NEW YORK — Twice recently, the people who run Fox News were reminded of their biggest nightmare.
The conservative network Newsmax’s $67 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over false claims after the 2020 election recalled Fox’s own $787.5 million deal with the same company more than two years ago. New legal papers filed last month by a second company suing Fox, Smartmatic, also put an episode they would like to forget back in the news.
Between the staggering payment to bypass a defamation trial and revelations about the lengths to which Fox went to avoid telling its audience what it didn’t want to hear about Donald Trump’s defeat, many wondered if its actions in November 2020 would damage Fox News or compel it to change directions.
Not so much, it turns out.
Fox News Channel has defied gravity with its ratings, and is more popular with viewers this summer than ABC, CBS or NBC. Its top personalities resolutely support Trump, who has filled his second administration with former Fox stars like Pete Hegseth and Jeanine Pirro. Time after time, the White House turns to Fox to make news; shortly after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump was sitting with Sean Hannity.
Reached by The Associated Press, Fox declined to make anyone available to speak for this story.
An ethos many at Fox share with the president — no expressed regrets, no apologies — has also shown signs of spreading, given Newsmax’s swagger following the Aug. 11 settlement announcement.
Fox News averaged 2.63 million viewers in weekday prime-time for the second quarter of 2025, up 56% from the same period in 2023, the Nielsen company said. While the increase is somewhat inflated since Fox took a hit in the ratings two years ago following the firing of Tucker Carlson, the advance of cord-cutting means that any network gaining viewers now is unusual.
MSNBC’s prime-time audience of 1 million this spring was down 21% in two years, and CNN’s viewership of 538,000 was down 6%, Nielsen said. Forty-five percent of people watching one of the top three cable news networks at any given time two years ago were tuned to Fox. This year, that audience share jumped to 62%.
Clearly, Fox’s audience is more interested in following a Trump administration than it was for a Joe Biden administration. Just as clearly, the Dominion case had little appreciable impact on viewership.
“Fox’s audience didn’t really look at that verdict and say, ‘Oh, I can’t watch them anymore,’” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. “I think Fox’s audience looked at that and said, ‘oh, the left is coming after them.’”
Financially, the Dominion settlement was stiff enough that Newsmax is spreading its payments out over three years. The much larger Fox had a greater ability to absorb its hit. Fox confirmed at the time that it could deduct the settlement from its income taxes, and insurance could make the payment lower. Meanwhile, Fox News is a profit engine and becoming even more so; Axios reported earlier this year that the company expected to make half a billion dollars on non-TV products like books, podcasts and streaming.
Carlson was the face of the network before he was fired shortly after the settlement was announced, but Fox has always been able to generate new stars. Carlson took over from Bill O’Reilly when he was fired in 2017. Fox started “The Five,” arguably its centerpiece show, when Glenn Beck was shown the door in 2011. Jesse Watters now owns Carlson and O’Reilly’s old