Cable’s most-watched network just posted its smallest audience in years, in the final weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Fox News averaged 1.1 million total day viewers in October 2026, its lowest-rated month in that measure since December 2023, according to Nielsen data reported Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, confirming the slide. Preliminary Nielsen figures obtained by Status ahead of the official release carried the same number.
Quarter-Century Low in the Demo
The network averaged 98,000 viewers among adults 25-54, the age group advertisers prize, its weakest month in a quarter-century. Against October 2025, total viewers fell 27% and the demo dove 32%.
Fox News ranked third among all cable networks in the 25-54 demographic, behind ESPN and TBS, and fifth among adults 18-49. The October ratings period ran Sept. 28 through Oct. 25, and Nielsen measured both this October and last on a Big Data + Panel, Live+Same Day basis.
The network still leads cable overall, finishing ahead of ESPN even with football back on the schedule, and it was the only cable network averaging more than one million total day viewers for the month. ESPN averaged 824,000.
The Morning Show Trump Watches
The prime time block from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., overseen by Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, drew 2 million total viewers, down 28% from a year earlier, while its 25-54 audience fell 36% to 183,000.
“Fox & Friends” spent a second consecutive month under one million total viewers and under 100,000 in the key demographic. The morning show, long a fixture of President Donald Trump’s daily viewing routine, logged its worst month in total viewers since July 2015 and its lowest 25-54 average since June 2001.
Rivals Climb as Midterms Near
MS NOW rose 16% in daytime to 588,000 total viewers compared with last year, and CNN climbed 3% to 402,000. Both rivals had year-over-year increases to tout in their October press releases, the sort of gains networks ordinarily expect heading into a consequential midterm election.
MS NOW jumped 38% to 62,000 in the total-day demo and CNN gained 3% to 60,000. In weekday primetime, MS NOW averaged 1.16 million viewers, up 15%, and CNN averaged 644,000, up 16%; CNN edged MS NOW in the primetime demo, 124,000 to 117,000.
Last October was a different month, with enormous stories buoying the audience, including the Gaza ceasefire and the hostage release. Fox News also lost 16% of its total audience and 24% of its 25-54 audience in the third quarter of 2026 alone, year over year, as reported Oct. 29.
Fox still claimed 53% of the combined cable news audience in total day and 52% in primetime for the October period, and it drew more total viewers than CNN and MS NOW combined in both dayparts. The network cited 3.8 billion YouTube video views through Oct. 27, against nearly 3 billion for MS NOW and 2.4 billion for CNN, data from the social media analytics firm Emplifi — figures that count video views rather than unique viewers and are not directly comparable to Nielsen television ratings.
“Trump Doesn’t Rate Anymore”
The slide arrived while Trump publicly battered his preferred network. He slammed Fox News in a Truth Social post over its interviews with Democratic candidates, among them Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker and Iowa gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand.
“FoxNews is spending far too much time putting on the OPPONENTS of Republican Party Candidates, people that love our Country, and have Great Policies and Ideas,” Trump wrote, accusing the network in the same post of “trying too hard to be Politically Correct” and complaining that Republican figures were getting “blurred out” by the traditional media.
Trump raged after Fox News briefly cut back live coverage of his campaign rallies, and he urged supporters to switch to Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), the outlet Trump enthusiast Joe Seales launched in 2015 to stream rallies uninterrupted. Fox News carried his Texas rally live on Tuesday, Oct. 27, with polls about to open. His approval ratings are hovering near record lows.
An anonymous Fox host, summing up the network’s internal consensus, put it bluntly: “Trump doesn’t rate anymore.”
