Right wing elements woven in throughout ‘Fox & Friends’ first studio audience show

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

“Fox & Friends” tested adding a live studio audience for the first time in its 20 year history — an audience that included some familiar Fox faces and a big helping of Fox’s trademark right-leaning angle.

• Not surprisingly, the show got off to a pro-Trump, pro-right wing start teasing stories about another “caravan,” excitedly reporting that a ranking Democratic acknowledged that “walls do work,” blaming Nancy Pelosi for “silencing” the State of the Union and a Carolina Panthers star donating a trip to the Super Bowl to a veteran.
• Mixed in there was a tease about weather.
• The show then played a rather muted clip of Jennifer Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud” as the show’s three hosts, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt entered the studio through a large set of double doors, high fiving members of the 50 or so studio audience members before taking a seat on the “curvy couch,” which had been moved down from the balcony to the main studio floor.
• The hosts appeared to be doing the opening segment without a teleprompter, awkwardly referring to printed scripts and at times stammering to get out coherent sentences.
• The audience members were seated in front of the large curved video wall around the LED panel in the floor.
• Behind them a large cityscape graphic was capped with a “Fox & Friends Live” banner, which was also used behind the hosts’ sofa.
• After some banter that included the hosts thanking the audience for “keeping us employed,” the show moved on to “the news.”
• Doocy introduced the top story saying “…so we’re going to start the news and, once again, like it was yesterday, there is a caravan…”
• At that point Kilmeade interrupted Doocy saying “since when? I didn’t know there was a caravan!”
• Doocy then noted that “this time they’re actually checking credentials” and that one of the “leaders” of the caravan had an outstanding warrant for rape — which has an odd ring of Donald Trump’s now infamous campaign speech calling Mexicans “rapists.”
• From there, the show continued to be a right wing celebration, with the hosts handing out food from Chick-Fil-A, a fast food restaurant with conservative ownership and a checkered past of donating to anti-LGBTQ groups.
• “Justice with Judge Jeanine” host Jeanine Pirro was also brought in to take live questions from the audience.

• The show also included a performance of “God Bless America” — during which most of the audience stood.
• Internet stars turned Fox Nation hosts “Diamond” and “Silk” were also in the audience to give their thoughts on the day’s events.

• Fox PR sent out a notice to the media alerting them of the audience-driven show, which included a short transcript of the banter at the start of the show — but notably left cut off as soon as talk of the caravan started and did not mention any of the other events on the show.
• The co-hosts also acknowledged that the show has done “diner” shows as well as a live edition from “Fox Square” that had an audience component, but this is the first edition of the show to use the format in a permanent Fox studio.
• The show’s test of an audience comes as news that, while “Fox & Friends” continued its dominance in the ratings in 2018, it’s audience shrank.
• Broadcast competitors “Good Morning America” and “Today” have also experimented with studio and outdoor audience segments more in the past year.