Good day all. The effects of Fox News firing Tucker Carlson is, apparently, hitting Fox Corporation where it really hurts, in the wallet. We already know that viewership for Fox has cratered since they fired Carlson, oh, excuse me, suspended him or something. Now it’s also hitting the actual bottom line
I won’t bother going over the surprise dismissal of Tucker Carlson. He’s already starting his own production company and has been posting videos on Twitter. I suspect that once all the legal crap is out of the way, Carlson will start his own video channel. What has happened is that Fox’s management has basically shot themselves in the financial foot. Fox Corporation’s stock has been downgraded by Wall Street. Here are the details from Newsmax:
A major financial services company downgraded Fox Corporation stock, citing risks concerning news, earnings, and viewership. Wells Fargo analysts downgraded shares of Fox Corporation (NASDAQ:FOXA) to underweight from equal weight on Monday, lowering the price target to $31 from $35 per share.
“Fox News is the FOXA cash cow at ~80% of our FY24E EBITDA,” the analysts said, Investing.com reported. “Viewership is down -19% Jan-June’23 vs Jan-June’21 due to cord cutting and/or programming.
“More worryingly, Fox News was 52% of cable news prime-time viewership for 2020-22, 51% in Jan’23, and that has slid to a low of 38% in June’23 post-TC. FN’s share of conservative news viewers has fallen from 94% to 84%.”
I think those numbers are off and by quite a bit. Viewership has basically cratered since they removed Tucker Carlson and they’ve been trying to get it back. It’s not happening.
Fox News saw a significant ratings decline after its termination of its number one rated host Tucker Carlson. The network has yet to reveal why it had removed Carlson from his prime-time perch.
The rumor is that they removed Carlson as part of the cave in to Dominion over the voting machine stories. Other rumors indicate that former Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who is about as Deep State as it gets, and is now on the Fox Corporation Board of Directors may have been instrumental in pushing out Carlson and has been at the forefront, along with the Murdoch spawn, in going after President Trump. (Which may include the early call on Arizona in 2020)
Meanwhile Newsmax has seen a significant ratings rise. Newsmax’s total day rating rose 71% as Fox News declined 15% in the same period, according to Nielsen. In the key prime-time hours, Newsmax saw its audience grow 126% as Fox’s audience fell 21%.
Fox has also been suffering as cord-cutting has viewers canceling cable or satellite subscriptions and choosing less-expensive streaming options.
I’ve been reducing my satellite service, although I haven’t “Cut the cord” yet. I haven’t watched Fox News since the 2020 election debacle, watching Newsmax instead.
Analysts universally are cautious on Fox Corp. It has a hold rating from Seeking Alpha, while Wall Street analysts rate it a hold.
The Newsmax story has a number of financial institutions listed that have downgraded Fox Corp. It looks like they’ve generally gone from a Buy signal to a Hold or neutral position, meaning they’re saying if you already have shares in Fox Corp, hold them, but to buy any more shares at this time. It gives the target company a bit of leeway to turn things around. I don’t see that happening for Fox under the current management.
The next step, if things continue to slide, might be Wall Street going from Hold to Sell. If that recommendation happens, Fox’s stock price will basically crash as the institutional investors dump their holdings. You could even see short selling. While this is not in the offing, as near as I can tell from the news reports, if it were to happen and Fox collapsed, (Also not at all likely), it would be a flat out self inflicted wound. Basically, they would have gone Woke and then Broke. If the worst case scenario should occur, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of idiots.
Thatisall
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~The Angry Webmaster~
What killed professional wrestling as a legitimate sport here in the states was a New York newspaper accidentally publishing the results of a match the day before the match. Thereby letting us all know that the fix was in. Calling Arizona before the Maricopa county polls closed pretty much does the same about elections, no? Refusal to review evidence is not the same as no evidence.