Fox News succeeded because market demand for partisan news already existed
Evidence
The arrival of Fox was, in its way, the ultimate expression of the partisan division in how people seek out sources of news in a new electronic marketplace. What Limbaugh tried to do with radio … Ailes made a reality with a network. Had Ailes not created Fox, someone would have, because the market, as talk radio proved, was already there. As the conservative author and Fox commentator Charles Kruthammer likes to quip, Ailes “discovered a niche audience: half the American people.” — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 139
Categorization
- SEED: The Kruthammer quip that Ailes ‘discovered a niche audience: half the American people’ is an essay-ready line about how partisanship sells.
- XREF: connects to: Fox’s strategy targeted audiences alienated from the broadcast mainstream — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 623; Social media let confirmation bias drive news consumption, undercutting paid mainstream outlets — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 190; Believing all media are biased pushes partisans toward their own echo chambers. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 179 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Fox’s strategy targeted audiences alienated from the broadcast mainstream
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 623 - Social media let confirmation bias drive news consumption, undercutting paid mainstream outlets
#corroborates(0.80) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 190 - Believing all media are biased pushes partisans toward their own echo chambers.
#corroborates(0.75) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 179 - Deliberate misinformation weaponized for profit or power can outcompete true news
#qualifies(0.72) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 218 - Fox News functions as the leading platform broadcasting state anti-Muslim rhetoric
#expands(0.72) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 341 - Fox News and QAnon exemplify symbolic decline through paranoid rejection of common facts
#expands(0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 99 - Fox News’ core appeal was a throwback militant masculinity, not theology
#responds-to(0.70) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 341