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Fox (FOXA) News Digital Rides on Multiplatform Views in November

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Fox Corporation (FOXA - Free Report) is riding on FOX News Digital's continued dominance in the news and business sectors, both in terms of online traffic and social media engagement.

In November, FOX News Digital maintained its position as the top news brand in both multiplatform views and minutes. This marked the 33rd consecutive month that FOX News Digital led news brands in multiplatform minutes and the 14th consecutive month as the leader in multiplatform views.

FOX News Digital closed out the month with 2.9 billion total multiplatform minutes, 1.7 billion total multiplatform views and 89 million multiplatform unique visitors. The FOX News Mobile App reached 5.8 million unique visitors in November.

FOX News was the most engaged brand on social media in the competitive set for November, with 18.4 million total social interactions. This marked the 111th consecutive month that FOX News placed on top in social media engagement.

FOX News had 2.7 average views per visit, showing an 11% year-over-year increase. On Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) owned YouTube, FOX News secured 183 million video views. It also drove 4.5 million interactions on Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) owned Facebook, 11.9 million Instagram interactions and 1.9 million X interactions, seeing month-over-month gains across all platforms.

Fox's Business Network Outpaces Competitors Once Again

FOXBusiness.com outperformed competitors such as Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD - Free Report) owned CNN Business, Bloomberg.com and Forbes.com, driving 187 million multiplatform views in November.

The business site delivered 264 million multiplatform minutes (up 4% from October) and 26.3 million multiplatform unique visitors (up 15% from October).

FOX Business' videos on YouTube remained the most viewed among the business news competitive set for the 24th straight month, achieving 56.7 million views in November.

Fox Sees a Slowdown in Growth Due to Cord-Cutting

Cord-cutting due to the shift in consumer viewing patterns toward subscription-based video-on-demand services does not bode well for Fox, which is predominantly a linear television content provider.

Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have declined 2.4% in the year-to-date period against the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s rise of 16.6%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

As of the third quarter of 2023, traditional pay TV subscribers declined to 51% year over year, while 35% of total U.S. Internet households have dropped their traditional pay TV subscription without replacing it, per S&P Global report.

What further escalates the threat for FOXA is the decline in ad revenue growth as advertisers are contending with rising costs amid record inflation, which has led to cutbacks in spending on advertising.

In first-quarter fiscal 2024, advertising (37.4% of revenues) declined 1.6% year over year to $1.2 billion as continued growth at Tubi was more than offset by comparably lower political advertising revenues at the FOX Television Stations and the impact of elevated supply in the direct response marketplace at FOX News Media. This trend is likely to continue in the near term.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal third-quarter advertising revenues is pegged at $1.2 billion, indicating a decline of 1.7% year over year.

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