Fox Corporation shares down 12% since Election Day, 6% yesterday alone, since hopping on the 'Biden elected' media bandwagon
Fox News Channel had a great market niche: half of the country, as the late Roger Ailes and Charles Krauthammer both quipped. For reasons that only can be speculated on, the network that once was a safe harbor for conservatives navigating the Trump-hating media seas, discarded its lock on half of the market. First, its "Decision Desk" prematurely called Arizona for Biden, though a recount continues with Biden's lead shrinking every day, and then on Saturday, 10 minutes after CNN and MSNBC, it went all in on selling the fake news that Joseph Robinette Biden was "elected."
Speaking for myself, my sense of affiliation with Fox News has been destroyed. They are selling what I believe to be a stolen election long before the constitutional processes to safeguard a presidential election have been followed.
Yesterday, eight days late, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum both broadcast brief acknowledgements from the "Decision Desk" that it had blown its call that Democrats would enlarge their House majority. Interestingly, they waited until they felt they could "call" that Democrats would retain their majority before acknowledging their error. And they offered no explanation at all as to how they could have been so wrong.
President Trump is not pleased and has tweeted about FNC's subsequent ratings decline:
.@FoxNews daytime ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2020
Insider's Tom LoBianco and Lucia Moses reported last month that Jared Kushner, Trump's senior advisor and son-in-law, was floating the idea of a Trump-branded media outlet. Axios reported on Thursday that the president was now looking into starting his own digital media company to get revenge against Fox News.
Wall Street has noticed:
Class A shares of Fox News parent-company Fox Corp. dropped as much as 6% on Thursday as President Donald Trump retweeted support for its rival right-leaning news networks Newsmax and OANN.
Some of Trump's Thursday retweets include: "#FoxNews is dead," "Fox has been completely unfair and untruthful. Moving to Newsmax," and "Newsmax and Oann are great alternatives [to Fox News]."
This one-day decline is on top of earlier losses since Election Day: Class A shares of Fox Corp. are down as much as 12% from their election day peak of $29.28 as of Thursday afternoon.
(Source)
I confess that I am deeply sad over Fox's decline and fall. It will be difficult if not impossible to replace. Perhaps it can right its course, but I am doubtful. So many of its key personnel, people like Chris Wallace, Sandra Smith, Martha MacCallum, and Arnon Mishkin (of the "Decision Desk"), have discredited themselves in many formerly loyal viewers' eyes that a housecleaning would be bloody, embarrassing, and expensive.
As I post this, trading has just opened...