With Rupert aging and his sons trying to turn Fox News into another mainstream (a.k.a. left wing) media outlet, it is inevitable they will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Fox News flourished as a fair and balanced network. You could tell the news shows from the opinion shows. Partisan opinion hosts did not hide their political bias. They would put on people from both side of an issue to hash it out. They would call out BS and falsehoods.
How things have changed.
It is now hard to separate news from opinion. Take Shepard Smith - we came to love him for his news show. But now his news show is all about left wing politics. It is neither fair nor balanced and looks much more like an MSNBC or CNN production then a Fox News production. But it is not just Shepard Smith, have a look at some of their weekend news anchors - what a disaster, who do we trust.
It is not a matter of if the news anchors are left or right wing - we never used to be able to tell on Fox News. But now, there are many hosting news shows with their left wing fangs exposed.
Fox News would be much better moving these people from news shows to opinion shows and clearly labeling them as opinion shows. If Shepard Smith wants to be a left wing version of Sean Hannity - great go for it - but clearly re-brand his show as an opinion show.
Trust is quickly destroyed and viewers are already voting with their feet. Here are a few recent quotes from Bill O'Reilly - one of Fox News most famous former opinion hosts:
So, Fox News has begun losing viewers especially in the 25 to 54 years old category. MSNBC is actually beating FNC in prime time on some nights which rarely happened in the past. Correction, it never happened.
Fox News allows some of its on air talent to hate Trump too, and that is not sitting well with its core audience who now have alternatives on radio and the net.
If viewers can no longer trust Fox, then they will quickly turn to up and coming alternatives like Blaze TV (formerly CRTV) which describes itself as:
the biggest conservative voices from around the country to a single platform for the first time ever
Not hiding their bias, not pretending to be news when they are not. Sounds a lot like what Fox News used to be.
Remember Fox News rose from nothing to become the number 1 cable news channel. If they are not careful, there are many budding platforms like BlazeTV that will replace them.