Fox News’ Ratings Surprise: ‘The Five’ Keeps Outperforming Primetime
29.03.2022 - 18:09
/ variety.com
Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorEveryone’s talking about this week’s furor at the Oscars — even the hosts at Fox News Channel’s “The Five.”On Monday afternoon, regulars Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino, Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro held forth with guest Piers Morgan — the British journalist and TV host who has demonstrated a proclivity for getting into celebrity feuds — sitting in a chair typically reserved for someone with more liberal political views. In the show’s opening segment, however, politics went out the window.
Today was a day to discuss Will Smith’s slapping of Chris Rock the previous evening.Pirro, a former judge and district attorney, felt Smith’s actions were prosecutable. The Oscar ceremony “is not a bar” where fights take place, she said, noting that if the actor wasn’t reprimanded in some fashion, “I should go over to ‘Saturday Night Live,’” where she is often lampooned, “and go crazy over there.” Meanwhile, Gutfeld took the whole incident in stride.
“Part of me was just grateful something interesting happened” at the event, which has been shedding viewers noticeably over the years. The aforementioned banter may seem a little silly, but it’s no laughing matter for executives at Fox News Channel.The most-watched program at the Fox Corp.
cable outlet for the past two quarters hasn’t been one of the opinion hours hosted by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Instead, the Fox News show with the biggest overall audience is “The Five,” a panel program that producers believe airs views from the right (four of the five co-hosts) and left (a single host, who rotates among three regulars).
The show, which airs at 5 p.m. — not typically a bulwark of top viewing in the TV business — lured an average
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