‘News Doesn’t Have to Be Boring’

As Fox News keeps winning the cable news race, one of its hosts has ensured that the 8 p.m. hour remains a must-watch for the network’s viewers.

The namesake of Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime doesn’t mince words when it comes to why he thinks his show is thriving — or why, according to Nielsen, it now draws 15% more viewers than his predecessor Tucker Carlson averaged in that same time slot before Carlson’s abrupt 2023 exit. “Fox gives me the opportunity to be myself every night,” Watters told me in an interview, after the latest Nielsen data released in recent days confirmed what’s become a familiar trend:

Jesse Watters Primetime led all of cable news in primetime for the third quarter of 2025. At 3.3 million viewers, the show not only won its timeslot but helped give Fox its 95th consecutive quarter as the No. 1 cable news network. To understand how long of a span that is, it means Fox has been #1 since 2002, during the first term of President George W. Bush.

For Fox News and Jesse Watters, ratings are surging

Watters has emerged as a key player in Fox’s post-Carlson era, with his show emblematic of both Fox’s populism as well as its industry-leading ratings dominance. His show, built around a blend of sarcastic humor and hot takes, is a cornerstone of Fox’s primetime lineup that’s also anchored by Hannity and Gutfeld!, both of which likewise outperform their broadcast competitors.

Fox, as Watters insisted to me, is also more “mainstream” than people often give it credit for. “It’s the most watched primetime channel in the country right now. We have tons of Democrats, independents that watch the show — all the shows — both daytime and in the evening … I think we’re right in the middle of the country. And you can tell that just by looking at the ratings.

“I mean, some of the other channels, you know, the ratings are infinitesimal. And I would say that they’re a very small minority of the country in terms of their belief system, some of their values. It doesn’t mean we’re not all Americans, but I think we stand where most Americans stand.”

His and the network’s detractors, of course, claim that’s a misreading of the data. That, in fact, studies from organizations like the Pew Research Center and others point to older Americans being more likely to get their news from cable television rather than younger adults — that ratings supremacy, in other words, simply amounts to winning the biggest slice of a shrinking pie.

However, the Q3 data complicates that argument, at least when it comes to Fox.

For one thing, Fox’s weekday primetime (consisting of around 2.9 million viewers, and just shy of 300,000 in the key advertising demo) outpaced CBS and ABC. Numbers like those make Fox look more like a broadcast-sized network that happens to operate on cable.

Fox’s audience aged 25-54 — the key advertising demographic — also isn’t collapsing like the rest of cable; it’s holding steady and, in some cases, even growing. The network averaged around 299,000 adults in that demo during primetime in Q3, topping ABC and CBS while nearly matching NBC.

Watters himself is one of the Fox News personalities at the center of that momentum.

He’s known for a bombastic on-air style, with segments and quips that over the years have made him both a hero to Fox viewers and a frequent target of media watchdogs. Remarks like his tongue-in-cheek comment earlier this year that “the fact that they don’t want us to take them over makes me want to invade” Canada are especially dissected in today’s media environment, where short clips and video snippets quickly go viral across social platforms.

Watters’ defense? He’s described himself on X as a “political humorist.” His audience, in other words, knows it’s hyperbole not meant to be taken seriously. “You know, news doesn’t have to be boring,” Watters told me. “I am in the news business. 
I’m a communicator and so, you know, sometimes I’m funny, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes people don’t get it, but that’s ok. I am myself … Fox News Channel’s a very powerful news organization, and at 8 o’clock I try to bring the audience the news the way I know how.”