Fox News Shifts Advertising Strategy For First Republican Debate

This week, the race for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 gets its first prime time debate, set for Wednesday night on Fox News. But the network’s been grappling with a challenge: how do you sell a big event when the headliner has insisted he won’t show up?

“New CBS POLL, just out, has me leading the field by “legendary” numbers. TRUMP 62%, 46 Points above DeSanctimonious (who is crashing like an ailing bird!),” former President Donald Trump wrote Sunday on his Truth Social website. “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”

“I’m still holding out hope that President Trump will come,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News Sunday. “I think it’s so important that the American people hear from all the candidates.”

But Trump insists he’s got nothing to gain by appearing onstage with GOP challengers looking to take a shot at the former president—and that presents a problem to Fox News, which has tried in recent weeks to convince the former president to attend the debate. Having Trump onstage would certainly be a bigger spectacle—and presumably draw higher ratings for the Fox News Channel. By one estimate, Trump appearing Wednesday night could single-handedly triple viewership.

But Trump has not just stated he won’t share the stage with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the other 2024 hopefuls, he’s even reportedly agreed to be part of some counter programming: a recorded interview to be posted online Wednesday night with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “It would be in the former president’s style,” to attempt to upstage his rivals, said Fox News anchor Bret Baier, “but we’re not focused on where he won’t be. We’re focused on if he’ll be on that stage, so he’ll do what he does.”

“We’ve had strong demand for the debate from our advertisers,” said Jeff Collins, Executive Vice President of Ad Sales for Fox News Media. “Being the first in the 2024 election cycle and taking place in August, we believe we’ll see significant viewership gains on Wednesday night.”

Collins says Fox will cut the ad breaks during the debate Wednesday, allowing for a more free-flowing debate and making the shorter ad breaks less cluttered and potentially more attractive to advertisers. “The commercials will be limited within the debate; about half of our normal commercial load making that limited time even more valuable,” Collins told me.

Fox shattered ratings records in 2015, when Donald Trump took the debate stage in Milwaukee as Trump sucked up all the oxygen in the Republican primary, with 23.9 million viewers tuning in. It marked the highest-rated presidential primary debate in television history, and was one of the most-viewed events of any kind since the emergence of cable television.

This week’s debate will once again be in Milwaukee, but Fox is under no illusions about Wednesday night’s ratings getting anywhere near the stratospheric heights of eight years ago, with many Americans still not engaged in the 2024 campaign—and the dominant figure in the Republican race vowing to be a no-show.

“We aren’t expecting the record 2015 levels as it’s an entirely different media landscape, but we do anticipate a healthy viewership turnout,” Collins said. “And our partners are excited to be part of the action.”

The debate, which will be moderated by Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, gives Fox a chance to reach viewers who may have drifted away from the network in recent months. Fox News saw its prime time ratings drop significantly after Carlson, Fox’s highest-rated host, was forced out in April. The network unveiled a new prime time lineup in June, and ratings have rebounded, but not quite to where they were one year ago.

In a media environment where it’s harder and harder to draw huge numbers of viewers to live events, the debate presents a chance for Fox to bring viewers back—and perhaps convince skeptics who may be drawn to get their first look at Trump’s GOP challengers. “Advertisers are looking at this as an opportunity to reach a large, engaged audience during a time when there is limited live sports or original entertainment programming,” said Collins. Limiting the advertiser load for the debate plays to ad buyers looking for a diverse, high quality audience.

“Reach and engagement matters more than ever for many advertisers and products,” Collins told me. “In this fragmented TV world, there are fewer and fewer opportunities—and many of them are cost prohibitive. Given the demand we are seeing around this first debate, we believe there will be more advertiser interest in this election cycle than in the past.”