3.049 million three weeks later.
But the drop for both Hannity and O'Reilly merely brings them back to the ratings they had prior to the Republican National Convention, with Hannity drawing around two million viewers a night while O'Reilly draws roughly 3 million.
Yes, that's far from ideal: MSNBC, the liberal cable news network, has been far more successful at retaining viewers since the election, especially in the coveted 25-54 demo.
But until Hannity starts averaging under 1.5 million viewers a week, it's not fair to call him "one of the big losers in the 2012 election," as Kaplan does. Ditto for O'Reilly at 2.5 million.
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