Fox Business numbers not improving

Douglas McIntyre of 24/7 Wall St. writes Monday that the performance at Fox Business Network in terms of gaining viewers and readers to its Web site has stagnated, a statement that Fox disputes.

McIntyre writes, “Based on 24/7 Wall St. conversations with people with knowledge about recent Fox Business viewership figures, including one former executive with the network, audience numbers have hardly budged in since The Post article eleven months ago. Average hourly viewership runs between 2,000 and 8,000 during most hours from 6 AM to 6 PM. The network’s most watched prime-time shows rarely pull more than 15,000 viewers per hour.

“24/7 Wall St. checked what it had been told by sources with Fox Business and the network’s PR department’s reaction was ‘whoever is telling you this is lying –- you’d be wrong if you wrote this and our average is definitely higher than that from the hour breakdowns I’ve seen.’  Fox Business would not say how much ‘higher’ the numbers are.

“To make matters worse for the network, the audience at FoxBusiness.com is rapidly eroding. According to online audience measurement service Compete, the network’s website had 1,480,369 unique visitors in March. In May that number dropped to 783,917 only 53% of the figure two months earlier.”

Read more here.