Be Patient: Fox News Viewers Have Maybe 15-20 Years Left to Live, Tops

When I was in high school and college, I worked at a nursing home, and when there was no more Boggle to be played or Jello to be eaten, residents loved watching Fox News, hours and hours of men yelling and attractive, smart blonde women pretending to be dumb and concerned.

Turns out, my anecdotal story bears out, statistically — old people effing love Fox News. They can’t get enough of it. And that’s a problem for the network’s future, but not the nation’s; in fact, you might say that the only certainty among Fox News viewers — besides hating taxes — is death.

According to the New York Times, not only are Fox News viewers old, the network is losing younger viewers in droves. Says the Grey Lady,

Just how old is its audience? It is impossible to be precise because Nielsen stops giving an exact figure for median age once it passes 65. But for six of the last eight years, Fox News has had a median age of 65-plus and the number of viewers in the 25-54 year old group has been falling consistently, down five years in a row in prime time, from an average of 557,000 viewers five years ago to 379,000 this year. That has occurred even though Fox’s overall audience in prime time is up this year, to 2.02 million from 1.89 million three years ago.

The Times notes that while all news viewers are oldish, none are as old as the olds that watch Fox. MSNBC’s viewers are barely over 60, and CNN’s viewers are 59 and change. In fact, the only two cable networks with older median viewerships are the Game Show Network and RFD (a rural news network that, despite growing up Deep In The Rural, I hadn’t heard of until I read this story).

So, if watching Fox makes you want to run naked and screaming into the wilderness until you are eaten by a bear or perish in the elements, relax. Sit tight; we’ll outlive them.