OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Fox News has been crashing every other cable news channel in the ratings for a long time and now a new show is smashing the ratings too.
Jesse Waters took over as the permanent host of the 7 PM EST weekday time slot this week on Fox News Channel and he raked in 3.8 million total viewers on his first day, Monday. That represented the network’s best ratings in that timeslot in more than a year, Yahoo News reported.
In fact, Watters’ debut scored double the viewership for the hour compared to the same day in 2021 and more viewers than every “Fox News Primetime” telecast since the show launched last year with a rotating cast of hosts.
In fact, Watters drew more viewers — including 537,000 in the advertiser-coveted age demographic of 25 to 54 — than Fox News has gotten at the 7 p.m. slot since Jan. 6, 2021.
That was the day of the famous riot at the Capitol in which a Donald Trump supporter was killed by Capitol Police.
Notably, “Jesse Watters Primetime” got more viewers than ABC’s “The Bachelor.” CNN’s 7 p.m. offering, “Erin Burnett OutFront,” drew 700,000 total average viewers, while MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” netted 1.2 million, giving “Jesse Watters Primetime” a 446% advantage and a 216% advantage over each of them respectively.
“The Five,” which Watters also co-hosts, was the top-rated cable program on Monday, pulling in 3.9 million total average viewers, of whom 588,000 were in the demo.
Additionally, FNC’s “The Five” at 5 PM/ET remained the top-rated live program in all of cable, with 3.9 million total viewers and 588,000 in the demo.
He spoke to “The Wrap” on Monday, before his show debuted, and gave an idea of what he envisioned for it.
He said that it would be “an entertaining hour with news and politics and culture, crime, tabloid — everything.” Which means he wants to be certain to take into account viewer feedback.
“We’re also going to be debuting something,” he said. “You know how my mom’s always texting me? We didn’t think that was fair for just my mom to be able to text me, so we’re going to be putting out a number where the whole country can text me. We’re going to have an open line of communication with the country, so I’ll be listening to them.”
He promised that his viewers would play an active role in the show.
“That’s what the show is about: Listening and then rallying for the people. We’ll be having a segment at the end of each show where I will be putting people’s texts on the air and I’ll be responding to them because we want to hear from the people,” the host said.
Waters is remaining as a cohost on “The Five” at 5PM EST, giving him an hour between shows which he said he would use to decide what to do on his own show.
“I’m going to be deciding the entire hour what I want to do. It’s my show,” the host said. “The producers on ‘The Five’ usually kind of set the rundown, with some input from the hosts … and it’s a very entertaining show and that’s why people tune in, but this more of a solo hosting gig and this is my hour so I’m going to be doing topics that I care about, whether it’s getting fatter paychecks, whether it’s controlling the border, whether it’s political correctness.”
“The Five” also added a new, permanent cohost this week in Jeanine Pirro who ended her own weekend show “Justice” to join the ensemble cast. The show will have a rotating list of cohosts in the “liberal” slot on the show that include Geraldo Rivera, former congressman Harold Ford and commentator Jessica Tarlov.
