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Bret Baier says he’s doing things now at Fox News Channel that he simply couldn’t do when he joined the outlet in 1998.
In recent days, Baier, who has placed more emphasis in recent months on securing exchanges with
world leaders and newsmakers, snagged an on-camera interview with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. On Wednesday evening, he is expected to talk to billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos. In the weeks leading up to the nation’s 2026 midterm elections, Baier will be traveling around the country, hoping to talk to Senate candidates from both parties.
In the past, “we may not have attempted a lot of that” type of enterprise reporting, says Baer, during a recent interview of his own. “We are attempting a lot more of that now.”
Fox News Channel gets a lot of attention for its host-driven primetime programs, but Baier makes the case that the news division ought to get its due. “There is an investment in news that I think has always been there, but it definitely has increased,” he says, under Fox News Media’s senior executives, Suzanne Scott, the CEO and Jay Wallace, the president and executive editor. Fox News has given news personnel like Peter Doocy and Jacqui Heinrich their own solo hours on weekends, and caps off its weekday schedule with a news hour led by Trace Gallagher. Trey Yingst, a foreign correspondent, gets as much notice on social media as he does on Fox News’ linear platforms. Fox News is even drawing blue-state newsmakers like Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who did an in-studio interview with anchor Martha MacCallum.
On some nights, the network may even pre-empt the comedic stylings of Greg Gutfeld at 10 p.m. in favor of coverage of breaking news developments on a particularly serious story.
In a different era, says Wallace, news for most TV operations was something “churned out” in daytime hours, and the process stopped at 7 p.m. But “social media has changed a lot of that, he notes, adding that viewers are keenly aware of “so much information coming out at different times. We have evolved.”
Executives at Fox News don’t do many press interviews, and the company’s willingness to make Wallace available for a wide-ranging discussion about its news operations, just as Fox News touts its 30th anniversary, reflects the importance such activity will have in coming weeks. Election coverage typically draws wider viewership to all the nation’s TV-news outlets — and the ad dollars that try to follow such activity.
Fox News offers stability this election season, while many of its rivals are adjusting to corporate maneuvers. MS NOW, part of Versant, will tackle its first midterm election this year without the help of newsgathering from NBC News. Both CBS News and CNN are likely to be scrutinized this year for how they perform under Skydance, the Ellison family vehicle forged from the combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Ellisons have displayed close ties to the Trump administration and the installation of Bari Weiss, a digital entrepreneur and opinion journalist as top editor at CBS News, has generated significant controversy.
“We are not out there courting other people’s viewers,” says Wallace. Instead, he says, Fox News hopes to draw audiences with compelling newsmaker interviews and top-notch voting analysis, while the network’s overall reach makes it a venue that newsmakers should not avoid.
“It’s hard to go after another network’s audience,” he says. Instead, Fox News has created its own. “We really expanded the center, of the amount of people who watch us,” he adds, He will keep an eye on the competition. When companies combine, he says, “these people are going to lose jobs, no matter what. At the end of the day, these are human beings who are doing to have to deal with the economics of it.” Skydance said Tuesday it planned to find $6 billion in corporate cuts, “primarily from technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate rationalization,” and the company’s top executives said in a memo that some layoffs could result.
Fox News is grappling with many of the same secular trends as its competitors. Consumers are moving away from cable subscriptions and gravitating to digital venues where a good chunk of them enjoy getting news and opinion from independent “creators” and single-subject experts. Indeed, Pew-Knight Initiative research found that adults under 30 — the viewers with whom traditional news outlets need to forge links — follow the news less closely than any other age group. They are also much more likely to get news on social media than older adults.
Fox News remains the most-watched news outlet on cable and on many nights outdraws a bigger live audience than one or more of the broadcast networks. But its subscriber base is, like those of MS NOW and CNN, eroding. In the third quarter, Fox News saw its total day viewership slip 16%, and its viewership among people between 25 and 54 — the demographic coveted most by advertisers in news — fall 24%. Both CNN and MS NOW eked out small gains in overall audience for the period. At the same time, Fox News is this year winning its biggest percentage of the cable news audience.
Fox News, says Wallace, has developed a following by monitoring its viewing behavior and interests, and “staying ahead” of consumption trends. He points to a growing cadre of in-the-field experts like Yingst, who often delivers dispatch from war-torn regions around the world, and Bill Melugin, a Washington correspondent. “Our reporters are so good, and we are also good at swarming stories so quickly, sometimes it doesn’t even behoove usto send a Bill Hemmer”out from New York, he says, nodding to a typical TV-news maneuver when a story has national import.
Like other journalism organizations, however, Fox News is navigating a world in which a new crop of reporters has grown accustomed to talking to followers via social media in less formal ways. Fox News hires frequently from the local-news ranks, says Wallace, and “local news really pushes them to be out there marketing in social-media spaces, I think they come in here with a different perspective.”
There’s a place for buttoned-up newscasting, the executive says, and a place where interactions can be more buttoned-down.
“I think that at the end of the day, when it comes to television and TV news, the suit and tie still tells something,” says Wallace. Still, he recognizes that other venues call for different looks and settings. A presentation of Fox News Channel “may be a bit more formal,” but anchors of any generation can go on social media and “there is a big difference there.”’
Fox News wants to “be organic in the right space,” he says, and will tailor its efforts to whatever venue its viewers and followers use.
Will the Fox News election team have to walk gingerly in November? Many polls suggest key Senate and House seats could flip. In the past, Fox News has taken pains to illustrate to its viewers how the election could tilt blue. There was the famous Megyn Kelly-walks-down-a-long-hall incident in 2012, when she quizzed officials at the news outlet’s Decision Desk on camera how President Obama was poised to win a new term. When Fox called Arizona for Joe Biden in 2020 early on Election Night, it had to grapple with backlash from President Trump and his adherents.
Election Night “is our Super Bowl,” says Baier, and a key to a successful telecast is explaining the votes. “It’s about the numbers, and what the numbers are,” he says.
Viewers will also want to get a sense of any new storylines that might emerge from the wins, says Wallace. If Democrats do win the night, they may still have to contend with far-left candidates who may quarrel with policy and procedure.
Baier says the elections are important for other reasons., They give Fox News a new chance to hear from its audience – which can only help. Viewers “talk about issues and stuff that people care about,” he says. “I love this time because it enables us to hear people’s voices more than on the average day.”
