Fox News will bounce back from ratings dip by being 'loyal opposition' to President Biden, CEO says
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- Fox News has seen a slip in viewership after a long record of dominating cable news ratings.
- But Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the network will benefit from serving as opposition to President Biden.
- He also said the network will remain "center-right," which he says is where its audience is.
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Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp., said Fox News would serve as "loyal opposition" to President Joe Biden, which he said will boost the network's ratings, NBC News reported.
Murdoch spoke Thursday during a Morgan Stanley investor conference and compared Fox News's relationship with Biden to MSNBC's relationship with former President Donald Trump.
"The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC... and that's because they were the loyal opposition," Murdoch said, according to NBC. "That's what our job is now with the Biden administration, and you'll see our ratings really improve from here."
In response to a question about the recent ratings dip, Murdoch said the network's audience was disappointed by the election results but that the ratings had already started to bounce back.
"Seventy-five million people voted for a Republican president," Murdoch said, according to NBC. "That's what we represent. We're going to stick to the center-right. That's where our audience is."
During his presidency, Trump often promoted the network, frequently tweeting about specific shows or topics shortly after Fox covered them. But the president's relationship with the network changed after the 2020 election.
Fox was the first network to call the state of Arizona for Biden, prompting swift fallout from Trump and his supporters. The network also eventually called the race for Biden, despite Trump's insistence that he had won.
The president began encouraging supporters to stop watching Fox and instead watch lesser-known right-wing outlets that showed even more loyalty to Trump, like Newsmax and One America News Network.
Fox, which has long dominated cable news ratings, saw a drop in viewership as a result. In January, the network lost it's top spot in cable news for the first time in nearly 20 years, trailing behind cable rivals CNN and MSNBC.
However, CNN reported Fox saw a ratings boost on Sunday, when Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in his first major speech since leaving the White House.