Why Is FoxNews.com Failing to Connect?

Mediaweek's Mike Shields writes about FoxNews.com, specifically how its traffic lags behind its cable news rivals, even as the linear channel crushes them in the ratings. But even on its own, CNN.com consistently beats Foxnews.com by 7 million or 8 million unique users. Per comScore, the gap is even larger: 43.4 million uniques for CNN.com in June vs. 11.4 million for Foxnews.com. Plus, CNN.com regularly bests Foxnews.com in measures like page views, time spent and video streams-and it has opened an early lead in mobile (14 million uniques vs. 9 million in May for Fox, per Nielsen). Shields notes that it isn't all bad news for the site: Still, Fox's newfound dedication to the Web has paid off in user loyalty. According to a recent American Customer Satisfaction Index report, Foxnews.com registered the highest scores in the news category, 82 vs. just 73 for CNN.com. "A Foxnews.com visitor is a Fox News brand person," said Eric Feinberg, industry director at ForeSee Results, which produces the research in conjunction with the ACSI. "The repeat visitor side of the equation for Fox News is huge"-indicating that the site is poised to grow its base sharply. Shields addressed some of the questions, but it is still worth asking, why is the network's websites failing (so far) to attract the massive readership that its competition has? The News/Opinion Quandary Fox News Channel's success is a direct result of its wildly popular opinion programs. The daytime news shows usually win their time periods, but they owe a debt of gratitude to the network's opinion programs, which bring in most of the viewers, and allow the marketing team push them to the other shows. By and large FoxNews.com sticks to news, with the exception being subsites like TheFoxNation.com. This is a problem, because the Fox News brand was built on opinion first, with news second. By comparison CNN's brand is news all the time, while MSNBC.com built up its audience largely by being there early in the game. The Audience Matters While there is likely overlap between who watches a TV network on TV and who regularly visits network websites, the audiences are vastly different. One key point is that far more people visit websites than watch the television networks. The top rated cable news telecasts will attract a couple of million viewers. Meanwhile unique visitors to network websites are counted in the tens of millions. The takeaway? The number of TV viewers you have is irrelevant, even if they are incredibly engaged. Yes, as the article notes, Fox News' audience skews older, and that may play a factor, but the truth is that the television audience is largely irrelevant, as they likely make up only a small percentage of the website visitors anyway. In the End, It Doesn't Matter (Yet) Despite FoxNews.com's traffic woes, the bottom line is that right now, the current economic models ensure that the overwhelming majority of Fox News Channel's revenue is coming from the linear channel, both in advertising and subscription fees. The websites would be over-performing if they accounted for even 5% of total revenue. All this discussion about traffic is fun blog fodder, but it is small fries compared to the larger business picture. Eventually, of course, Fox news needs to crystallize its web strategy, and deliver real traffic growth, but that day isn't today. They have time to figure it out.

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Why Is FoxNews.com Failing to Connect?

Alex Weprin

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Alex Weprin