News 3 min read By Trevor Kendall
MS NOW sees no viewer fatigue unlike Fox News, Versant CEO says
Versant Media chief executive Mark Lazarus told investors that MS NOW audiences show no sign of news fatigue, in contrast to comments about Fox News from rival Lachlan Murdoch.
Versant Media chief executive Mark Lazarus said Tuesday that MS NOW is not experiencing the viewer fatigue that Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch had described at Fox News. Speaking on the company's quarterly earnings call, Lazarus said the network is "not seeing any fatigue with our audiences."
The remarks came a day after Murdoch raised the issue of viewer fatigue while discussing his own network's ratings. Lazarus was asked directly about trends at MS NOW, the cable news channel owned by Versant and previously known as MSNBC. He indicated that the current news cycle has not dampened interest among the network's viewers, and he pointed to the audience as the reason the company remains confident in its news division.
According to coverage of the call by Variety, Lazarus said viewers of the Versant-backed outlet appear to be growing more interested, not less, in the current news cycle. Lazarus was responding to a question about the state of the news business as the cable industry confronts shrinking audiences and a crowded media environment. His answer framed MS NOW's engagement as a point of strength as the company reports its financial results.
The contrast between the two cable news outlets has become a recurring theme in the industry as channels compete for an audience that many analysts expect to decline over time. Murdoch's comments suggested Fox News was feeling the effects of a heavy news cycle, while Lazarus presented the opposite picture for MS NOW. Together, the two executives' remarks on consecutive days highlighted how the rivals are reading the same headlines in very different ways.
Lazarus has been positioning Versant as a standalone media company following its separation from NBCUniversal's cable networks. The earnings call gave investors an early look at how the company views its news division as part of its broader portfolio of cable properties, and it was the venue in which Lazarus made his assessment of audience demand public.
Neither the primary report nor the supporting coverage included specific audience figures, such as ratings numbers or year-over-year comparisons, for MS NOW or Fox News. Lazarus's statements rest on the company's own assessment of its audience, which will be tested by independent viewership measurements in the coming months.
Source: deadline.com
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