Fox News aims to grow its streaming business with election year campaign

Fox News is preparing viewers for the upcoming U.S. presidential election, starting with the continuation of the previous race’s “Democracy 2020” marketing campaign. The campaign aims to humanize the news network’s top talent as escalating political polarization fuels social perception of the channel, and to grow its digital business as cord-cutting accelerates.

The “Democracy ’24” campaign features 29 spots starring top Fox News talent, each discussing their personal connections to the job. The ads are a mixture of clips from the network showing each reporter at work and intimate interviews in their homes.

In one spot, Bret Baier, chief political anchor and executive editor of “Special Report,” discusses the importance of leading election night coverage, which he calls “our Super Bowl.”

“It’s never lost on me that [election coverage] is not about me,” says Baier. “It’s about the future of the country.”

In addition to allowing audiences to “feel like they have more of a personal relationship with the anchors and the reporters and hosts,” Jason Klarman, executive VP of marketing for Fox News Media, said the broader goals for the campaign are to appeal to new viewers as well as immerse the network’s existing fans deeper into its media ecosystem.

“Democracy ’24” will also feature a hub on Fox News’ streaming platform Fox Nation, which will feature some live coverage, such as the first Republican primary debate on Aug. 23, and supplementary content around the presidential race.

“Being number one is a lot of work—staying ahead of the curve and being thoughtful about how to grow the business and expand the business,” said Klarman. He added that while Fox News’ linear channels are its core focus, if a viewer wants to consume election coverage beyond that—via streaming, podcasts or the radio—they don’t have to look outside of Fox. “When you look at all the data, people are not consuming less media. They’re consuming more and more media all the time, they’re just consuming it in different ways and in different places, so that’s what we’re after.”

Adding platforms to reach consumers is growing increasingly important to traditional linear players as cable cord-cutting persists. Linear has fallen below 50% of all TV usage for the first time, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge, which also recorded streaming at its highest share of consumption to date at 38.7%.

Fox Corp., in its fiscal year 2023 annual report, listed a decline of 3 million cable subscribers for Fox News, with subscribers shrinking to 72 million as of June 30, down from 75 million a year earlier, as estimated by Nielsen. 

However, Fox News’s ratings remain at the top of the cable news set—since the network settled its new lineup in mid-July, primetime viewership has averaged 2.13 million versus 1.56 million for MSNBC and 671,000 for CNN, according to Nielsen. Since the exit of ratings machine Tucker Carlson in April, Fox News has seen more than 40 advertisers buy into the network, a network spokesperson confirmed, and the network's current 8 p.m. show, “Jesse Watters Primetime,” has averaged 2.39 million viewers, nearly 1 million more than the average for closest competitor MSNBC's programming during the hour (although still below the 3.25 million Carlson averaged in his final month per Nielsen).

Recent news: 2024 political ad spending expected to top $11 billion

It remains to be seen if Fox News’s election year ratings will be impacted by the recent lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., which was settled earlier this year and disputed the accuracy of the network’s reporting on the 2020 election results.

Fox News wants to show that its viewer base is diverse. “A lot of people want to think that the channel is pigeonholed into a certain audience and a certain demographic and a certain part of the country and that’s just not true,” Klarman said. “The more that we can get the message out there, that people are watching it everywhere and it’s for everyone, there’s still room to grow the audience.”

A spot starring White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich exemplifies that message. The reporter describes political discourse at her childhood dinner table between one parent whom she describes as “a second amendment, live-free-or-die, very conservative Republican and the other is a very humanitarian-minded, Bernie Sanders liberal.”

“What that gave me was the ability to at least understand where people are coming from on very polar ends of things,” says Heinrich.

“Brands are living things that evolve over time,” said Klarman. “And the perception of all of them change over time, and that might be incremental, but you have to develop the messaging to drive that.”

The spots will run on linear, digital, social and radio through September. Spots promoting the Republican debate broadcast will air alongside them on the same platforms, as well as on competitive networks including ESPN, History Channel, Paramount and HGTV and through programmatic buys on publications such as The Wall Street Journal. The day of the debate will feature a takeover of FoxNews.com and placements on cable TV guides, including Comcast. Phase two of the campaign will roll out in October featuring new spots on linear in key markets as well as sports broadcasts, out-of-home including a billboard in Times Square and digital ads in news outlets.