Versant CEO Mark Lazarus said MS NOW is not experiencing the viewer fatigue that Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch recently described. Lazarus made the comments during Versant’s third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, in response to a question about audience trends ahead of the midterm elections.
“We’re not seeing currently not seeing any fatigue with our audiences,” Lazarus said. He described MS NOW and CNBC audiences as active and growing, and credited the performance to the quality of the networks’ programming, their on-air voices and viewers’ trust in their brands and talent. He added that MS NOW had recorded growth for many months in a row.
The question followed Murdoch’s comments on Fox’s quarterly earnings call a day earlier. Murdoch said Fox was seeing some viewer fatigue after an intense news cycle the previous year, including the inauguration, the Charlie Kirk tragedy, DOGE and flooding. He said viewers were watching somewhat less television overall rather than switching to other news channels, and compared the situation with the 2006 midterms.
Murdoch also noted that Fox News Channel continues to draw more viewers than CNN and MS NOW combined. He said the gap between Fox and the next-ranked cable news networks meant he did not consider them peers, and added that Fox’s ratings can at times rival those of major broadcast news brands.
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter.