With the 2024 presidential election season underway, Fox News Channel anchor and host Harris Faulkner is heating up on the ratings front as the host of two daily shows on the cable news network.
The 19-year Fox News veteran’s morning news series, The Faulkner Focus, averaged nearly 1.5 million viewers in January. That’s a larger average audience than such broadcast shows as GMA3: What You Need to Know on ABC and CBS’s The Talk tallied during the first week of February, according to Nielsen data provided by Fox News.
Outnumbered — Faulkner’s other daily series, which she co-hosts with Emily Compagno and Kayleigh McEnany — is marking its 10th year on air in 2024. That show features a panel of regular contributors discussing breaking news and issues of the day.
Faulkner recently spoke to Multichannel News senior content producer R. Thomas Umstead about the upcoming election news cycle and the challenges of competing in a crowded television environment.
How have you been able to build ratings momentum in a noisy, competitive television news environment? It’s about consistency. When people tune in, they know what they’re going to get. My only goal is to tell the truth and to get the audience to remember some of those words by the way that I deliver it. I don’t want to waste their time and I don’t want them to think that I take them for granted.
Favorite TV show of all time? Star Trek — every version.
TV show you’re currently binge-watching? One Day (Netflix)
Most recent best meal? River Palm Terrace, right in my New Jersey hood.
Destination on your bucket list? The southern tip of Spain.
The person in history whom you would’ve loved to have interviewed? My mom.
How has the cable-news business changed since you’ve been at Fox News? The platforms are all still changing, but when you talk about reaching viewers, especially a young audience, staying relevant is everybody’s goal. You’ve got to be there when news happens …that’s what makes you relevant in this business. Whatever they are doing to consume the information, you have to bring the truth to them and tell it in a memorable way.
Has the cable news business improved for women in general, and for women of color in particular? The one place I want to see more of us — and this includes Fox by the way — is as content drivers behind the scenes. We need line producers, senior producers and executive producers. We need people who are handling and driving the content behind the scenes. I think we have representation in front of the camera with people of many diverse lanes, and I encourage networks to look at more than skin color and hair texture when it comes to diversity.
What role will the media serve in the 2024 elections? I do think we have a responsibility to prepare the viewer. The unifying message to me, the nonpolitical, apolitical message to me is to go and to do what my dad fought for — go do your supreme right of freedom and vote. In that sense, that’s our most important job. And the way that you do that is to instill confidence in people that you’re preparing them and that you’re telling them the truth, especially around presidential elections.
What’s left for you to accomplish in the news business? It is an accomplishment when you’re on a team for there to be a measurable way to show them how you’re doing. So while I don’t think it’s the end-all be-all, when we have good news to share about how the show is doing I’m extremely proud. Sometimes the only measurement that we get besides the beautiful comments from viewers that we get to meet in person are the ratings, and that’s of course what our bosses look at.
