The New Prime Time for TV News: Afternoons

Even the family that controls Fox is aware that casual observers may not be fully aware of the afternoon show’s success. “People will be surprised, but the No. 1 news show in America is ‘The Five,’” Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive of the Fox Corporation, said at an investor conference last week. “It’s a great, energetic show, a panel show that has opinions from all sides of politics.”

“The Five” has also incubated two of the network’s rising stars. Fox News turned to Mr. Gutfeld to lead a new 11 p.m. comedy show that has turned into a major hit. The show far outranks its strait-laced, news-focused competitors on CNN and MSNBC and routinely pulls in more viewers than comedy stalwarts like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.

“The Five” isn’t the only afternoon show on Fox News that has been doing well relative to its in-house competition. In February, Mr. Watters’s 7 p.m. show drew more viewers than Mr. Hannity at 9 and Laura Ingraham at 10. Bret Baier’s “Special Report,” at 6 p.m., also attracted a bigger viewership than Ms. Ingraham.

In some ways, the shift back to afternoons and early evenings is a throwback to the traditional dinnertime network newscasts that, for generations, summarized current events for a mass audience at 6:30 p.m.

Today, the 6:30 newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC still rank among the highest-rated programs on all of broadcast and cable TV. ABC’s “World News Tonight,” anchored by David Muir, was the most-watched nonsports program on all of television in 31 of 52 weeks last year.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/business/media/tv-prime-time-afternoons.html