Fox Nation’s ambitions are larger than news. Will it become the Netflix of the Right?
Hypothesis: Fox Nation is trying to position themselves as the SVOD of the conservative world. Its streaming ambitions may go far beyond just news.
Fox Nation, Fox News’ direct to consumer streaming service, is adding some movies. This may matter more than you think. Since the median age of a Fox News viewer is ~70, it makes sense that Fox Nation went with the classics. The initial movie list includes six Clint Eastwood movies, such as “Dirty Harry” and “Pale Rider”.
Context: Fox Nation has “non-news / opinion & personality content” like documentaries. Some of these are higher budget like Tucker Carlson Originals, while others are lower budget pieces on religion or war battles.
What’s changed? This is the first I’ve seen Fox Nation branch out beyond their standard non-news content & originals programming mix. It may be part of a broader strategic plan to target a general “conservative” market with a wider range of programming.
Why? There is rationale behind this strategy in my view since there is a lot of mistrust of mainstream news among conservatives. Moreover, from my qualitative research, this mistrust has expanded far beyond news and now includes many major media companies in general.
Support / Evidence: On the right, I see a lot more criticism of Disney, Netflix, Paramount, etc. for two primary reasons:
1) The content they offer tends to include more diverse programming
2) Public stances these companies have taken on social & political issues beyond the content isn’t popular with conservatives (e.g. voting legislation, LGBTQ, immigration, etc.)
Experiment: A couple weeks ago, I posted an article on a few social sites about how Disney planned to relocate thousands of jobs from California to Florida. On most social platforms, there was no reaction or very little, but on a more conservative-leaning one, I got a LOT of anti-Disney responses.
This was not the reaction I was anticipating because the post was not inflammatory. To test this further, I posted the same article on several conservative Facebook pages and Telegram chats. The reaction was clear: a lot of right-wing Americans are frustrated with Disney.
Moving forward? Maybe if Fox Nation expands their content to include more movies and possibly children’s programming down the road, it can essentially serve as the conservative alternative to Netflix, Disney, etc. for this market? Depending on how the initial movie content performs, I could see them acquiring the rights to additional movies and TV, however, they have a ways to go before being a more general SVOD competitor. Fox Nation has a possible play here, but execution may prove harder.
Sources:
- Article I linked to about Disney that drew this reaction: https://deadline.com/2021/07/dinsey-moving-parks-division-jobs-california-florida-1234794243/
- https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/fox-nation-adds-warner-bros-movies-to-subscription-service
