As Trump versus DeSantis contest rages, there’s another big Republican battle — Fox versus Newsmax

With the contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination already running full blast, another significant battle with far-reaching political implications is unfolding over where Republicans get their information.

Fox News — long the premier, go-to source for right-leaning viewers, and friendly venue for conservative thinkers and Republican politicians — is under pressure.

Newsmax, which is headquartered in Boca Raton, is on the ascent, nipping at the conservative media behemoth’s heels, hoping to permanently gain viewers and influence.

Fox is attempting to steady itself after its ouster of Tucker Carlson, its biggest ratings draw, periodic attacks from former President Donald Trump, and the channel’s agreement to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit over its spread of false information about Dominion Voting Systems’ role in the 2020 election.

“Fox isn’t the same brand it was two years ago. Can it right the ship? I think so, but is it an opportunity for Newsmax to gain viewership and audience? Absolutely,” said Justin Sayfie, a lawyer-lobbyist who splits his time between South Florida and Washington, D.C., publishes the online political news site Sayfie Review, and was communications director for Jeb Bush when he was Florida governor.

“Those Fox viewers are going to be flipping channels around now in a way that they weren’t before, just because of the upheaval that’s taken place at the channel in the last few months,” Sayfie said.

Newsmax faces challenges of its own, including lawsuits by Dominion, which extracted the big payout from Fox, and Smartmatic, another voting systems company. But Newsmax, which bills itself as “real news for real people,” is on the offensive as it attempts to capitalize on any hint of weakness at Fox.

“Newsmax is still relatively small when assessed against Fox News,” said Joshua Scacco, an associate professor of political communications at the University of South Florida who specializes in political communication and media content. But, he added, “there’s some reshuffling of the audience.”

Fox attracts more viewers than any other cable news channel. From April 24 through June 6, Nielsen Media Research figures show Fox averaged 1.6 million viewers in primetime, compared to 1.4 million for MSNBC, 550,000 for CNN and 358,000 for Newsmax. The Washington Post reported that in a month’s time, Fox’s primetime ratings were down 39% and Newsmax’s were up 135%.

All the big cable news providers, CNN, Fox and MSNBC, are dealing with shifting audiences and declining ratings. At CNN, ratings for some primetime hours have fallen below Newsmax in recent weeks.

“The kid down the block has shown up to challenge the big three cable news channels,” said Jeffrey McCall, a professor of communications at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., whose specialties include television, news and media literacy, and is the author of “Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of Mass Media Influences.” The smaller channel has “got enough legitimacy to make some noise,” he said.

“Newsmax is not, yet, in the major league,” McCall added. “But they’re not to be ignored either.”

Important role

Cable news channels could make a difference in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, so the Fox-versus-Newsmax competition has implications beyond the owners’ bottom lines and what channel conservative viewers flip to when watching television.

Trump enjoyed glowing attention from Fox during his presidency. More recently, as Gov. Ron DeSantis ramped up his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, he’s the one who’s received glowing attention from Fox and its media siblings controlled by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Neither organization commented on their rivalry. Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy did not respond to requests for comment, and Fox News Media declined to answer questions on the record.

Both Fox News and Newsmax regularly make pronouncements about their achievements and plans, Nielsen ratings are widely dissected for clues about trends, media critics analyze their content and public opinion polls probe people about the media outlets they trust and where they get their information. In addition, five close observers of media and political communications — from the left, the center and the right — recently assessed the evolving conservative media landscape in interviews with the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Trump factor

Trump, the dominant figure among Republicans, has been trash-talking Fox on and off since he lost the 2020 election.

Angered by Fox’s early, and ultimately accurate, call that Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona’s electoral votes, he turned on the cable network. Information that became public as part of the Fox-Dominion lawsuit revealed that the channel’s concern over the prospect of viewers defecting influenced the nature of the information it aired.

Trump has offered some acerbic comments about Fox, especially as it became a welcoming platform for DeSantis.

“Just watching Fox News. They are so bad, just like the Globalist Wall Street Journal and the now, way down, New York Post. They are desperately pushing DeSanctimonious,” Trump posted recently on his Truth Social platform.

DeSanctimonius is a Trump-coined nickname for the Florida governor. Fox, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post are Murdoch’s highest-profile U.S. outlets.

“Fox News is way down in the Ratings. After firing Tucker Carlson and refusing to fight against a VERY Corrupt and Rigged 2020 Presidential Election, which just cost them plenty of money, prestige, and RATINGS, they are a far cry from what they used to be,” Trump added.

During a May 15 phone interview with Newsmax, Trump praised the channel. “Your network is really doing well,” he said. “I looked at the numbers and you’re really going up like a rocket ship, and that’s a fantastic thing for a conservative movement, frankly.”

Trump hasn’t completely spurned Fox and its large audience. He’ll post Fox content he likes on his social media platform. On June 1, he participated in an Iowa town hall hosted by Fox’s Sean Hannity. On Tuesday, Fox announced Trump would appear June 19 for an interview with host Bret Baier on his evening “Special Report” program.

Tucker Carlson

Fox abruptly fired Carlson, its top-rated host at the end of April. It never explained why, though a headline in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal explained it this way: “Tucker Carlson’s Vulgar, Offensive Messages About Colleagues Helped Seal His Fate at Fox News.”

He had a large and dedicated following for his nightly 8 p.m. show. Jason Campbell, a senior researcher at the left-leaning Media Matters for America, where he monitors and analyzes conservative media, described Carlson as “the biggest pundit in the right-wing media system.”

“Tucker Carlson being ousted from Fox News has clearly thrown not just Fox News but conservative media at large into quite a bit of turbulence,” Campbell said.

Nielsen numbers show Newsmax’s primetime ratings surged after Fox fired Carlson, but have subsequently dipped. The week before the Carlson firing, Newsmax averaged 132,000 viewers in primetime on weeknights. The week Carlson was fired it averaged 403,000 viewers in primetime. It averaged 383,000 the following three weeks and last week — which may have been affected by Memorial Day — it was 271,000.

Newsmax seized the opportunity to capitalize on the upheaval, declaring itself the “primary beneficiary” of the Fox ratings decline, which it described as a “plummet,” a “catastrophic drop” and its bigger rival was “hemorrhaging viewers.”

Fox hasn’t named a permanent replacement for Carlson’s time slot, and even though the fired host posted his first 10-minute “Tucker on Twitter” video Tuesday evening, his ultimate landing spot — and the ultimate impact — is unknown.

Some viewers may wonder “whether or not the Fox News of old is still in operation today,” McCall said. “So if you’ve got some doubt in the minds of traditional Fox viewers that maybe Fox has lost its way, they’re going to sample other right-of-center outlets.”

In a statement after Carlson’s ouster Ruddy used the word “establishment” — the equivalent of a vile epithet among people on the populist right and in the Trump-inspired Make America Great Again movement — to describe Fox.

“For a while Fox News has been moving to become establishment media and Tucker Carlson’s removal is a big milestone in that effort,” Ruddy said. “Millions of viewers who liked the old Fox News have made the switch to Newsmax and this will only fuel that trend.”

Importance of Fox

Fox has long been the outlet most trusted by conservatives.

“The Fox audience has always been really important because of the fact that they had a monopoly in terms of (television) networks on right-of-center viewers, making it “the place to be” for voters, commentators and politicians,” Sayfie said. “All the people who care and all of the people who are most interested in right-of-center politics, they’re all in one place.”

It’s still by far the most trusted source of information for Republicans. The YouGov “2023 U.S. Trust in Media Poll,” conducted April 3-9 among U.S. adults, found Fox had a net positive of 41% among Republicans.

The YouGov trust score is the difference between the percentage of people who said an outlet is trustworthy or very trustworthy, and the percentage who say it is untrustworthy or very untrustworthy. YouGov is an online polling firm that has done work for a range of media outlets, businesses and academic organizations. Pollster ratings from FiveThirtyEight.com give YouGov a B-plus rating based on the historical accuracy and methodology of its polls.

Newsmax was second with 28%.

The Associated Press, widely considered the gold standard of neutral, fact-based reporting, had a negative 5% among Republicans. The two other big cable channels, CNN and MSNBC, were both minus 37% among Republicans.

One cable channel actually enjoyed slightly higher trust: The Weather Channel, which stood at 47%. Democrats also said The Weather Channel was their most trusted source of information, but it scored a much higher 64%.

Fox was in last place among Democrats, with negative 16%, and Newsmax was at zero.

What is Newsmax?

For those unfamiliar with Newsmax, it is in many ways similar to Fox, offering a stream of conservative programming.

“They provide the kind of content that they know their audience wants to see. They’re challenging the establishment media. They’re taking on the Biden administration. They’re challenging the answers of the kind of corporate establishment as well, and there’s certainly a place for that in the journalism world. Whether they can maintain that is hard to say,” McCall said.

Newsmax describes one of its primetime hosts, Eric Bolling, as someone who “fights big media, woke politics, and cancel culture. He tells the truth and exposes hypocrisy.”

Announcing a new daily late-afternoon show in April, Newsmax said host Carl Higbie — a former spokesperson for a pro-Trump super political action committee — would “focus on providing common-sense news analysis, exposing big government overreach and the media’s shortfalls — all while always fighting for American values.”

Though its programs aren’t as polished as Fox’s, viewers of the larger channel would find familiar programming.

The hosts of the hourlong shows at 6 p.m. (Greta Van Susteren), 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. (Rob Schmitt) 8 p.m. (Bolling) and 10 p.m. (Greg Kelly) all used to work at Fox and departed for various reasons. The newest primetime offering, “The Right Squad” at 9 p.m., is Newsmax’s version of Fox’s highly-rated 5 p.m. group chat among conservatives, “The Five.”

“They have a much smaller budget. They have much less revenue than Fox News. Because of that, the sort of polish won’t necessarily be there,” Scacco said, adding that he suspects potential viewers are more interested in content than slick presentation and that familiar faces and formats could make for an “easier transition from Fox to Newsmax.”

The Newsmax website was founded in 1998 by Ruddy, and he launched Newsmax TV in 2014. In December 2020, Ruddy said the organization had 250 to 275 employees, with about half working in Boca Raton, where the company is headquartered. He said about half were working in New York, where much of the channel’s programming originates.

Newsmax’s LinkedIn page shows it has from 100-500 employees. Fox News Media’s LinkedIn page puts it in the category of 1,001 to 5,000 employees.

Campbell, who has Newsmax programming on all day at work and watches all its primetime shows, called it “a font of hatred and extremism and bigotry.”

“They’re an extremely dangerous propagandist outlet that injects hatred and conspiracy theories into their news constantly,” Campbell said, adding that the channel keeps “viewers riled in a state of vitriol and anger and hatred against marginalized communities and filling their heads with downright falsehoods and conspiracy theories.”

Real threat?

McCall and Sayfie said there’s plenty of opportunity for Newsmax to increase and retain viewers. Success doesn’t require toppling Fox from its No. 1 spot.

“They can siphon off some of their audience. That’s sufficient. That’s a victory for Newsmax,” McCall said.“Newsmax doesn’t need to get to the same size of audience as the big three. They just need to get enough to be relevant in the news discussion. They need to get enough to be financially viable. They need to get enough to make the other people pay attention to them,” McCall said.

“Even if it’s still a fraction of what Fox has, they would be able to reach a very targeted segmented audience of conservative voters,” Sayfie said. “If you’re someone running for office, or someone who’s influencing opinion or a pundit, that several hundred thousand audience is meaningful.”

Stuart N. Brotman, a professor of journalism and electronic media enterprise and leadership at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said Newsmax “has achieved basically parity” with Fox in its availability on cable systems and satellites, so it is no longer at the kind of structural disadvantage it once had.

Brotman is a lawyer who has worked in presidential administrations of both parties, and taught at leading colleges and written books and articles on media, telecommunications, the internet, law and politics.

The Fox-Newsmax rivalry received a lot of attention in the weeks and months after the 2020 presidential election.

Angered over Fox’s coverage of the election aftermath, Trump and his supporters fiercely criticized Fox and touted Newsmax. The smaller competitor saw some ratings bumps, and internal communications that came to light as part of the Dominion lawsuit revealed that Fox was “worried about their audiences going to OAN (One America News) or Newsmax,” Scacco said.

Ultimately it was a blip, and Fox retained its dominant position.

Dominion, Smartmatic

Fox agreeing to pay $787.5 million to settle the defamation lawsuit filed by voting machine company Dominion over its spread of the false conspiracy theory that the company was part of a plot to rig the election in favor of Biden has received enormous attention. Fox faces another defamation lawsuit from voting systems company, Smartmatic, which has its U.S. headquarters in Boca Raton.

Newsmax faces similar defamation claims from both Dominion and Smartmatic, though there are some differences.

Like Fox, Newsmax has repeatedly said it was reporting legitimate questions about voting systems in the immediate aftermath of the election. But in a late 2020 statement on air and online, Newsmax acknowledged that “No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.”

After the Fox-Dominion settlement, Newsmax in a statement said it “believes that the facts at issue in Dominion’s case against it are materially different from those that may have driven Fox to settle, and no conclusion about Newsmax should be drawn from that settlement. Newsmax stands by its coverage and analysis of the 2020 election and will continue to vigorously defend against the claim.”

McCall said the potential impact the Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits might have on Newsmax is unknown. “There is the potential financial risk for Newsmax in this,” he said. “It’s hard to say how this is going to play out.”

Long-term trends

Even if Fox’s audience were to shrink in coming months and years, that wouldn’t mean long-term success for Newsmax. Along with all forms of information and entertainment on cable, they face an existential threat.

“We’re in a digital era where people access programming from all different sources. Clearly watching it on cable and satellite is only one option,” Brotman said. “There are a number of others, new systems like YouTube TV.”

Campbell, who focuses on online streaming platforms in addition to Newsmax, said non-cable media will become dominant. “A demographic crisis is happening in cable media,” he said. “Streaming platforms and podcasts have just exploded.”

Cable remains the most popular way for older voters to get their information, but not younger voters.

A Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research poll conducted April 13-14 asked Florida voters what source they use to get the majority of their political news.

Among all voters, 40.4% chose the option “cable News such as CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Newsmax.”

The breakdowns by age revealed dramatic differences, and showed the long-term challenge for cable, which was the choice for 55.7% of people 65 and older, 44.1% of voters aged 50 to 64; 27.2% of voters age 35 to 49, and just 12.8% of voters age 18 to 34.

Social media was cited by 13% of voters as their primary source of news. But the long-term trend is clear: 2.7% of voters older than 65 and 30% of voters aged 18 to 34 picked social media. “Other websites or blogs” was cited by 19.2% of Floridians overall, but the percentage was more than four times higher for people under 35 than for people 65 and older.

“The future of news is going to be online video or phone or digital video. It’s not going to be on people’s television sets. At some point that’s going to fade away,” Sayfie said. “Generation Y or Z is not going to sit down at 8 o’clock to watch Tucker Carlson.”

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com, on Twitter @browardpolitics and on Post.news/@browardpolitics.