WARNING: Watching Tubi funds Fox News

Tubi is Rupert Murdoch's latest scheme to use entertainment — and especially the Super Bowl — to fund his right-wing agenda and assault on American minds.

Key Takeaways

• Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation owns streaming platform Tubi

• Watching ad-supported Tubi funds Fox News and promotes Rupert Murdoch’s hate-for-profit media empire

• Fox uses Tubi as a pipeline from movie and sports programming to the right-wing Fox media ecosystem

• Fox courts minorities on Tubi and seeks to gain their brand loyalty

• Fox is establishing a long-term, captive audience normalized to the Tubi-Fox brand

Fox News brainwashes the electorate

As we watch in horror as Trump and extremists wreak havoc on the nation, perhaps we should pause to consider how gravely Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is sabotaging millions of Americans’ sense of reality and corrupting our democracy. Fox News’s non-stop barrage of lies has convinced its viewers that the U.S. is a crime-ridden hellscape in desperate need of rescue, and that only Trump can save the country from destruction by evil forces. Murdoch’s formula of hate-for-profit propaganda is legendary—combining racism, misogyny, transphobia, and science denialism into a toxic stew of right-wing hysteria. The media behemoth’s lying is no secret: Fox paid nearly $800 million to settle a lawsuit with Dominion over Fox News hosts’ deliberate and repeated promotion of false claims that Biden lost the 2020 election. But Fox does more than just broadcast lies—it specifically omits negative news about Trump and MAGA supporters. Many viewers thus are unaware of the nature of the January 6th insurrection, know almost nothing about Trump’s two impeachment proceedings, and believe that Trump is not guilty of any crimes—despite his 34 felony convictions. So Fox-watchers felt pretty good about voting for a man whom most employers would not consider hiring for any position.

Fox News fed its fictional narrative to a mostly conservative, white, older, and apparently gullible audience, convincing it that Trump won the 2020 election (he didn’t), that the economy was a disaster (it wasn’t), and that immigrants are all criminals or insane (they aren’t). Many of us have observed the effects of Fox’s brainwashing on our aging parents who sadly fell for Trump’s cons and remain dangerously unaware of his deranged behavior and lifetime of crime.

Going forward, is there any hope that the fading business proposition of broadcast and cable TV and perhaps the hesitancy of some advertisers to support a right-wing lie engine will spare future generations from the Murdochs’ deceptions? After all, Millennials and Gen Zers are overwhelmingly “cord-nevers” who don’t watch cable TV. They favor streaming platforms and follow YouTube and a slew of podcasts, but they won’t be watching or supporting Fox News. Right?

RIGHT? 

Wrong.

Psst…Tubi is FOX and watching Tubi helps fund Fox News

Tubi is a popular streaming service known as an advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) platform. In 2020, Rupert Murdoch’s son and current Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch purchased Tubi for $440 million. Lachlan really likes Tubi—in 2023 he reportedly declined offers of more than $2 billion for the still-unprofitable enterprise. The streaming platform is growing rapidly, and Fox expects to generate $1 billion in revenue from Tubi in 2025. Fox considers Tubi’s growth to be a driver of overall advertising revenue and noted it was a beneficiary of a “tidal wave” of political advertising in the last election cycle. Nandini Jammi of Check My Ads describes it clearly : “Tubi is plan B to subsidize and protect Fox News.”

Danger ahead: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is

Tubi viewers are not just an audience for direct advertising that enriches Fox Corporation, they are also poised to become targets for Fox to further engage and manipulate. Historically, Fox benefited from popular programs such as The Simpsons (now owned by Disney) and NFL events (on Fox Sports) that ultimately subsidized the building of Fox News. Tubi is similarly part of a long-term and devious strategy to expand Fox’s audience. Unlike its overt cable TV propaganda-delivery apparatus, Fox’s Tubi experiment is an insidious and stealthy attempt at influencing elections—including those at the local and state-wide level. Tubi is deploying sophisticated geo-targeting tools to deliver Fox’s brand of political messaging. Given the Murdochs’ moral and ethical failures on display at Fox News and throughout the Dominion lawsuit proceedings, Fox’s collection of Tubi viewer information to enable geo-targeting of political advertising is especially disturbing.

Tubi is clearly taking aim at younger, ethnically diverse, and cable-free audiences. By 2025, more than a third of its growing audience of viewers were Gen Z or Millennials in the 18-34 demographic, and almost half were from minority groups. (See Figure showing growth in various viewer demographics.) 77% of its audience does not have cable television, making these viewers among the least likely to watch Fox News. Tubi thus gives Fox access to viewers previously unreachable by its cable programming operation, and potentially positions the Murdochs as political and cultural influencers of the next generation.

Hate-for-profit owners of Fox News court and exploit minorities on Tubi

Fox is making shrewd and deliberate overtures to minority groups by including multiple “categories” on Tubi aimed at Black viewers and at least one category targeting LGBTQIA+ audiences. Tubi also targets Latino viewers by, for example, running commercials in Spanish. These tactics create a false sense of community with underserved minority groups, and mask Fox’s otherwise obvious right-wing politics and messaging that would typically not resonate with these viewers. The strategy of using Tubi as an entry point to Fox’s more noxious media brands is at play in what captured viewers see in Tubi’s “On Now” live streams. Fox News’ streaming channel “LiveNOW from Fox” is prominently featured in this category. This channel is currently a sort of normalized Fox News “lite”, but how it will evolve and what other channels Fox will add to the mix remains a mystery. What is clear now is that Tubi will ensure that millions more voters, including minorities, will have yet another point-of-entry leading to Fox media brands that view the political landscape through the Murdochs’ very own right-wing lens. 

The unholy trinity of the new Blaxploitation, sportswashing, and Fox News

By mid-2024, black viewers comprised an astonishing 46% of Tubi’s audience. Journalist Roland Martin has noted that Fox is “building a digital brand on the backs of black people” and that “we’re funding Fox with our eyeballs.”  Critics have also noted that some of Tubi’s content echoes Hollywood’s so-called “Blaxploitation” genre movies of the 1970s, which often presented negative racist stereotypes. Tubi’s practice of paying content creators for films that beckon to Black audiences at least invites scrutiny around the exploitation of marginalized communities and the harnessing of Black attention and spending power.

Fox’s ultimate engagement hook is, of course, sports programming, which includes America’s annual advertising juggernaut: the Super Bowl. Rupert Murdoch has always understood the importance of sports programming to finance his media empire. “I believe if they hadn’t gotten the NFL, Fox would have puttered along, like the WB or UPN,” observed former Fox Sports president David Hill. (Does anyone even remember WB or UPN networks?) Fox regularly capitalizes on America’s appetite for sports, and recently announced that Tubi will stream the Super Bowl…for “free.” Just sign up for an account, and you’re in! In addition to reeling in the bounty of ad cash that only the Super Bowl can deliver, Fox has previously used the event to explicitly promote its right-wing media ecosystem. In 2023, Fox ran a blaring ad promoting Greg Gutfeld’s toxic 11pm Fox TV show, calling him “the new king of late night.” Fox also used a Super Bowl ad slot to boost the Fox Nation brand featuring MAGA queen Roseanne Barr, among other celebrities. The business decision to drain expensive promo time that could have raked in millions from advertisers leaves no confusion as to where Fox’s interests lie. 

But who can turn down “free” football? Could you?

Your pro-democracy actions in support of a better-informed America:

• Align your media diet with your values: Watching Tubi gives the Murdochs credibility and your “eyeballs,” viewing habits, and personal data. It also helps to subsidize Fox News.

• Spread the word: Restack and share this post! And use the hashtag #TubiFundsFOX #SuperBowl

• Discuss “#TubiFundsFOX” with your social networks and family. Ask someone under 30 if they watch Tubi and whether they know that FOX owns it.

• Help us fund our effort at the FCC to hold Fox accountable for spreading lies https://givebutter.com/FOXappeal