The Will Cain Show has been a smash hit for Fox News since debuting last month. The program has led the cable news network to an 89% increase in the ratings compared to the same timeframe last year.
You can posit about all sorts of different reasons why the show has been so successful so quickly. Whether you believe it’s the audience’s familiarity with Cain, the fact that basically anything on Fox News is going to perform really well, or the program falls at a good time for the average octogenarians tuning into cable news, there are all sorts of reasons why it could see a great first few weeks on the air.
And while the show’s overall ratings are up, I think an overlooked portion of the ratings success is the 110% uptick in the Adults 25-54 demographic. This definitely isn’t a critique of the former host in the timeslot — Neil Cavuto, who I have the utmost respect for — but a two-fold development for Fox News. It’s that Will Cain isn’t just another old white guy bitching about the Democrats on Fox News, and his show looks eerily similar to what a lot of viewers in the 25-54 demo are used to seeing on YouTube.
It’s a great strategy, so kudos to whoever made the final call for The Will Cain Show to essentially just take the presentation from what it had been doing on YouTube over to Fox News.
First of all, it’s comfortable for Cain. He’s been hosting a day digital video show/podcast for quite some time. And the host being comfortable with the presentation both on-screen and off-screen is undeniably a good thing for a show to hit the ground running, which is always going to be the expectation at a network like Fox News.
Additionally, when your audience has grown accustomed to seeing a presentation like what we see on YouTube — stripped down, not overproduced, without a constant barrage of on-screen graphics and scrolling information that could make even the person with the worst case of ADHD overwhelmed — wouldn’t it logically make sense to transfer that over to cable news?
Sometimes, common sense isn’t so common. I wholly understand getting lost in trying to develop the next great cable news show and how things being complex and complicated make it likely that your show is going to be the next big thing. But, sometimes, less is more. We’ve seen that with the performance of The Will Cain Show since its debut after the inauguration.
Cable news channels want as many viewers as possible, obviously. But when you look at the average age of the current viewers, the data — featuring numbers that start with 7s and 6s — doesn’t necessarily paint a rosy picture for the future. “Cable news” is likely to be a term that’s as relevant as “yellow pages”, “beepers”, and “landline phones” in the coming years. But brands like Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, and NewsNation aren’t just going to vanish when cable inevitably goes the way of the dodo. So investing in the future of the brand by courting those in the 25-54 demographic.
How can they do that? By leaning into the YouTube style. Gone are wild studios with hundreds of monitors, graphics packages in constant motion, expensive lighting, and intricate camera movements. Instead, the focus is on the content. More than one billion hours of content is being consumed daily on YouTube. There’s a reason for that, but part of the reason is because the focus isn’t on anything other than interesting conversations and topics in so many different aspects.
That does require some tempering of egos, though. A feeling of superiority and pretentiousness from legacy and linear media employees persists over those who work digitally. That is changing, however, as it should. In the latest data from Nielsen’s The Gauge, streaming dwarfed both broadcast and cable TV, nearly beating the two sectors combined. Nearly 43% of all television viewership now happens on streaming, and more than 10% of that happens on YouTube alone. So the idea that cable news is somehow above digital content creators is outdated thinking.
Will Cain does a simplistic, more personable approach than the average cable news program in 2025. Much more similar in style to what is produced daily on YouTube than its cable news counterparts at 4 PM ET. In my opinion, that’s the key to the future if the cable news industry wants to capture any of the 25-54-year-olds not currently watching the format, which is the overwhelming majority.
Content has been, and always will be, king. In the past, the cable news style has often been putting lipstick on a pig. The average viewer doesn’t necessarily go for that anymore. People just simply don’t care about the things the cable news industry has prioritized — from a production standpoint — any longer. Does having cool graphics and great camera motions and the most perfect makeup on a host wearing a $3,000 suit still make people look important? Absolutely.
But, collectively, we’re past that. Providing engaging, interesting, compelling, and authentic content in a personable way is how cable news can win going forward. Fox News has that in Will Cain. The only question is: who’s next?
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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.
