We’ve been writing about how Fox truly ticked off viewers with its election coverage on many fronts. That included calling Arizona early for Joe Biden as well as calling the House races for the Democrats early (and wrong) and saying the Democrats would pick up five seats before the polls had closed on the west coast. On top of that, Neil Cavuto cut off Kayleigh McEnany for daring to ask questions about election fraud and Sandra Smith got caught on a hot mic rolling her eyes and making faces when a guest also spoke about Biden not being officially determined to be the winner yet.

That’s caused many viewers to flee Fox and look around for another alternative.

That’s caused Fox’s ratings to take a hit. Fox has recognized they have a problem and their PR people have been working overtime, it seems, in their efforts to help smooth things over with viewers. But it hasn’t seemed to do much good and if they were involved in the statement that Sandra Smith made to try to appease the viewers, they didn’t do a very good job with it.

So a lot of people casting around for an alternative have fled over to Newsmax and their ratings have gone up.

Pal @ChrisRuddyNMX's @newsmax beat CNBC, Fox Business combined in Nielsen ratings pic.twitter.com/wGvr1k6lG9

— Paul Bedard (@SecretsBedard) November 12, 2020

Another record night for @Newsmax: For the first time, one of its shows topped the 1 million viewer mark, according to Nielsen TV ratings. "Greg Kelly Reports" averaged 1.06 million viewers at 7pm last night. Fox News averaged 2.06 million at the same hour.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 13, 2020

That’s of course already causing Brian Stelter to flip out who thought all he had to deal with trying to put down was Fox News. Now with burgeoning conservative outlets all around him, he’s definitely losing his mind trying to figure out how to address all the heresy against the liberal orthodoxy.

While I wrote about AT&T reportedly looking to sell off CNN and speculated about what karma it might be if President Donald Trump were to buy it if he did not prevail in his election challenge, turns out that his allies are in fact casting around for a news buy. Turns out they may have their eyes on Newsmax as a possibility.

SCOOP: Trump allies are raising at least $200 million to fund a new conservative TV network. They've expressed interest in buying Newsmax, which has seen a ratings surge since the election:https://t.co/gy6esInAQW
w/ Juliet Chung, @keachhagey and @rebeccaballhaus

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) November 15, 2020

That would give them something which already has a conservative bent and a growing audience, a good place to build from and if they did, they’d likely pull in a lot more viewers.

Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, downplayed the idea of a deal, although he didn’t deny that investors were interested.

He said the Newsmax’s goal was to overtake Fox in the next year. It certainly looks like they might be well on their way. So whether the Trump allies buy them or not, it looks like they are going to continue to take on Fox and be a viable alternative.

HT: Twitchy