Fox News is launching a stand-alone subscription service meant to “appeal to the Fox superfan,” the company’s SVP of development and production, John Finley, told the New York Times.
Called Fox Nation, the service marks Fox News’s first option for cord-cutting viewers. It will include some new shows and plenty of right wing commentary, as per its current cable TV counterpart. Viewers can also expect appearances by key cable personalities like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. However, most of the anchors will be faces Fox News fans haven’t seen before.
Finley further described Fox Nation’s target audience, the “superfan,” as “the folks who watch Fox News every night for hours at a time, the dedicated audience that really wants more of what we have to offer.” One of those fans is the President, who often tweets and otherwise reiterates Fox News content, exemplifying the kind of viewer loyalty Finley’s touting.
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In December, ratings showed Fox News to be the most watched cable TV network in 2017—it was also most-watched the year before. Nielsen put the network’s 2017 primetime viewer numbers at over 2.4 million as of December 24. This happened in spite of an onslaught of negative press surrounding Bill O’Reilly’s departure with the network due to a number of sexual harassment lawsuits and popular anchor Megyn Kelly leaving her primetime slot at the start of the year.
Fox Nation is set to launch towards the end of 2018. Specific hosts have yet to be named, and the type of content viewers can expect on the service so far has been described as alternatively live, commentary-focused, and long-form. While Fox News isn’t the last cable network to launch its own stand-alone subcription service, it’s certainly not the first. CBS, for one, launched its stand-alone option in 2014.
Other networks have debuted niche stand-alone services, like NBC’s Premier League Pass, which focuses on sports content and originally sold for $50 but now goes for $30 (so people must have loved it). Then there’s ESPN Plus, also set to debut later this year, and two new offerings from CBS, one focused on sports and another for Entertainment Tonight.
