Rob Schmitt Has Helped Newsmax Grow Into a Conservative TV Challenger

April 24th, 2023 will go down in cable news history as an incredibly consequential day. Mere moments after Fox News announced it was severing ties with popular primetime host Tucker Carlson, CNN made an announcement of its own, firing morning host Don Lemon. Unknowingly, the two cable entities opened the door for another challenger to emerge: Newsmax. And part of the conservative cable outlet’s climb has been the growth of Rob Schmitt Tonight.

Rob Schmitt joined the network in 2020, after previously serving as the host of Fox & Friends First in the early morning hours on the East Coast. Airing weeknights at 7 PM ET, Rob Schmitt Tonight has seen expansive growth in 2023 and 2024. Ratings grew 128% in 2023, with growth seen in five consecutive quarters.

Since joining the network, Schmitt has watched as Newsmax has grown into a formidable opponent for other cable news networks.

“When I came in, this thing was so new and it was so small and just needed to be figured out what exactly it was going to be,” Schmitt said. “I remember when I first started my show at 10 o’clock, my show was after a rerun of Sean Spicer’s show. So they run Spicer at 6:00 PM and then they’d rerun it at 9:00 PM. And then I had my show, so I mean, we’re talking even two, two-and-a-half years ago, we didn’t even have filled out schedule as far as programming.”

He noted that while there are still, in his opinion, some programming holes on the network, Newsmax is still in the early stages of its growth.

“It’s still such a new thing and it’s caught a lot of popularity,” he shared. “Obviously, in conservative news, Fox is kind of the king, but we have this growth pattern. I mean, when I started, we were probably, you know, 1/30th of Fox in viewership. On a normal night now, my show gets about 1/4 of what Fox gets at seven o’clock. So it’s it’s crazy to see growth like that and just to see something so new catch and then grow. It’s been wild to be a part of something like that.”

Of his early days at his cable home, Rob Schmitt shared that he was tasked with filling in for Greg Kelly during his second day at the network, giving him a crash course in writing a monologue and hosting “the only show on the network that anybody watched”. It also highlighted the differences between a billion-dollar entity like Fox News and the fledgling network Newsmax was at the time.

“To me, that was just a wow moment. Like, I couldn’t believe that. And then we just did it. It was just such a freewheeling place. We were still building the studio, so I had to do it in this little closet that was next to the makeup room. I mean, I was like ‘This is worse than a blog in somebody’s basement.’ It was just so new. We were building this really beautiful studio, but it wasn’t done yet. So I was just like shoved into this little room with a desk and just the camera.”

Schmitt admitted he was apprehensive about his first days with Newsmax, questioning whether or not the program would take off. And take off it has.

Ratings are up 122% year-over-year in the adults 35-64 demographic, making it the #4 cable news program and the #8 cable program in its timeslot.

The ratings began to spike for the cable outlet founded by Chris Ruddy in 1998 after Carlson’s high-profile exit from Fox News. Schmitt believes a challenger to the cable giant was long overdue.

“For a long time, Fox held that position kind of solely, in a lot of ways. And then I think we were kind of the big first more mainstream competition that they got,” he stated. “Obviously, there’s a lot of blogs and websites and internet shows and stuff like that, but as far as the cable channel, we’re the first one to kind of start giving them a run. There was a landscape there that was ripe for the competition.”

During his tenure at Fox News, Schmitt hosted the early morning news program. While he was hesitant to call the program “throwaway news,” the Newsmax host claimed the role “required very little thought.”

“What I do now is a hell of a lot harder, but it’s also a lot more rewarding, too. And this is a lot more important,” admitted Schmitt. “I remember my best friend, who lives in Los Angeles, when I worked at Fox, I would ask him ‘Did you ever see the show?’ and he would say ‘Dude, I don’t watch your show. I can see morning headlines and stuff like that, I can get that anywhere. I get on my phone.’ And he’s like ‘When you start spitting fire, then we’ll talk.’

“Now, when you get into opinion and you realize how much more work it is. Every day you gotta come in with a perspective. Information’s everywhere. I mean, the information is all over everyone’s phone. It’s on Twitter. The info is blasted to every person in the century within five minutes of it happening. We all have the information. Nobody’s waiting for somebody to tell you the info on the 6:00 PM news anymore. The perspective is that what’s driving the content.”

Rob Schmitt has a belief that if he comes in every day and works as hard as he can, the ratings will continue to climb.

“It’s a tough job. It asks a lot of you. I think it’s just a matter of doing it consistently is the hardest part,” said Schmitt. “I think there’s a lot of shows in this business that have maybe a couple of good shows a week and then a couple of throwaway shows a week. You just have to hit ’em every day. Because you just never know when your audience is just going to show up.

“It’s weird. You look at the ratings and some nights will come out of the show and think ‘God, that was a great show,’ and you just don’t rate that well. Other nights, you’re like ‘That show could have been a lot better,’ and it does well. You don’t ever know when those eyeballs are gonna show up. And that’s why consistency is so important.”

Garrett Searight

Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.