Through the course of this election cycle, Fox News has become as unwatchable as its left-leaning counter-networks and it seems I’m not the only person to make such an observation.

New data from YouGov BrandIndex released Thursday explored Fox News’ brand value.

Long touted as the Republican alternative to network news, Fox News viewers are increasingly disenchanted with the “we report, you decide” moniker.

Ad Age explains:

To compile BrandIndex, each weekday YouGov interviews thousands of people from its worldwide panel of 2.5 million consumers to gauge public perception of brands. For its 2016 ranking of best-perceived brands in the U.S., YouGov surveyed U.S. residents and then sorted responses by respondents’ self-reported political affiliation: Republican, Democrat or Independent. BrandIndex scores range from 100 to -100 and are calculated by subtracting negative feedback from positive (a score of zero is essentially neutral: overall equal positive and negative feedback). Consumer feedback regarding a wide variety of brands — including household brands (e.g., Cheerios) and media brands — was solicited. In 2014, Fox News was the brand 10th best-perceived by Republicans; Craftsman was No. 1, CNN was No. 1,291 and MSBNC was No. 1,293. In 2015, Fox News slipped to No. 15; Band-Aid was No. 1, CNN was No. 1,388 and MSNBC was No. 1,391. In the just-released 2016 YouGov BrandIndex ranking, Fox News is now No. 50 among the brands best-perceived by Republicans; Band-Aid is again No. 1, while CNN has dropped even further to No. 1,470 and MSNBC to No. 1,471.

Brand value might be plummeting, but Fox is still cleaning up the table in cable network ratings, where only ESPN has an edge.

Disenchantment with Fox News mirrors deep factions in the Republican electorate. Many-a-Fox anchor, most notably, Sean Hannity, have been annoyingly unapologetically pro-Trump and have gone so far as to attack other Republicans (like Senator Cruz) for refusing to kiss The Donald’s ring.

Scandals and network personality departures too, may be contributing factors in Fox’s diminishing brand credibility.

Cable ratings are great, but it would be a rather unfortunate occurrence to watch yet another cable news network sell its soul for ratings over journalistic integrity.

Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye



