For decades, the architecture of American right-wing television has been synonymous with one name: Roger Ailes. The late Fox News founder built a cable empire that reshaped US politics, defined conservative media for a generation, and made billions in the process. Now, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy is openly positioning himself as the next Ailes, preparing a serious television rival to Fox News at a moment when the network's grip on its own audience is looking less certain than it has in years.
Who is Chris Ruddy?
Ruddy is not a newcomer to this space. He founded Newsmax in 1998, building it first as a conservative news website before gradually expanding into cable television. His relationship with Donald Trump stretches back decades, giving him access and credibility in right-wing circles that most media executives can only envy. But for most of Newsmax's existence, the outlet was treated as a fringe player, a footnote next to the juggernaut that Ailes constructed at Fox.
That changed after the 2020 US presidential election, when a significant slice of Fox News's base felt the network had betrayed them by calling Arizona for Joe Biden. Newsmax's prime-time ratings surged as disaffected Fox viewers went looking for an angrier, more committed alternative. The moment didn't last forever, but it gave Ruddy a glimpse of what was possible and, by most accounts, it accelerated his ambitions considerably.
The infrastructure being built
Ruddy has since moved to professionalise Newsmax's television operation in ways that signal genuine competitive intent. The network has invested in studio upgrades, expanded its roster of on-air talent, and pushed hard to secure better channel positions with cable and satellite carriers, a distribution battle that remains one of the most consequential and least-covered stories in American media. Losing a carriage deal can effectively render a network invisible to tens of millions of households, and Newsmax has fought bruising battles on that front in recent years.
The strategic logic behind positioning Newsmax as a Fox News rival is not hard to follow. Fox still commands the largest prime-time audience in cable news, but the network has faced internal tensions, high-profile talent departures, and a $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems that exposed, in extraordinary detail, the gap between what Fox's stars said on air and what they privately believed. That settlement, reached in 2023, did lasting reputational damage even if Fox's ratings proved more resilient than critics expected. For Ruddy, the vulnerabilities are real, and the opportunity window is open.
The comparison to Ailes: flattering and complicated
Describing Ruddy as "the next Ailes" is both a marketing pitch and a complicated comparison. Ailes was a television genius with a vicious streak, a man who understood the anxieties of a particular kind of white, older, suburban American viewer with almost preternatural precision. He also presided over a culture of sexual harassment that eventually brought him down. Ruddy is a different kind of operator: more relationship-driven, more focused on access journalism and proximity to power than on the confrontational populism that defined Fox under Ailes.
That difference in style matters. Fox News under Ailes was a machine designed to generate outrage and loyalty in equal measure. Newsmax under Ruddy has sometimes struggled to find a consistent editorial identity, oscillating between Trump boosterism and occasional moments of more conventional conservative commentary. Whether Ruddy can build the kind of cohesive, emotionally resonant programming culture that Ailes mastered is the central unanswered question about Newsmax's long-term prospects.
The comparison also matters in a broader context. As the godfather of right-wing radio showed, conservative media has always been built around dominant personalities and loyal ecosystems. Ruddy's challenge is to build that kind of loyalty at scale, in a television environment that is itself fragmenting rapidly under pressure from streaming platforms and social media.
What a credible Fox rival would mean for US media
A genuinely competitive right-wing cable landscape would have significant consequences well beyond ratings spreadsheets. Fox News has long acted as a kind of gatekeeper for Republican political messaging, with the ability to elevate or marginalise figures, narratives, and policy positions. A well-resourced Newsmax that could genuinely split Fox's audience would dilute that gatekeeping power and potentially push both networks toward even more extreme positions in a race to keep viewers engaged.
It would also add pressure to the broader cable news model, which is already under structural strain. The limits of MSNBC have become increasingly visible as streaming erodes traditional cable subscriptions, and Fox is not immune to those same forces. Ruddy is building his rival at exactly the moment when the medium he is competing in is itself contracting.
The journalism questions embedded in all of this are worth taking seriously. Networks built around partisan loyalty rather than editorial rigour tend to produce coverage that flatters their audience rather than informs them. The Dominion case made that dynamic visible in stark terms for Fox. A Newsmax with greater reach and resources would face the same pressures, and its track record of amplifying unverified claims suggests those pressures would not necessarily produce better journalism. For reporters and media critics who care about challenging corporate journalism and the structures that shape it, the rise of Newsmax as a serious player is worth watching very closely.
The road ahead
Whether Chris Ruddy becomes the next Roger Ailes or remains the ambitious runner-up depends on factors that are only partly within his control. Trump's political trajectory, Fox's internal stability, the pace of cable cord-cutting, and the decisions of a handful of major distributors will all shape what Newsmax looks like in three to five years. What is clear is that Ruddy is no longer content to play a supporting role. He is building for primacy, and American media will be shaped by whether he gets there.