Mark Lazarus: MS NOW Not Experiencing the Viewer “Fatigue” Lachlan Murdoch Complained About

MS NOW doesn’t have that viewer “fatigue” problem Lachlan Murdoch was going on about.

Versant CEO Mark Lazarus was teed up with the word in a question asked Tuesday by a member of the analyst community. The analyst himself was teed up by a phrase Murdoch, the Fox CEO, used on his own company’s quarterly earnings conference call.

“Yesterday, Fox called out some viewership fatigue on news leading up to the midterms,” Morgan Stanley’s Sean Diffley said during the Q&A portion of this morning’s Versant third quarter earnings call. “I’m curious how you would describe what you’re seeing most recently on MS NOW.”

“We’re not seeing currently not seeing any fatigue with our audiences,” Lazarus responded. “Our audiences are active and vibrant and growing for MS NOW, and for that matter, with CNBC. I think it’s a testament to the quality of our product, to the voices that we have on there, and to the trust that our viewers have in our brands and in our talent. But we’re showing growth, and we have for…many months in a row on MS NOW, and that’s encouraging.”

It was a fair shot to take following the TV ratings excuse Murdoch introduced just 24 hours earlier.

“What we are seeing is some viewer fatigue, where our viewers have gone through an incredible news cycle last year with the inauguration, the Charlie Kirk tragedy, DOGE, flooding, it was an incredible news cycle last year,” Murdoch said, comparing what is currently happening to the 2006 midterms, when President George W. Bush was midway through his second term. “Those viewers are not switching to another news channel, they are just fatigued and watching slightly less television overall. We have seen this playbook, and we know how to move through it.”

Murdoch has his own fair shot chambered for Laz: Fox News Channel is still beating CNN and MS NOW combined in viewers. Murdoch quipped on his call that Fox News really shouldn’t really consider CNN and MS NOW its “peers” given the ratings chasm between first and second place in cable news. At times, FNC’s Nielsen numbers rival those of the major broadcast news brands, Murdoch pointed out.