What is the average age of Fox News viewers?

1. Conflicting headline numbers: Where the 55 and 68 figures come from and why they differ

Two distinct clusters of figures appear in the material: a 55-year median from a Pew Research Center analysis of regular news audiences and a high‑60s median reported for Fox News prime‑time viewers ^{[1] [4]}. These are not the same measurement. The Pew report measures adults who say they regularly get news from Fox News and reports a median age of 55, which compares to a U.S. adult median age of 47 in that dataset ^[1]. By contrast, industry and media reporting that cite a median viewer age around 68–69 are typically referencing television ratings samples or prime‑time audience measures, which skew older because cable news viewership concentrates among older adults ^{[3] [4]}. The difference in sample frame (regular news consumers vs. TV prime‑time audience), years, and measurement (median vs. mean) explains the apparent contradiction.

2. The evidence base: what the provided sources actually report and what they omit

The Pew source explicitly reports a median rather than a mean and gives a transparent comparison across 30 news sources, placing Fox News viewers as older than the U.S. median adult ^[1]. Several analyses and articles cite a median age ~68 for Fox News viewers—often linking back to TV ratings or aggregated reporting on cable news demographics—but these pieces do not provide a population mean either and sometimes lack methodological detail ^{[2] [3] [4]}. Statista and other data aggregators supply age‑bracket distributions and frequency measures but do not give a single average age or the precise weighting needed to compute one ^{[5] [6]}. No source in the provided set reports a calculated mean (arithmetic average) for the whole Fox News audience, so any claim about an “average age” as a mean cannot be substantiated here.

3. Why median vs. mean matters and how it shapes interpretation

Demographic distributions for media audiences are often skewed; older viewers are overrepresented on cable news, which pulls the arithmetic mean upward and makes the median a more robust central measure when distribution is skewed. The cited medians (55 vs. ~68) reflect different audiences and methodologies, so quoting one number without context misleads. A median of 55 from Pew signals that half of regular Fox News news consumers are older than 55, whereas a prime‑time median of ~68 signals that the live TV viewing audience during evening programming is concentrated among retirees and older adults ^{[1] [4]}. Policy debates or advertiser claims that use a single “average” number ignore these critical measurement distinctions.

4. What the timing and possible agendas tell us about the numbers

The dates and outlets matter: the Pew analysis cited is dated August 28, 2025 in the material and reflects a broad news‑use survey; the high‑60s median figures are reported across pieces dated 2019–2024 and a 2023 reporting cluster that track TV ratings patterns ^{[1] [7] [4]}. Parties with incentives—advertisers, political operatives, or media critics—may prefer one figure over another: advertisers and critics emphasizing an older audience often cite prime‑time medians around 68 to argue demographic narrowness, while broader surveys use the lower median to portray a wider adult news audience ^{[3] [2]}. The available sources show these differing emphases rather than a single, neutral number.

5. Bottom line and what’s missing to resolve the question decisively

The evidence shows no reliable mean (average) age across the entire Fox News audience in the provided sources; the best supported statements are medians that vary by definition and timeframe—55 for adults who regularly get Fox News (Pew) and about 68–69 for prime‑time TV viewers ^{[1] [4]}. To produce a defensible single “average” would require raw counts by single‑year age from a recent, representative audience measurement (or the full distribution to compute a weighted mean). Absent such data in the materials provided, the responsible conclusion is to report medians with their contexts rather than assert an unsupported single average ^{[6] [3]}.