Backing Donald Trump apparently isn't as profitable as it once was, as the president's biggest backers at Fox News are now learning.
Recent ratings numbers and advertising revenue shows that the personalities on the right-leaning network, who have been Trump's biggest supporters, have seen sharp declines across the board, including some dramatic drops for primetime programming. As the Wrap recently noted, viewer boycotts against Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have been particularly hard on the network.
The report noted that Ingraham's mocking of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and Carlson's controversial statements about immigrants have sparked massive backlash, leading to a total loss of $18 million in advertising revenue for the network as advertisers back out.
"According to an analysis for TheWrap by advertising data firm Standard Media Index, Fox News' 10 p.m. slot, hosted by Ingraham, was down at least $16 million in ad revenue in 2018," the report noted. "Carlson's show, which airs at 8 p.m., has lost another $2.2 million thanks to an ad boycott that began in December after he said mass immigration makes the U.S. 'poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.'"
Due to the loss of advertisers, Fox News has been forced to fill commercial breaks with promos for other shows on the network, which actually cost the network rather than bringing in any new revenue.Donald Trump's favorite Fox News program is not exempt from the ratings decline, either. Trump frequently cites the morning show Fox & Friends on Twitter, praising the anchors for flattering segments about him and repeating topics that he watched on the show -- usually within minutes of seeing it.
But a report from the Wrap showed that Fox & Friends saw a ratings decline of 5 percent in 2018, and 11 percent in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old news demographic. Though the Fox News morning show was still No. 1 overall, it lost ground to both New Day on CNN and Morning Joe on MSNBC.
As Fox News has suffered dips in both ratings and advertising revenue, many of its programs have slowly started to turn on Donald Trump, offering more critical analysis of his scandals and offering more time to guests who oppose the president.
That was the case during the government shutdown, when the Fox News website published an op-ed on the front page of its website claiming that Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were schooling Trump on the shutdown and pointing out that the public was not backing Trump in his demand for border wall funding.
Editor's note: Fox News reached out to the Inquisitr with a statement, disputing the idea that it has lost any revenue from the boycotts. This article did not previously reflect the below statement, provided to the Wrap.
"Advertisers have started to return and this period is not representative of the status quo in commercial loads for the industry as virtually every network runs a lighter commercial load during the first two weeks of the year," Marianne Gambelli, Fox News president of ad sales, told TheWrap in a statement. "No revenue was lost as inventory has been shifted to other dayparts and we are on track to deliver a record year in ad sales."
