Sometimes our fine readers drop notes in our tipbox thinking we are a particular network, not a website that covers them. Last week we got one of those missives. We are removing the anchor names to protect the innocent.
Why did you replace xxx with xxx. Xxx has a more positive and enjoyable greeting in the morning. Why Xxx? I have tried watching her and cannot stand her presentation. You have lost me, but I have found OAN. You have destroyed your ratings and going down the toilet.
What we found interesting about this message is not the complaint about one anchor or praise of another, it’s that this viewer says they “have found OAN.” If you’re not familiar OAN is One America News, it’s a sort of Fox News clone. OAN has been around since 2004, but the 24/7 cable news network only launched in 2013.
As we were talking to Fox News fans at the RNC last week about the inner turmoil at the network, and whether they were still inclined to watch, three people mentioned that OAN had become an alternative for them.
OAN has a very, very long way to go to catch up to Fox News, or CNN, MSNBC, and HLN for that matter. It’s in about 15 million households compared to Fox News’s 90 million. But the fact that viewers are starting to find the channel, is a sign they’re doing something right.