Ryan Burge has documented a truth of America news media consumption that has become gospel in the last 30 years: Republicans and conservative evangelicals are vastly more influenced by Fox News than other Americans.
However, Burge unearthed a surprising data point as well: “About 55% of the Silent Generation and 44% of Boomers watch Fox News every single day. But they are also doing some big numbers with younger adults, too.”
Ryan Burge
In fact, Gen Z is second only to the Silent Generation in watching Fox News. That is the generation born between 1995 and 2012. Burge found just a bit more than half of Gen Z survey respondents claim to watch Fox News regularly.
However, more Gen Zers watch CNN than watch Fox News — the only generational cohort for which that is true.
That’s a spot of good news for CNN — currently the subject of a proposed takeover by Donald Trump allies, the Ellison family — which has been slightly losing adherence among all age groups.
In 2020, about 39% of American adults surveyed said they had watched CNN in the prior 24 hours. That fell to 35% in 2022 and 2024.
By comparison, about 35% of American adults say they tune in to NBC News and about 38% say they watch ABC News. Those numbers have held relatively steady in the past four years.
About 47% of Americans say they watch Fox News.
Burge, who is a professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, wrote about TV news research in his latest Substack, “The Fox News Advantage: How Cable News Divides Along Religious and Generational Lines.”
One of his key findings — which has been talked about for years even if not documented — is that Fox News does best with religious and political conservatives. To make this point, he looks at the differences in who watches Fox News versus who watches MSNBC.
“Among white evangelicals, Fox News has a 49-point advantage,” he notes. “That’s the biggest divide (in either direction) of any religious group. The group that follows white evangelicals are Orthodox Christians at +32 for Fox News, white Catholics at +29, and they are followed by Mormons at +27. Then a bunch of groups that are in the 10- to 16-point range like Mainline Protestants and non-white evangelicals.
“There are only five religious groups that are more inclined to watch MSNBC. Atheists lead this category at +32 for MSNBC, followed by agnostics at +21 and Black Protestants at +14.”
Burge’s report on TV news consumption draws on data from the Cooperative Election Study, but there’s another important caveat, he explains: Many Americans are like him and do not watch broadcast news at all anymore.
Unspoken in this research is the increasing role social media plays in Americans’ news consumption — whether clips from major broadcast news outlets or commentary produced by Instagram influencers and agenda-laden provocateurs.
His full analysis is available on his Substack.
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