Cable’s most-watched network is pulling its smallest audience in years, and the midterms are days away.
Preliminary Nielsen figures for October 2026, obtained by Status ahead of their official release, show Fox News on track for its lowest-rated month in total day viewers since December 2023, averaging 1.1 million. Nielsen data reported Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, confirmed the slide.
Among adults 25-54, the age group advertisers prize, the network averaged 98,000 viewers — its weakest month in a quarter-century. Measured against October 2025, that is a 27 percent drop in total viewers and a 32 percent dive in the demo. Fox placed third among all cable networks in that age bracket, behind ESPN and TBS, and fifth among adults 18-49.
Last October was a different month. The audience then was buoyed by enormous stories, including the Gaza ceasefire and the hostage release.
Still Beating ESPN While Prime Time Sinks
Fox News still leads overall cable ratings, finishing ahead of ESPN even with football back on the schedule. It is the only cable network averaging more than one million total day viewers for the month, ahead of ESPN’s 824,000. Asked about the numbers, Fox News pointed to that lead and to its reach on YouTube, where its videos have drawn 3.8 billion views this year.
Prime time tells the same story at a larger scale. The 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. block, overseen by Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, averaged 2 million total viewers, down 28 percent from a year earlier, and 183,000 in the 25-54 demographic, a 36 percent decline.
“Fox & Friends” Slips Below a Million
The morning show that has long been a fixture of Trump’s daily viewing routine spent a second consecutive month under one million total viewers and under 100,000 in the key demographic. October was its worst month in total viewers since July 2015. In the 25-54 demo, it was its lowest since June 2001.
The competition moved the other way. MS NOW expanded its daytime audience by 16 percent to 588,000 total viewers compared with last year, and CNN climbed 3 percent to 402,000 daytime viewers. Both will have year-over-year increases to tout in their October press releases — gains networks would ordinarily be expected to post heading into a consequential midterm election.
Trump Tells Fans to Switch
The slide has arrived while President Donald Trump publicly batters his preferred network. He slammed Fox News on Truth Social for airing interviews with Democratic candidates — Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Kentucky Senate candidate Charles Booker and Iowa gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand among them — and complained that Republican figures were getting “blurred out” by the traditional media.
“FoxNews is spending far too much time putting on the OPPONENTS of Republican Party Candidates, people that love our Country, and have Great Policies and Ideas,” Trump posted, accusing the network of “trying too hard to be Politically Correct.”
He also raged after Fox News briefly cut back live coverage of his campaign rallies, urging supporters to switch instead to Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), the outlet launched by Trump enthusiast Joe Seales in 2015 to stream rallies uninterrupted.
Trump’s approval ratings are hovering near record lows. With polls about to open, Fox News carried his Texas rally live on Tuesday, Oct. 27.
An anonymous Fox host summed up the network’s internal consensus this way: “Trump doesn’t rate anymore.”