No it is an honest business assessment. The media has turned into a Pro-Trump or Anti-Trump black and white scenerio. This is a perfect scenerio for Fox with Trump as President. CNN and MSNBC are basically fighting for the same market and cannot get it 100% fro either of them. It is like Starbucks opening on two opposite street corners and a store across the street who caters to those who don't like coffee. I am referring to the 8-11PM time slot for cable news which is only the non-networks as they have regular TV programming. So this is not including NBC, ABC and CBS which only have news at 7PM and 11PM and 75% of that is local/sports and weather. FOX is able to collecct all of the conservative audience or independent who want to get away from CNN monotonous coverage. So if you take the 9pm or 10PM slot, FOX should be cleaning up in the number of viewers while CNN and MSNBC eat each other's lunch. OAN news is a conservative new network but they are still primarily reporting global news the way CNN USED to do. If they stoppped hiring comatose college interns to read the news I would watch it more and avoid Tomi Lahren. Great position in the market to be in for FOX and that should not change for 2 more years at least.
Was a perfect situation (or so everyone said) when Obama was President as well. Fox was the place everyone went to for news. So is it the President? Or is it the lack of a competitor? Or do more people find that Fox, in general, lies less than all the other stations.
We are in a much more polarized political situation now then 5 years ago. 2008 election was somewhat exciting, 2012 election was Zzzzzzz. 2016 brought out the bigger political divide and that drove the networks to play into that. Fox and CNN only care about ratings so that is what drives them and we have the perfect political environment for that. It would be exactly the same if Hillary won as CNN would kiss her ass and FOX would be the opposition daily like CNN is trying to be now. There is no such thing as the place everyone goes for news...
The problem with your assertion is that the viewing audience in prime time for FOX outnumbers the totals for CNN and MSNBC combined generally. This is in a country where liberals supposedly outnumber conservatives. I believe the root cause of this is that the prime time programming on CNN and MSNBC sucks. It is almost unwatchable. This prime time period is basically "entertainment TV" with editorializing & opinion. CNN and MSNBC do this poorly IMO. Not that FOX is much better -- when O'Reilly was forced out FOX lost a good number of viewers who enjoyed his "entertainment". The currently prime time offerings on FOX are barely adequate IMO but nowhere near as bad as CNN and MSNBC. On the other hand I am someone who thinks all these talking heads on all the networks are idiots and their editorializing is a detriment to real news coverage and reporting -- something nearly none of these networks do anymore.
Who says liberals supposedly outnumbers conservatives? If that was true there would never be a GOP president ever. Besides plenty of conservatives watch CNN and plenty of liberals watch FOX and plenty of independants watch both. I personally go back and forth between the two daily and I am sure plenty of others do as well. Did you know that for a long time many of Howard Stern's viewers were people who complained or could not stand him but they wanted to know what he would say next. There is no way for you to factually assess the number of X bias in this country and if you did it still has nothing to do with TV audiences. Viewers is just a number of people watching. All these talking heads on CNN and FOX and MSNBC are idiots but I explained objectively why in a free market competition for viewers, it should be no surprise that FOX is getting more viewers because if you are conservative, independent, anti CNN, or just curious about the other side, FOX is where you are going to turn while going the other way, people will go to CNN, MSNBC, and several other choices for commentary. If we assume all 3 are now complete shit with respect to news and unbiased reporting, CNN and MSNBC are playing in a pretty deep pool and eating each other up while FOX gets to stand apart and bring in a lot of viewers from all sides to one place. There are several other conservative mdeia outlets but FOX has way more recognition, notoriety, money and coverage than the others. They should have this lead in the ratings for a minimum of 2 more years and we will see what happens in the next election.