All throughout 2016, America has been forced to recognize the fact that the people in a certain chunk of the country (the middle chunk, specifically) have very strong conservative beliefs. For many years, Fox News has achieved great success by specifically targeting this market, meaning the Fox News brand is one that these people could rally around and continue turning to when faced with the terrifying possibility of, say, a woman in the White House.
That didn’t end up happening, but all of the drama surrounding this year’s highly contentious presidential election did help make Fox News the most-watched basic cable network of the year for the first time since it launched in 1996. That comes from Deadline, which notes that Fox News was also the fifth most-watched network across the entire TV multiverse, with only NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox beating it. Also, Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, The Kelly File, and Hannity were three of the most-watched shows of 2016.
This comes after what should’ve been a tough year for the network, with CEO Roger Ailes resigning/getting fired from Fox News for being an (alleged) sexual harassment monster back in July and contributor Jesse Watters facing a significant backlash for an overtly racist segment about Chinatown on The O’Reilly Factor in October. That stuff evidently wasn’t as important as people seemed to think it was, though, as the network simply cruised past everyone’s moral indignation and didn’t look back.
In the end, this all basically means that if Trump’s White House decides to streamline press briefings by cutting off every outlet but Fox News, a whole lot of people won’t even notice.