Can’t get enough Fox News? Starting today, devotees of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson can sign up for a streaming service that will give Fox “superfans” on-demand access to exclusive online content from the channel’s rightwing stable of TV personalities.
Fox Nation is the latest streaming service to be launched by established news organizations who are worried their aging audience is ditching cable TV for online content. But while the service may be aimed at a younger – or at least more tech savvy – demographic than Fox’s traditional audience , it will stay true to Fox’s Trumpian aesthetic.
The service will eschew news for comment. Alongside Trump favorites Hannity and Carlson, Fox Nation will stream a show called Un-PC hosted by former Snoop Dogg bodyguard turned political commentator Tyrus and former ESPN star Britt McHenry as well as documentaries with titles such as Planned Parenthood: the Hidden Harvest, The Birth of Jesus, Losing Faith in America and 13 Hours in Benghazi.
The Murdoch family, which controls Fox, has a lot riding on the success of Fox Nation. Walt Disney is buying the majority of 21st Century Fox, Fox News’s current home, leaving the Murdochs with a far smaller empire whose biggest brand will be the news channel.
Fox Nation is the brainchild of Lachlan Murdoch, media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son, who charged executives with coming up with a streaming version of the cable news network last year.
Despite doomy prognostications about the future of cable, Fox News remains the US’s most watched cable news network and highly profitable. In October, its daily audience topped rivals CNN and MSNBC combined with 2.8 million primetime viewers, according to Nielsen, the ratings agency.
But analysts are skeptical about the potential reach of Fox Nation. Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said the audience was likely to be in the “hundreds of thousands” rather than the millions.
“But any media owner needs to offer a product that goes direct to the consumer,” he said. “If they don’t, someone else will.” Wieser said the new, smaller Fox would have to compete with the equally right-of-center Sinclair Broadcasting network, Breitbart and, potentially, Donald Trump.
Trump had reportedly considered launching his own online media empire before he was elected. “If Trump isn’t in office in 2021, do you think he’ll go quiet? I am guessing not,” said Wieser.
Fox plans to charge $5.99 a month for the service and has been offering goodies to early adopters, or “founders”, as Fox calls them. A $60 one-year subscription comes with a Founder Challenge coin; $130 gets you two years of service, the coin and a Fox Nation baseball cap; chip in $280 for a three-year subscription and you get a pair of Founder engraved whiskey glasses; and, for the true believer, $1,200 gets you an exclusive Fox Nation Patriot “military” timepiece.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Fox News executive John Finley claimed to have lost the office sweepstakes on how many people would sign up for the founder packages by underestimating demand. “That so many people have enthusiastically signed up and committed that much time and money to it, we think, is a very, very good signal,” Finley said. He declined to disclose the initial subscriber numbers.
