The Five celebrates its 15th anniversary this month, and Fox News has every reason to celebrate right alongside it. The ensemble show debuted on July 11, 2011, stepping into the 5 p.m. ET slot Glenn Beck vacated after his contentious exit from the network. Not many people expected the panel to outlast Beck’s brand of appointment television, let alone become cable news’ most reliable ratings juggernaut.
Fox News took a real gamble on an unproven format back then. Executives could’ve easily plugged another solo host into the gap Beck left behind, but instead, they bet on a five-person roundtable built around rotating chemistry rather than a singular voice. That bet has paid off in ways almost nobody could’ve predicted at the time.
Look at Fox News’ primetime lineup today, and it becomes clear how much of an outlier The Five really is. Solo hosts dominate the 8 p.m., 9 p.m., and 10 p.m. hours, and each delivers extended monologues about the ills of the Democratic Party and the ways liberals are supposedly wrecking the country. The Five, meanwhile, plays by an entirely different set of rules.
A Different Kind of Chemistry
Sure, plenty of segments still cover how awful everything done by non-conservatives supposedly is. However, there’s a fantastic chemistry between the panelists that primetime rarely bothers to replicate, along with a shared understanding that the stakes aren’t quite as high as they’ll become a few hours later. Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino, and their rotating castmates trade jabs, crack jokes, and occasionally even find common ground, and that mix keeps the show from feeling like just another outrage cycle.
It also features more liberal voices, like Jessica Tarlov and Harold Ford Jr., than virtually any other show on the network.
That formula hasn’t changed much over 15 years, and it’s arguably grown stronger. Producers have shuffled the cast plenty of times since 2011, yet the show’s core identity — a roundtable that takes news seriously without taking itself too seriously — has remained fully intact. Consistency, more than any single personality, is what’s carried the format this far.
Ratings That Speak for Themselves
Fox News deserves genuine praise for how The Five has performed, especially lately. The show extended its run as cable news’ most-watched program for 19 consecutive quarters, drawing an average total audience of 3.58 million viewers in the second quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, it had already topped the charts as the top non-primetime program in cable news for 18 straight quarters back in March, a streak that’s only continued to grow since.
You’d be hard-pressed to find another network with a 5 PM show as its most-watched program overall. Consequently, that achievement says something meaningful about the panelists, the producers, and the network as a whole. Additionally, it says something about Fox News’ willingness to let a genuine outlier stay an outlier instead of forcing it into a more conventional mold.
Ultimately, that’s the real lesson behind 15 years of The Five. Fox News caught lightning in a bottle back in the summer of 2011, and rather than tampering with the formula, the network let it grow on its own terms. Fifteen years later, that decision still looks like one of the smartest moves in the network’s history.
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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.