The December 26 broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” marked exactly two weeks since the abrupt departure of longtime anchor Chris Wallace. Fox has yet to settle on a permanent replacement for Wallace, an 18-year veteran of the network whose exit came at the tail end of another year during which Fox not only held on to its ratings dominance. It also launched high-profile new programming, revamped what’s now a state-of-the-art newsroom in Washington DC, expanded the subscriber base for its Fox Nation streaming service, and much more.

Even before Wallace bolted for CNN’s soon-to-launch streamer CNN+, though, one of the most frequently heard criticisms of Fox was that the network is letting its news side atrophy in favor of more truculent, often incendiary opinion programming. Tucker Carlson, whose primetime opinion show on Fox finished the year as the highest-rated program in cable news, tends to be who most people are thinking of when they make that claim. Which also makes it easy to overlook other aspects of Fox’s operation — and to assume certain things about the kind of news content viewers can expect to see when they tune in.

For example: On that first post-Christmas broadcast of Fox’s eponymous Sunday show?

There was Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, talking up the importance of Covid vaccines and booster shots to millions of Fox viewers. As well as the need to keep schools open at this stage of the pandemic.

“We have lots of vaccines that are three-shot series,” Jha told host Mike Emanuel at one point during the conversation, adding that the vaccine for polio is actually a four-shot series. “So, I don’t think the idea of a three-shot COVID vaccine series to be fully vaccinated is either unprecedented or unusual … and I think in the upcoming weeks and months, the CDC is going to revise it to say fully vaccinated is three shots.”

Similarly, when catastrophic tornadoes swept through the US a few weeks ago and killed several dozen people, The Weather Channel didn’t provide live coverage of the storms that night.

But Fox Weather did.

Users of the barely two-month old AVOD streaming service that Fox launched at the end of October — to offer up free, 24/7 weather news — were able to get live reporting and analysis about the storms all night. From 10 pm to 5 am Central Time, thanks to Fox Weather meteorologists Steve Bender and Jane Minar.

Fox’s operation, in other words, encompasses a news division that’s more robust than people often give it credit for. If that wasn’t the case, the network almost certainly wouldn’t be able to claim as many self-identified Democrats among its viewers. Yet plenty of them are indeed watching, according to demographic breakdowns from both Pew as well as Morning Consult.

Of course, opinion hosts like Carlson remain the biggest ratings draws at the network — and, as such, tend to be regarded as the primary avatars of the Fox News brand. Which is why, when Carlson releases something like his recent and controversial “Patriot Purge” documentary series — produced as a Tucker Carlson Original as part of his programming deal with Fox Nation — the ensuing commentary doesn’t just blast the star anchor for seeming to link the January 6 Capitol riots with the notion of a state-sanctioned persecution of conservatives.

It also leads many people to decide these kinds of things are clear-cut proof of Fox’s MAGA bona fides.

Even though the data tells a more nuanced story about the network.

Fox News ratings

For one thing, 2021 reiterated that Fox’s audience is far from ideologically homogeneous. A Morning Consult survey from earlier this year, for example, found that more independents watch Fox News than any other network. And it’s not just the audience — the viewpoints of Fox’s own on-air talent sometimes clash with each other, as the response of some Fox personalities to the Carlson special demonstrated.

According to Nielsen MRI Fusion data, it’s also interesting to note that Fox and CNN have a near-identical share of the liberal audience for cable TV news (29% and 28% for CNN and Fox, respectively, with 43% going to MSNBC). Meanwhile, 45% of self-professed independents tune into Fox, with 31% and 24% going to MSNBC and CNN, respectively.

The latest ratings data as of the time of this writing, meanwhile, shows that Fox was #1 in all of cable news for the sixth year in a row in 2021. The network averaged 1.3 million total day viewers this year, while neither CNN or MSNBC broke 1 million for the same period (787,000 and 919,000, respectively).

Other milestones in 2021

In terms of other key moments over the past 12 months for Fox News, 2021 also saw the network making targeted bets on the future that extend beyond the TV screen and its core news and opinion programming.

• Fox Weather, for example, debuted as the #1 app in the Apple App Store when it launched in October.

• Fox News Books, which made its publishing debut over the past year, released a hat trick of back-to-back bestselling titles that collectively have sold more than 1 million copies. In October, Fox News Books also inked a new deal with HarperCollins to publish six more titles.

• As for the subscriber base for Fox Nation — which one analyst estimates to have more than 1 million users — Fox says it grew 40 percent this year. That’s on the back of the streamer’s programming like “Fox News Primetime All The Time,” Tucker Carlson Originals, and the classic TV series COPS.

Fox’s new late-night comedy show

Carlson might be the king of the Fox News hill on a ratings basis right now, meanwhile, but Greg Gutfeld is close behind. The latter, in addition to co-hosting Fox’s late afternoon talk show “The Five” since its debut 10 years ago, came storming out of the gate earlier this year with a new 11 pm Eastern show, “Gutfeld!” A launch that, among other things, moved Fox News into competing squarely within the late-night comedy space dominated by hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert.

Gutfeld’s new show, which finds the host essentially resurrecting a version of the comedic format he deployed at Fox’s “Red Eye,” of course positioned itself as a conservative alternative to the more left-leaning established order of late-night TV. And while the show hasn’t been live for a full calendar year yet, it nevertheless is ending 2021 as the second-most-watched late-night show on TV, according to Nielsen data. Moreover, “Gutfeld!” actually finished several weeks this year with the biggest late-night TV audience, even unseating CBS’ Colbert in the pole position.