The Five Cements Its Place As Record-Breaking Ratings Winner in Post-Tucker Fox News Era
When Tucker Carlson was booted from Fox News last year, he took his massive prime time ratings with him. But an overlooked story is that in the final years of his reign he often traded ratings wins with a show that aired in the afternoons, a show that has now grown into a consistent behemoth of a ratings winner: The Five.
The Five features Fox News hosts Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters, Dana Perino, and Jeanine Pirro and rotating co-hosts Jessica Tarlov and Harold Ford Jr. The 5 p.m. show is the perfect place to find passionate and sometimes tense and loud debates on everything from politics to sports to culture.
In the first quarter of 2024, The Five averaged more than three million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. For context, Fox’s prime time shows, which top competitors MSNBC and CNN, don’t quite reach those numbers. Jesse Watters Primetime averaged 2.79 million viewers, Hannity averaged 2.4 million, and The Ingraham Angle averaged 2.2 million viewers.
Airing at 5 p.m. is typically not supposed to bring in the kind of ratings that beat a network’s prime time lineup, but The Five has defied the odds in that respect. The show became the first non-prime time program to break into the cable news top 10 for 10 consecutive quarters.
The Five’s run has been so successful that Fox has essentially spun it off multiple times — to great success. Gutfeld was given his own show at 10 p.m., Gutfeld!, and Watters moved into Carlson’s old 8 p.m. timeslot.
In the last few weeks before Carlson and Fox News parted ways in early 2023, the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight was averaging around 3.3 million viewers. During the ratings highs of the Trump presidency and its chaotic aftermath, Carlson’s ratings could top four or five million. In 2020, Carlson broke records by averaging 4.3 million viewers and around 800,000 in the key 25-54 demo.
The Five has found some of that success three hours earlier in Fox’s lineup. It averaged 3.05 million viewers in quarter one of this year and brought in approximately 280,000 viewers in the key age demo. That key demo number is in line with what Fox’s prime time shows currently bring in.
In the first quarter, CNN and MSNBC averaged 100,000 and 84,000 respectively in the 25-54 demo during their daytime hours, though both networks did see small ratings gains year over year.
For the month of April, The Five continued averaging over three million viewers and brought in 262,000 in the 25-54 demo. It also had the highest most watched telecast of the month for its April 15 show.
The Five’s ratings wins could boil down to the sheer amount of big personalities all gathered at one table five days a week. Gutfeld, who cut his comedic teeth on Red Eye, a 3 a.m. panel show that is arguably more edgy than anything Fox has aired since, has established himself as the most prominent late night host for conservatives in America. His ratings often best the late night competition on the broadcast networks.
Watters has a similar past at Fox, putting together culture segments for Bill O’Reilly back in the day that all had a humorous spin, sometimes ones that landed him in hot water with critics.
Pirro and Perino can be equally light on the show. The former is a fiery conservative personality with her own Fox show where Republicans lawmakers rotate in and out constantly as guests. The latter is an anchor on the network, overseeing key daytime hours.
Big conservative personalities are one thing, but one key to the success of the The Five has to do with the inclusion of liberal voices. Tarlov has been an especially strong feature to the show, unafraid to directly push back on her conservative co-hosts when it comes to Donald Trump’s legal woes and much more.
Tarlov has sparred with Gutfeld and others in tense exchanges and no matter which side of the debate you fall on, it’s just good cable TV. Tarlov has taken full advantage of the show’s confrontational and humorous sides as she navigates being constantly outnumbered. Last month, she mocked Watters, telling him he “nearly cried” over Republican losses in the midterms.
Being the sole liberal at the table is not always an easy ride. Geraldo Rivera famously clashed with Gutfeld, leading to Rivera ultimately announcing his retirement from Fox. The men have taken multiple shots at each other since Rivera left Fox, suggesting those on-air debates can sometimes get as personal as it seems while watching at home. Rivera claimed in a Mediaite interview that he was suspended from The Five at times over clashes with Gutfeld.
Those clashes are partly why people are tuning into The Five, and Tarlov is no slack, going head-to-head with her co-hosts, including Gutfeld.
The media industry in general is going through some massive struggles right now as outlets try to integrate streaming and deal with an unsteady advertising market, but The Five has emerged as proof that there is still a large audience out there who wants some good old fashioned cable news commentary and confrontation, and Fox News is giving it to them.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
