CBS wants Fox News ratings

Kane at Citizen Free Press headlined a link to a story about Bari Weiss trying to recruit new on-air personalities “CBS wants to be the new Fox News.”

Of course. Who wouldn’t want the ratings of Fox News? The network is one month shy of being the No. 1 network in all of cable despite not having NFL games or NCAA basketball games to show in prime time.

Fox News also tops CBS, ABC and NBC in prime time ratings Monday through Friday year-to-date.

Forbes reported, “It’s shaping up to be quite a year at Fox News. The long-dominant force in cable news has transformed itself into the most-watched network in all of television, with just-released October ratings showing that Fox has held its lead over all of the broadcast networks in prime time. Since the start of the year, Fox News has averaged 3.281 million viewers in weekday prime, just ahead of ABC (3.252 million viewers), CBS (3.104 million viewers) and NBC (3.087 million viewers).”

That leaves out Saturday and Sunday nights when Fox News runs the Not Ready For Prime News players. Forbes ignored the original Fox network’s prime-time viewership.

The story also said, “The most-watched program in all of cable news in October was—again—Fox News Channel’s The Five, which drew an average audience for the month of 3.692 million viewers, crushing the competition and also putting The Five into first place across all of television in the 5 p.m. time slot, a remarkable achievement for a show that airs outside of prime time, when television viewership is typically highest.

Hey Grok, how many people watch The View?

“ABC’s daytime talk show, currently averages approximately 2.37 million total viewers per episode based on the most recent weekly data as of mid-October 2025. This marks a slight 2% increase from the prior week but reflects a modest seasonal dip compared to earlier highs, such as 2.62 million in Q1 2025 and 2.46 million in Q2 2025. Viewership for recent weeks has hovered between 2.3 and 2.4 million, making it one of the top-rated daytime programs.”

It is one of the top-rated daytime shows. I dare say The Five wins the title.

Heck, The View does not even win its time slot, “Harris Faulkner Beats The View As Fox News Sets Ratings Record.”

These numbers matter because no matter how good you may think your show is, you fail if your ratings swirl in the commode.

Television is turning into AM Radio in the 1970s when FM and its dreadful album-oriented-radio had listeners flooding FM like Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande under Joe Biden.

Rush Limbaugh saved AM radio (and later FM radio, which now struggles against Sirius XM). Grok, what was his audience?

“The Rush Limbaugh Show was one of the most popular talk radio programs in U.S. history, syndicated across hundreds of stations from 1988 until Limbaugh’s death in 2021. At its peak in the 1990s, it drew as many as 20 million listeners per week, according to estimates from sources like Talkers Magazine. By the late 1990s, weekly listenership was consistently between 17 and 18 million. More recent figures from 2019 placed the cumulative weekly audience at around 15.5 million, reflecting a stable but slightly declining core following amid broader shifts in media consumption. These numbers represent unique weekly listeners (cume), not daily tune-ins, and were measured via industry metrics like Arbitron (now Nielsen) diaries and electronic tracking.”

Now then, Weiss is a New York City liberal whose only crime was being pro-Israel. That led to her departure from the New York Times. She founded the Free Press on Substack, which was so successful that CBS bought it for $150 million. Not bad for a benched editorial writer (and I say that as one).

Weiss is smart and she realizes that the only way to get CBS News out of the basement in the ratings is to make it palatable to yucky conservatives, which is why people (mainly Oliver Darcy) are saying she is trying to recruit Fox News personalities.

Kane linked The Wrap’s story, “Who’s In, Out and on the Rise at Bari Weiss’ CBS News.”

She wanted Bret Baier from Fox News to take over CBS Evening News. He very publicly declined the opportunity. The Wrap reported, “Enter Baier and Cooper, who anchor two of the flagship shows on Fox News and CNN, respectively. Status reported last week that Weiss was interested in Baier for CBS Evening News, which has fallen further behind its ABC and NBC competitors after an anchor shift in January, while the Independent reported on Saturday that Anderson Cooper was also a potential replacement.”

Cooper, a Vanderbilt heir, already has an affiliation with 60 Minutes and hosts a low-rated prime time show on (checks notes) CNN.

Weiss’ former employer the New York Times reported:

Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, surprised senior staff at the venerable news program “60 Minutes” during a meeting on Tuesday when she asked a provocative question:

Why does the country think you’re biased?

The inquiry was met with stunned awkwardness, according to three people who recounted details from the private session in Midtown Manhattan. The staff of 60 Minutes, the nation’s most-watched news program, view their coverage as firmly nonpartisan and reject criticism from President Trump and his allies who argue that it has a liberal slant.

That is an excellent question. In fact, it is the only question that need be asked because until it is, CBS News is battling ABC and NBC for half the nation’s viewers while 77 million Trump voters look elsewhere for the news. Hint: X, not Fox News, is the main place conservatives now turn to for news. I doubt Elon Musk wants to add a hosting a TV show to his list of jobs.

ABC seems to have the left locked up, what with George Stephanopoulos hosting its cash cow Good Morning America and David Muir doing its 6:30 PM Eastern news show. If CBS fails to turn right, NBC should return to its Huntley/Brinkley Report roots and go conservative.

At any rate, CBS wants Fox News ratings. That would require being more patriotic, less TDS and more fair, balanced and unafraid.