Bad News for Fox News & CNN – Can They Survive Cable “Cord Cutters” & Toxic Programing?

As Alby said in a prior thread…cut the cable and stop supporting these right wing propaganda outlets.

Fox News ad revenue is down because there are only so many “My Pillows” willing to associate with the toxic brand.  Less ad revenue and fewer overall cable subscribers might turn out to be a perfect storm.

Multiple sets of analysis from Wall Street researchers show cable television as an industry in decline, with over 1.9 million subscribers cutting the cord in the second fiscal quarter of 2022, and over 5.4 million users leaving top pay-TV providers over the past year.

…Cord cutting is not a new phenomenon, but it is speeding up, and has been for years.

The trend poses a threat to the financial health of institutional media companies, especially Fox Corp., due to the high proportion of revenue that comes from affiliate fees. Affiliate revenue comes from a small fee included in the cost of a cable bill that consumers pay in exchange for carriage of that channel. The rates of these fees are set during negotiations between channels like Fox News and the cable companies. Fox News’ affiliate fees are disproportionately high (around $2) due to the exodus of advertisers from the network as a result of it’s toxic and bigoted programming.

Big picture: Cable companies are serving up smaller and smaller audiences to the channels they carry. Fox’s strategy to guard against this negative trend is to squeeze this shrinking consumer base with higher affiliate fees. This new analysis shows that cable companies will lose even more if they give in to Fox’s strategy.

In fact, Fox was among the companies that Wells Fargo identified as having ”the highest exposure among entertainment companies” with “little/no offsets to cord cutting” built into their business model. It was listed alongside Paramount Global and AMC Networks.