OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Popular Fox News anchor Sean Hannity revealed that he is packing up his talents and moving to Florida. He is leaving his home in Long Island and will broadcast from the Sunshine State.
After relocating his family to Florida, Sean Hannity informed his iHeartRadio talk show audience that he was now broadcasting live from his new studio.
At the outset of his show on Tuesday, Hannity announced the “breaking news,” stating: “If anybody is listening to this program for any length of time, been threatening now to do this for quite a while. But we are now beginning our first broadcast of my new home, and that is in the free state of Florida. I am out. I am done. I’m finished.”
“New York, New York. Goodbye. Florida. Florida. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. But it’s great to be here. And I will tell you, one of the things that I was told either before, Linda, but feeling good tonight, by the way, and I’m that because she entertains everybody. I bet she was entertaining every day working or not working. And no, she worked a number of days. But and she’s such a good entertainer and such a great host is that anyone would want her back as soon as we can. I was told even before this that it just it just the time was right. I was able to put the final exclamation points on what needed to be done. And here I am,” Hannity said.
“And finally, for the first time that I can think of in my adult life, I actually have representatives in the state that I’m living in that share my values. I have a governor by the name of Ron DeSantis and Senators Marco Rubio and Senator Rick Scott,” he added.
Hannity concluded: “So I’m feeling a lot better about it, and I’m not going to go through the whys. The how comes because it’s obvious this migration out of the blue states with high taxes, burdensome regulation, high crime, and horrible school districts is real. And if anything, I’m probably late and behind the curve and many others have made the move beforehand.”
“Hannity has regularly hosted his Fox News show from his Long Island compound, which includes a full television studio, except for when he hosts live studio audiences at the Fox News broadcast headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. One can only assume that Hannity and Fox News have the means to fly the top-rated host to and from his Florida residence to continue live shows,” Mediaite reported.
The outlet added: “Hannity is, of course, not the only cable news star to decamp to Florida. Former Fox News star Tucker Carlson regularly hosted his show remotely, either from a compound in rural Maine or an estate on the Western coast of Florida. And anyone who watches MSNBC’s Morning Joe knows that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski regularly host their show from studios at their home in Jupiter, Florida.”
Fox News ended 2023 on a good note.
For the eighth year in a row, Fox News remained the most popular cable news network as the year ended. The network’s six news programs dominated the cable news industry, with The Five making history as the first non-prime-time program to top the ratings in the crucial 25–54 age group and overall viewers.
It was Fox’s 22nd consecutive year at the top of cable news in terms of total viewers and the demo in terms of total day and prime-time viewers in 2023, Mediaite noted.
Earlier this year, Fox was in the news for settling a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for an astounding $787 million. Shortly after, the network fired Tucker Carlson, the top-rated cable news host.
Carlson moved his act to Elon Musk’s X, where he openly supports far-right conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. Jesse Watters replaced Carlson at 8 o’clock in July when Fox relaunched its prime-time lineup.
The network’s total viewers fell 18% from 1.49 million to 1.2 million, marking its lowest total viewership since 2015, despite Fox’s continued dominance in the industry. Total day viewers for MSNBC increased to 784,000 from 733,000 in the previous year.
Similarly, CNN saw a decline of 15% from 568,000 average viewers in 2022 to 482,000 total day viewers in 2019.
The Five on Fox topped the ratings with 2.9 million viewers overall and 303,000 in the demo. Jesse Watters came in second with 2.5 million total viewers and 255,000 demo viewers. While Sean Hannity’s total viewership was 2.4 million, his 217,000 demo viewers placed him in second place.
Among cable news programs, only Bret Baier averaged over 2 million viewers for the year; Ingraham remains the most-watched woman on the network, while Bret Baier came in at number four overall. In terms of overall viewers, Greg Gutfeld came in at number six.
