Fox News enters 2026 with momentum that few cable news organizations can match.
After posting an 11% increase in primetime ratings and a 16% rise in total day viewership in 2025 compared to the prior year, the network finds itself in a position of strength that feels both earned and sustainable.
Those numbers stand out for an important reason. They came in a post-presidential election year. Historically, cable news audiences retreat once ballots are counted, and the national temperature cools. That didn’t happen here. Instead, Fox News grew its audience even as the news cycle became noticeably calmer than the chaos of 2024.
And make no mistake — 2024 will be remembered as one of the most tumultuous, headline-driven years in modern American history. Cable news thrives in moments like that. What it usually doesn’t do is grow once the storm passes.
Yet Fox News did exactly that in 2025.
That performance sends a clear message. Viewers aren’t tuning in only when the country is on edge. They’re building habits around the network. In an era where audience loyalty is becoming increasingly rare, that matters more than ever.
If MS NOW and CNN harbor hopes of closing the gap and returning to within striking distance of Fox News in the cable news race, 2026 doesn’t appear likely to be their year. The early calendar alone suggests otherwise. January arrived with military action in Venezuela pushing foreign policy back into daily headlines. Soon after, the ICE shooting in Minneapolis ignited a national debate that shows no signs of cooling off.
That’s before factoring in what still lies ahead. The midterm elections are coming. A State of the Union address looms that promises to be anything but routine. And hovering over all of it is a Trump White House that operates with a never-a-dull-moment approach to its messaging. For a network built to cover politics aggressively and continuously, those conditions are ideal.
Equally important is what Fox News isn’t dealing with right now. There’s no primetime identity crisis. No sense of scrambling to find the next big thing. Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld remain firmly in place, anchoring a lineup that viewers recognize and trust. That consistency is a competitive advantage, especially when rivals continue to experiment with formats and personalities.
Television audiences value familiarity. They reward predictability when it comes to tone and point of view. Fox News understands that dynamic, and it shows up in the ratings. When viewers know exactly who they’ll see at 8 or 10 PM ET, they’re far more likely to return night after night.
The result is a network that isn’t simply capitalizing on breaking news. It’s benefiting from long-term audience habits. That’s how year-over-year growth happens when it isn’t supposed to.
Fox News doesn’t need to reinvent itself to win 2026. It simply needs to keep doing what it’s been doing. The ratings growth from last year suggests the audience is responding, even without the intensity of a presidential race.
If that’s the floor, the ceiling this year could be much higher.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
