Fox, CNN, MSNBC can agree Trump is gift that keeps giving

Fox News, CNN and MSNBC enjoyed a surge in viewership with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and his narrow victory is still provoking passions across the political spectrum. The question now is who will benefit the most from interest in Trump’s transition to office.

Will it be first-place Fox, home to Trump fans like Sean Hannity and interrogators like Megyn Kelly? CNN, which almost closed the ratings gap with Fox among younger audiences during the campaign? Or MSNBC, whose liberal bent could prove a draw for anti-Trump viewers?

“They’re uncorking the champagne at the cable news networks right now,” Mark Feldstein, a broadcast journalism professor at the University of Maryland, said in an interview. “People are going to be a lot more interested in watching the news with a Trump presidency than a Hillary Clinton presidency, which would have been much more predictable.”

The networks certainly won’t be setting audience records as they did in the run-up to the election, when the three were regularly averaging 7 million viewers combined each night. But the normal post-election drop could be smaller than in past cycles, as Trump in the White House provides fodder for more-riveting-than-normal cable news.

“There will be a lot of political news going on to keep ratings elevated,” said Andrew Donchin, chief investment officer at Dentsu Aegis Network, which buys ads on channels including Fox News for companies including GM and Pfizer.

Fox

As the most-watched news network, Fox News has the biggest opportunity in covering President Trump -- and the most to lose. Parent company 21st Century Fox Inc. counts on the channel for about a quarter of its profit, according to SNL Kagan, and the network has plenty of challenges to face. Fox News is confronting a much more competitive No. 2 in CNN, while still recovering from Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes’s departure this year following sexual harassment allegations. Two big tasks include wooing stars like Kelly and Bill O’Reilly for contract extensions, and capturing more young viewers.

The network needs to “reset” itself over the next few years to maintain relevance “because their audience is so old,” said Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group LLC. The median age of Fox News prime-time viewers was 65 so far this quarter, compared with CNN’s 56 and MSNBC’s 63, according to Nielsen data pointed out by Fox News.

While ratings may slip as interest in the election wanes, “we expect to remain No. 1 regardless of who is in the White House,” 21st Century Fox co-Chairman Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday at the company’s annual meeting.

Fox News, which caters to a right-leaning audience, will also have to calibrate itself now that Republicans run the White House and both houses of Congress. A Clinton presidency might have provided an easier target for Fox News’ conservative commentators, but the network showed a knack this year for playing both ally and nuisance to Trump.

Kelly’s star power rose when she confronted Trump and his surrogates, such as Newt Gingrich, during the campaign. A Trump administration could be another big “Megyn Kelly moment,” said Tony Maciulis, head of news video at Yahoo! Inc. and a former TV producer.

And Fox News could still maintain its anti-establishment voice even with commentators that support him, in part because Trump has rejected Republican party orthodoxy with his views on trade and immigration. Hannity, a Fox News host who has sparred publicly with his colleagues over his support for Trump, took to his radio show Wednesday to discuss “unfinished business,” saying “my anger at the Republican Party has never been greater.”

“Fox is better-positioned than you might think,” Maciulis said. What happened on election night “was a post-partisan turnout,” he said. “This was not about Democrats versus Republicans.”

Hannity’s contract with the network runs through 2020, but Kelly’s ends in the coming months. Rupert Murdoch, who assumed the day-to-day running of the news network, has said turning away from popular commentators would be “business suicide.”

CNN

In past election years, Fox News has done better than CNN in retaining viewers through the presidential transition period. In the 2008 election -- the last major battle between the networks -- Fox News’ ratings among viewers 25 to 54 years old fell 38 percent from November to December, according to Nielsen data. CNN’s dropped 55 percent.

CNN is also the network whose audience isn’t so commonly associated with an ideological viewpoint. That could help or hurt depending on whether audiences seek reinforcement of their views or a more balanced accounting of what unfolds over the next few months.

“There’s no doubt that we are not going to have the same ratings next year that we have this year,” CNN President Jeff Zucker said at a conference in August. “We’re not. We fully acknowledge that. We’re upfront about that.”

To gird for the ratings decline, CNN has created about a dozen original series, like “Parts Unknown” with celebrity chief Anthony Bourdain, and has invested $20 million to expand its online operation, with plans to hire 200 more staffers to focus on web video, international coverage and mobile viewing.

MSNBC

Comcast Corp.’s MSNBC has been making changes of its own, focusing its daytime programming more on original reporting and less on opinion shows. The network drew its largest total day audience ever in the third quarter of 2016, averaging 682,000 viewers.

“Our rapidly growing numbers are proof that our viewers have an appetite to see how this story plays out,” said MSNBC spokesman Errol Cockfield.

MSNBC and Fox may benefit more than CNN from viewer interest in the Trump presidency because they are “so identified with political parties and particular ideologies,” said Feldstein, the University of Maryland professor.

It may be tempting for the network popular with left-leaning audiences to shift back to an emphasis on opinion, a way to appeal to liberals looking for a place to vent their frustrations, he said.

“Look at how well Keith Olbermann did for MSNBC against George W. Bush and the war,” Feldstein said. “If I was in charge of programming at MSNBC that’s what I’d be doing.”