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Trump Blames Fox for Losses, Ratings Decline Without Waiting for His Review
· New York time
President Donald Trump has blamed Fox News for Republican election losses as the network's ratings slide. The criticism puts a major media business under pressure from a politician who has frequently attacked broadcasters he regards as biased against him. For a cable network, ratings are more than a public scoreboard. Audience size matters to advertisers and helps shape the value of programming. A decline can therefore concern executives even before a prominent political figure adds his own assessment of the product. Trump's criticism also highlights the awkward relationship between a political movement and a network that covers it. A broadcaster needs an audience to keep watching, while a politician wants coverage that serves his interests. Those goals can overlap without being identical, particularly after an election loss. Fox now has two very different reviews to consider: the numerical one from its audience and the political one from Trump. Neither automatically explains the other. The network's programming decisions remain its own, and viewers have reasons of their own for tuning in or leaving. It is an uncomfortable position for a business built around interpreting events. The network is accustomed to putting elections on the screen. This time a former fixture of its coverage has put the network on the ballot, with ratings already counting the votes.
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