The most loyal audience on television isn’t watching a drama. It’s watching the news: the same newscast, at the same time, every day, for years. Cable dominates, and news dominates cable. Local stations own their markets. And the people watching are the ones who own the house, run the business and sign the checks. Here is why your commercial belongs in the news, and how to buy it without overpaying.
Cable news is Fox News
Fox News Channel finished 2025 as the most-watched cable news network for the tenth straight year, with its highest-rated non-election year ever. On weeknights it averaged 3.2 million primetime viewers, more than NBC, and within reach of CBS and ABC. In total day it averaged 1.7 million viewers, up 18% from 2024. All twelve of the most-watched cable news programs of 2025 were Fox shows, led by The Five at 4.1 million. CNN averaged 580,000 in primetime; MS NOW, 923,000.
By Nielsen data the network itself cites, Fox held roughly two-thirds of the entire cable news audience, about 64%, its largest share since it launched in 1996. If your customer watches cable news, there is a two-in-three chance that’s where they are.
Local stations own the local audience
Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey found 65% of U.S. adults get news from their local TV station at least sometimes, which keeps it among the most popular sources of local news. Eight in ten say local news outlets matter to the well-being of their community. The local newscast is appointment viewing: the morning show before work, the 6 o’clock with dinner, the 11 before bed, the same anchors for a decade.
We see it in the ratings we pull every month. In our Comscore analysis of the Miami–Fort Lauderdale market for July 2026, the single most-watched program in the market was the evening network newscast. In South Florida that strength extends to the Spanish-language stations, whose newscasts are a market of their own.
The news viewer is the buyer you want
News skews to the people with the most to spend and the most decisions to make. Pew found that 60% of adults 65 and older prefer television for their news, against 12% of adults under 30, and 43% of adults 50 to 64. Three-quarters of older viewers who get news from TV watch it through cable, satellite or broadcast, not a stream.
Now look at who those viewers are. Census housing data puts homeownership among households headed by someone 65 or older at about 79%, versus roughly 37% for households under 35. The news audience is the homeowner who hires the roofer and the AC company, the business owner who needs the attorney and the accountant, the couple buying the anniversary ring and choosing the restaurant for the family dinner. They are established, they have money, and they are the hardest people to reach with a TikTok.
Loyalty is frequency
A news viewer doesn’t sample. They watch the same program at the same hour, five, six, seven days a week. Run your commercial in that newscast for a season and the same household sees it dozens of times, which is exactly how a name becomes the one they call when the need arrives. It works the way all television works: consistently, and then suddenly.
Buy it wrong and it costs you
News is premium airtime and it’s priced that way. Stations sell newscast packages with rotations across dayparts, cable operators sell Fox News by zone, and the first proposal is rarely the best cost per thousand you can get. Common mistakes: paying for the late news when your customer watches the morning show, buying a county-wide cable zone when you serve one city, and letting a “news rotator” fill with low-rated hours.
We buy news for clients the way we buy everything: with the audience data on the table. We pull the program-by-program ratings, calculate the cost per thousand for every unit in the proposal, match the newscasts to your customer’s day, negotiate, and keep the schedule consistent. Because we don’t sell airtime, the recommendation is about your results, not a station’s inventory. The same discipline took one client from $100 to $15 per thousand impressions on the same budget; the case is here.
How to run your commercial in news the right way
- Pick the newscast your customer watches. Morning, early evening, late, Fox News primetime, Spanish-language. Match the daypart to the buyer, not to the rate card.
- Buy it locally. Local stations by daypart; cable news by zone or through streaming, so a Boca Raton business runs in Boca Raton.
- Earn the credibility of the setting. A news spot should sound like news: clear, direct, your name three times, one reason to call. Produced for TV and cut for radio news, too.
- Stay for the season and measure. Calls, website traffic, foot traffic and revenue against the schedule, reviewed every month.
What we do at Sunray
We produce the commercial, plan and negotiate the news buy across local stations, cable news and streaming as an independent agency, and report what it brings in. If you have a news proposal on your desk, or you’ve wondered why your competitor is in the 6 o’clock every night, book a free marketing diagnostic and we’ll show you what it would take to be there instead, and what it should cost.
Sources
- Nielsen 2025 cable news ratings, as reported by TV Insider (December 2025); audience share per Nielsen data cited in Fox News Media’s year-end release.
- Pew Research Center, Local News Fact Sheet (survey of December 2025) and News Platform Fact Sheet (survey of August 2025).
- U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Vacancy Survey, homeownership by age of householder, 2025, as reported by the National Association of Home Builders.
- Sunray Media Consultants, Comscore analysis of the Miami–Fort Lauderdale market, July 2026; ad spend efficiency case study.
