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EXCLUSIVE: Meet Harris Faulkner, The Fox News Host Who Is Bearing Down On ‘The View’ In Ratings Duel

EXCLUSIVE: Meet Harris Faulkner, The Fox News Host Who Is Bearing Down On ‘The View’ In Ratings Duel

Design by Conor Coutts/Daily Caller News Foundation. Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Harold Hutchison
May 15, 2025 7:03 PM ET

Fox News host Harris Faulkner has been neck-and-neck with “The View” in the ratings in 2025 despite her namesake program reaching fewer households than the network show, an outcome Faulkner attributes to her efforts to “tell the truth” and showcase “every point of view.”

“The Faulkner Focus” has drawn roughly 2.3 million viewers on average in Nielsen ratings since 2025 began compared to roughly 2.5 million viewers for “The View.” At times, notably during the month of January, Faulkner’s show topped the ABC show co-hosted by a panel including Oscar-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg, comedian Joy Behar, former Trump administration official Alyssa Farah Griffin and attorney Sunny Hostin in the ratings during the month President Donald Trump was inaugurated. Faulkner told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview that she is competitive with “The View” because many viewers at 11:00 a.m. EDT are looking for things the ABC show doesn’t provide.

“At 11:00 a.m., people are looking, I think, for three things: They want the very latest on the big stories that they know about, they want breaking news on things that they would care about but are now happening and hadn’t happened before and they want the facts,” Faulkner told the DCNF.

Faulkner also believes that many media outlets are too focused on lawmakers and fighting, as opposed to the concerns of average people.

“What about the people caught in the middle with their loved ones at home? I’m a mom. My kids are in high school now, so I’ve been through all those years… I had to do what I had to do during the pandemic,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “But I think I know what it takes to get your kid ready for life. I’m doing it right now. I have a high school senior in my household getting ready to go to college. So as I look at all of that, I think, you kind of flip the switch and take it from the perspective of the shareholders, if you will, the stakeholders in a story and I just don’t get that when I watch ‘The View.’”

ABC News declined to comment for this story.

Faulkner has not only hosted “The Faulkner Focus” since January 2021, she also is a co-host of “Outnumbered” since the show began in 2014 and hosted “Outnumbered Overtime,” which aired immediately after the Fox News panel show from 2017 to May 2021. She credits her parents for her interest in how people communicate, receiving a degree in mass communications from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“I got communication from my parents. They both had beautiful speaking voices. My mom taught early childhood education,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “She was a social worker, working with families in trouble. And the one thing that she would give people that she worked with, those kids in those homes, some group homes, some she would go to visit residences to see how the family was doing. She’d give children books to read, and she would challenge them: When you get to a favorite passage in a book, begin to read that out loud and see if you can memorize that so that you can take part of that book where you, with you, wherever you go.”

“That’s who raised me. And so these are people who, Bob and Shirley, were people who told me that your, your greatest power will be telling the truth and your superpower will be making sure that you told it in a way that people remember it and know your values by you telling it,” Faulkner continued.

Faulkner has reported for Fox News since 2005 after receiving six Emmy awards for her local news coverage, including the plane crash that killed former Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota while she anchored at KSTP in Minneapolis.

“Broadcast is a big, free footprint and cable is an involvement. It’s one of those things that people are choosing to watch, and they live in slightly different lanes and so the potential for audience for broadcast, we shouldn’t even come near them statistically,” Faulkner told the DCNF, referring to “The View.” “Look at the numbers. The fact that we’re even in the same conversation, numbers-wise, irrespective of our content and who the talent are on the show and who I have on the show, which means, yes, that is just an incredible honor to be in a space where I compete strongly against them, because the odds are really for them.”

“The Faulkner Focus” beats “The View” in multiple cities, including St. Louis, Charlotte, Denver, Detroit, Phoenix, Sacramento and Tampa, according to Nielsen data shared with the DCNF. The show also beat daytime talk show titans like Drew Barrymore and Kelly Clarkson, along with “Today 3rd Hour,” “GMA3,” “CBS Mornings” and “Today: Jenna and Friends” in the overall ratings, according to Nielsen data shared with the DCNF.

Faulkner got a glimpse into how the ABC show was run during a 2018 appearance on “The View” to promote her book, “9 Rules of Engagement: A Military Brat’s Guide to Life and Success.” Faulkner also revealed to the DCNF that this appearance on “The View” wasn’t the first time she had shared the TV screen with Goldberg.

“I would work extra jobs on TV, like a little extra in the background, make a little money while I was working as an intern at a local station in Los Angeles and so forth, because I went to UC Santa Barbara, so that was a natural progression down there for jobs, south to Los Angeles,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “And I remember she was on set one day with Jonathan Frakes on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ and I was in the background of the hologram that they created, and I was just like a little minor dancer in there.”

Faulkner noted that the ABC show changed from when journalist Barbara Walters created it in 1997, especially based on what she saw during her 2018 visit.

“I got to see the inner workings. And the show is not what I remember it as,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “When Barbara Walters created it, I thought ‘The View’ was every point of view, and sometimes it can be, but a lot of days it is through that, that lens of the left.”

When asked about the moments where she calls out guests on the show who are not answering questions or who often attempt to ignore facts, Faulkner credits her father, a combat pilot, for encouraging her to not let those moments slide.

“I was raised by a combat pilot, military lieutenant colonel, and he said that when you see something in your sights that you know is not right, go after it,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “That’s what I do, and I can do it with respect. I can do it with questions and facts in place. But what I can’t do, and what my audience really would prefer I don’t do, and now, what they really expect for me not to do, is ignore it.”

While those encounters go viral, Faulkner pointed to one particular segment featuring a panel of voters, which she contrasted with the ABC program’s approach, as a reason for her show’s success.

 

“Voters’ Voices is one of the most popular segments we do. It grew so much that it’s a live part of election night now, presidential and midterm,” Faulkner told the DCNF. “We had one this week on the 100 days on Tuesday [April 29] and what that means is people come and they know I’m listening to these Democrats. I’m probably listening to Democrats more than Democrats are, which is why they can’t figure out who’s there and what they stand for. It’s like Harris Faulkner can tell you what this looks like, because she’s listening to you guys, and they’re not listening to independents either. Who the heck are they listening to? They’re like navel-gazing, just talking to themselves. You know, it’s, it’s really, it’s kind of sad.”

“I have a responsibility on my shoulders that I’ve never felt before,” Faulkner told the DCNF about the competitive ratings with “The View.” “I’m grateful for that.”

 

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