10 Years of Outnumbered: How Fox News Won The Daytime Cable News Ratings Battle

Fox News’s long reign atop the cable news ratings has been cemented thanks to a regular winning streak across almost every time slot, including at midday, where Outnumbered beats its CNN and MSNBC competition combined.

The five-person panel show, which marks ten years on the air Saturday, is a kind of daytime version of Fox’s top-rated program, The Five, but instead of one seat belonging to a “liberal,” on Outnumbered the format is four women discussing politics with one man.

The show is helmed by Harris Faulkner, who also anchors the network’s 11 a.m. news program The Faulkner Focus. Faulkner is joined by co-hosts Emily Compagno and former Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and an array of guest hosts. The real estate is highly-rated: Faulkner’s double-duty on Fox in the mornings makes her one of the most-watched and influential women on cable news.

The show has been so successful, averaging 1.7 million daily viewers this year and 204,000 average viewers in the 25-54 age demographic, that it even beats its broadcast rivals, which appear in more homes across the U.S.

NBC Today’s Hoda & Jenna trail Outnumbered with 1.5 million average viewers for the year, while ABC’s Good Morning America 3 brings in 1.46 million, and The Kelly Clarkson Show rakes in 1.4 million average viewers.

The audience has only grown since its inception — an impressive feat in an industry where ratings are steadily declining thanks to factors like cord-cutting. Outnumbered has grown its audience by some 64 percent since launching in 2014 and regularly lands more viewers than the top-rated prime time shows on CNN or MSNBC. The show’s success is undoubtedly due to Fox’s overall dominance and impressive audience retention, but also stands out as it regularly leads the network in viewers before 5 p.m. rolls around. While the program’s format sets up a gender divide that one might think would lead to memorable on-air debates and hot-buttoned clashes, the real drama on the show usually comes from a guest host from the left sparring with the right-leaning or pro-Trump hosts.

In recent years, guest hosts like Fox contributors Marie Harf, Leslie Marshall, and even The Five’s Jessica Tarlov have brought their diverse viewpoints to the show with explosive results. Earlier this week Marshall threw down with Fox’s Charles Payne while defending President Joe Biden over allegations that he’s a gaffe machine. The segment led to headlines from media watchers and highlighted, again, why the show draws so many eyeballs.

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