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Fox's (FOXA) Fox News Ranks Number One in News Brands Again

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Fox Corporation (FOXA - Free Report) recently announced that Fox News ranked as the top-performing news brand for the month of October in both multiplatform minutes and multiplatform views.

According to latest report from Comscore, FOX News Digital reached over 2.5 billion total multiplatform minutes, 1.5 billion total multiplatform views and 80 million multiplatform unique visitors, along with 6.1 million unique visitors on Fox News Mobile App.

FOX News also engaged in 8.9 million interactions on Facebook, 18.4 million on Instagram, which was 12% higher than last month, and 3.6 million on Twitter.

This marks 20 straight months as the number one news brand with multiplatform minutes and the 98th consecutive month as the most-engaged news organization on social media.

FOX News also finished the first quarter of fiscal 2023 as the number one channel on cable and the third most viewed network in Weekday Prime in all of television.

Fox News Media Boosts its Content Library

Fox News Channel (“FNC”) has been the driving engine for Fox and its continued growth can be attributed to the efforts it has been taking to onboard dynamic journalists.

The signing of Trace Gallagher to anchor Fox News @ Night and Shannon Bream to helm FOX News Sunday comes as an initiative that draws traction among viewers.

Fox Nation, which is a subsidiary of FNC, has been aiding the company’s top-line growth as well. Its subscriptions and total hours watched grew 45% and 70% year over year, respectively, in first-quarter fiscal 2023, making it FOX Nation’s highest quarter ever for hours watched. The conversion rate of trialists to paid subscribers has been high and retention rates were above industry averages.

It released original content like Duck Family Treasure, Sharon Osbourne: To Hell & Back and Yellowstone: One-Fifty with Kevin Costner to expand its existing library and now awaits the release of Christmas at The Greenbrier, the second feature film from Fox News’ subscription streaming platform, which will premiere on Nov 24.

 

Besides this, Fox Business is also benefiting from a growing user base, as it achieved 142 million multiplatform views, delivered over 261 million multiplatform minutes, up 3% year-over-year, and had 19 million multiplatform unique visitors.

This let Fox Business surpass Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD - Free Report) CNN Business for seven consecutive months. The latter’s launch of the streaming service CNN+ accounted for a huge loss for the company and was shut down a few months back. Management is still hunting for new sources of revenue.

Headwinds

Despite a strong pipeline of content, Fox is suffering from a shift in consumer behavior. Consumers are opting for subscription video-on-demand and advertising-based video-on-demand from multichannel video programming distributors, which Fox is currently using to deliver broadcast and cable networks to consumers.


The cable business faces a serious threat from OTT platforms like Netflix (NFLX - Free Report) due to cord-cutting, which does not bode well for Fox. Netflix is set to launch its ad-tier subscription for customers by the end of this year. This low-cost subscription is expected to gain traction and the streaming giant currently expects to gain one million paid subscribers in the third quarter of 2022.

Fox recently announced the merger with News Corporation (NWSA - Free Report) , which not has boded well with the investors. Readers’ preference for accessing news online, mostly free, has made News Corporation’s print-advertising model increasingly redundant. Besides, a major portion of News Corporation’s total revenues is generated outside the United States. The ongoing foreign exchange fluctuation or the U.S. dollar gaining strength may hurt both the top and bottom lines of the company.

Shares of Fox Corporation, which carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), have declined 20.2% year to date compared to the Zacks Consumer Discretionary Sector, which fell 38.6%.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

 

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