CNN And Fox Are About To Go To War Like Never Before

If you were watching Monday night’s broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight, then you would have seen the namesake host of the linchpin of Fox’s nightly primetime lineup dedicate his nearly half-hour monologue to a surprising topic — excoriating the buildup of National Guard troops in Washington DC. 

It was surprising, in that the need to gather as many as 26,000 federal troops to protect the inauguration of Joe Biden became unquestionably necessary as a result of the unsettling January 6 riots incited by President Trump which saw thousands of his supporters rampage through the Capitol complex. Scores of arrests followed, as did at least five deaths.

Nevertheless, here was one of the biggest stars of the Fox News network — which now finds itself playing catch-up to CNN in terms of viewership, for the first time in 20 years — making it clear that Fox’s opinion personalities intend to, at least for the time being, keep the MAGA train rolling proudly on.

“No matter what they are telling you,” Carlson said during his Monday night show, “those 26,000 federal troops are not there for your safety … The Democratic Party is using those troops to send the rest of us a message about power: We're in charge now. We run this nation, from Honolulu to our colony in the Caribbean and everything in between, very much including where you and your family live. Do not question us. Men with guns enforce our decrees. We control the Pentagon."

It was, to say the least, a monumentally disingenuous rhetorical sleight-of-hand, especially given that it was President Trump himself who wanted a bombastic military-style farewell parade to mark his exit from the White House (which the Pentagon turned down). Meanwhile, threats stemming from aggrieved Trump supporters in the wake of the January 6 riots have continued to trickle in, and turned the Biden inauguration into a security event the likes of which the Secret Service and other national security professionals haven’t seen in recent memory.

That’s where we are now, as Biden prepares to solidify Democratic control of all three federal branches of government — and Fox and CNN tee up some major changes both on- and off-air to meet this moment. Four years of Trump have left Fox in an atypical ratings slump and trailing CNN, while both networks tweak programming lineups and shuffle talent. And at least at Fox, as proven by the Carlson monologue, it seems clear for now that the ghost of Trump — angry, often fact-free, and hungry to settle scores — will continue to haunt the network that helped facilitate his path to the White House.

Over at CNN, meanwhile, the network is preparing for the dawn of the Biden era in its own way. 

If you’ve seen the “Most Watched Cable News Network” ads that CNN has been running in recent days, you’ve already gotten a taste of what’s going on at Fox’s chief ideological rival. CNN has averaged a little more than 2 million viewers a day throughout this month as of the time of this writing, compared to a little more than 1.4 million at Fox, according to Nielsen NLSN data.

To try and keep that momentum going, CNN announced a big revamp of its Washington coverage, which will make Jake Tapper the lead anchor for all Washington events and see his daily program expand to two hours. At the same time, additional changes CNN has announced include:

• Moving White House correspondent Jim Acosta, a dogged reporter who became a thorn in the side of President Trump for most of his term, to a new weekend program that he’ll anchor. Taking his place, starting January 20, is Kaitlan Collins as CNN’s new White House correspondent, with Phil Mattingly as senior White House correspondent.
• Abby Phillip, meanwhile, is anchoring CNN’s weekend program Inside Politics, while senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown is shifting over to CNN Newsroom, where she’ll anchor the weekend broadcast in the evenings.

CNN also made sure that everyone knew, during the second impeachment vote of President Trump last week, that the network “was the most-watched among the broadcast networks (when they were on-air with news coverage) and cable news (MSNBC and Fox FOXA ).” Put simply, CNN is on a tear right now, while Fox’s ratings are, with apologies to the president who used to watch it ad nauseum, sagging bigly.

But that’s not to say Fox hasn’t likewise rearranged the pieces on its own chess board in preparation of the onset of the new administration. Among the changes that have been announced:

• Fox has named Peter Doocy to the post of White House correspondent.
• Several Fox staffers on the digital side of the operation were pink-slipped in recent days, including Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt. He sat on the network’s decision desk, which as is now well-known issued that early call on election night predicting that President Trump would lose Arizona. The call stood, notwithstanding Trump’s angry tirade by phone to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, beseeching him to intervene.
• Another departure to mention: Bill Sammon, Fox News’ senior vice president and managing editor in Washington DC, is retiring at the end of this month.
• Meanwhile, the network is also reportedly looking to give commentator Greg Gutfield his own late-night talk show.
• Fox also decided to yank Martha MacCallum from her 7 pm slot. In her place, the network is trying out a range of opinion hosts and commentators to helm what will be known during that hour as Fox News Primetime.

The current hopefuls include anchor Maria Bartiromo, who’s been unapologetically devout in her on-air enthusiasm for President Trump since 2016. Indeed, she’s given conspiracy theory-minded Trump attorneys like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell time on Fox to air their outlandish election fraud rants. “What Happened to Maria Bartiromo?” wondered a recent Washington Post headline.

“It is ludicrous and disheartening that we are rewarding (Bartiromo) with a prime-time spot, knowing full well she is among the most responsible for propagating the big election lie,” one Fox news division staffer anonymously told the Post.

First up in the rotation for this new opinion show, however, is Brian Kilmeade, co-host of Fox & Friends. On Monday, before Carlson ranted about the troop buildup in DC, Kilmeade delivered a monologue complaining about “the big tech crackdown on free speech.”

Fox has also shaken up the daytime side of its schedule, which includes deciding that Harris Faulkner will now anchor at 11 am in addition to her noon show Outnumbered. MacCallum has been bumped up from 7 pm to 3 ppm, to take the slot filled by Shepard Smith before he decamped to CNBC, while Bill Hemmler was moved from 3 pm to 9 am to co-anchor with Dana Perino.

It should go without saying that it remains to be seen what effect all these changes will have on the respective networks, but some huge questions certainly linger for Fox. The coronavirus pandemic is still raging, for example, and a new presidential administration means there will be an abundance of hard news that viewers are looking for. Will Fox dig its ratings hole deeper by doubling-down on opinion programming, leaving viewers who are hungry for news to look elsewhere? Or will Fox reverse its slump by making an even more naked appeal to right-wing audiences?

Moreover, Trump may be gone, but does that mean we can expect a moderation to any degree of Trumpism at Fox News? Or will Trumpiness actually increase at Fox, especially since Trump’s base won’t have him to look to anymore? They’ve got to go somewhere, in other words. And how much longer will Fox’s top brass allow its top talent to entertain wild conspiracy theories on-air?

"I don't know how some people sleep at night," Smith said in a new interview with CNN, about the journalists who still remain at his former employer, Fox. "I know that there are a lot of people who have propagated the lies and who have pushed them forward over and over again who are smart enough and educated enough to know better."

One thing is clear: CNN’s ascent as Fox News plummets should not be taken to imply a cause-effect relationship. Fox knows how to dominate the cable air waves, something it’s done with seeming ease for years. Likewise, the continuation of CNN’s success is in no way guaranteed.

CNN risks going too soft on an idealistic new Democratic administration, now that Trump’s time is over. Likewise, Fox News will foment more anger among Trump supporters if it’s not careful — people for whom the new presidential talk of unity and healing ring hollow, who are sick of the COVID-era restrictions and who want to get back to their lives. All of which is to say, there’s as good a chance as not that 2021 is different for cable news audiences, while also giving us much more of the same.