WEDNESDAY: We're keeping our eyes on more than one prize!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2025

Fox News rules the cosmos: As we near the end of the year, we're keeping our eyes on the prize--more accurately, on a pair of such measures.

Morally and intellectually, the opening of last night's Gutfeld! show was deeply ugly fare. In part for that very reason, Mediaite has now filed this end-of-year report:

EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Scores Record Ratings in 2025—Rivaling Broadcast Primetime

Christmas came a little bit early for Fox News this year, with new data from Nielsen Media Research on Monday showing the cable news juggernaut enjoyed its best ratings ever for a non-election year.

Fox News averaged 2.72 million primetime viewers in 2025—up 14% year-over-year—spearheaded by Jesse Watters Primetime and Greg Gutfeld’s eponymous show, as well as network staple Sean Hannity’s long-running program. That primetime average was 80% higher than both CNN (580,000 viewers) and MS NOW (923,000) combined.

Jesse Watters had the most-watched show on cable in primetime this year, averaging 3.6 million viewers...

You can certainly do the math! In prime time, The Channel almost doubled the viewership of MS and CNN combined!

"Wait a minute," you may be saying. If Watters Primetime and Gutfeld! are tops, what happened to The Five?

Technically, The Five doesn't air in traditional "prime time." As the report by Sean James continues, the story only gets worse:

(continuing from above)
Jesse Watters had the most-watched show on cable in primetime this year, averaging 3.6 million viewers.

The Five had its best year ever, averaging 4.1 million viewers...Gutfeld! had its best year as well, averaging 3.1 million viewers at 10:00 p.m.

Beyond beating up its cable competition, Fox News also topped NBC when it came to primetime between Monday and Friday, averaging 3.2 million viewers, compared to 3.1 million viewers for The Peacock Network.

There you have it! There are the numbers for the three horsemen of this propaganda-based imitation of broadcast news, but also for the assault on the possibility of an American nation.

On the brighter side, those of us in Blue America will never be asked to think about any of this. Our imitation journalists and ersatz news orgs will know to avoid reporting statistics like these in places where we might see them!

Those are straight-ahead, objective statistics from the Neilsen people. What comes next is basically subjective—a matter of judgment.

At Mediaite, the staffers have selected the 75 "most influential" people in the news media for the past year. For reasons they explain as they go, this is the way their expanded Rushmore looks, top ten performers only:

Mediaite’s Most Influential in News Media 2025

[...]

1. The Five
2. Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski
3. Megyn Kelly
4. Suzanne Scott
5. David Muir
6. Kaitlan Collins
7. Matt Drudge
8. Sean Hannity
9. Bret Baier
10. Jake Tapper

We hadn't heard Drudge's name in years! That doesn't necessarily mean that his ranking is wrong.

As you can see, Mediaite has Joe & Mika right in the second spot. They don't base that on the numbers alone. Their reasoning goes like this:

Even with Donald Trump back in the White House, America’s political power players in Washington, DC, New York City and yes, even Palm Beach and beyond, start their mornings with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Whether it’s members of Congress catching the show at the gym, lobbyists watching it while grabbing coffee, or Hill staffers boning up on the news they know their bosses will be asking about, Morning Joe’s influence in political circles remains enormous and likely unparalleled.

Joe and Mika set the daily agenda for a political class scrambling to keep up with the breakneck speed of the Trump administration and a media ecosystem drowning in content and takes...

And so on from there. It isn't always how many people are watching—it's who those people are.

 (For the record, Hardball played that insider role back in the much more limited "cable news" day when Chris Matthews was helping to script the crackpot, and ultimately successful, War Against Candidate Gore.)

Back to that top ten list:

Suzanne Scott is the CEO of the Fox News Channel. For reasons which go unexplored and undiscussed, she cracks the lid on the garbage can and sends Gutfeld out there every night. Ultimately, the fault doesn't lie in the "cable news" stars. It lies in the souls of the "Unrecognizables" who put them on the air.

Blue Americans might be wondering where other Blue superstars rank. As we venture down the list, Rebecca Kutler appears at #23. Podcast historian Rachel Maddow is listed at #34.

Kutler is the new network president of the new MS NOW. We'd like to know how she's calling the shots, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and the same time-honored omerta rule is honored within these guilds.