Fox News Bets Lawrence Jones Can Lure Viewers from Surprising Places

Not many people who work at Fox News Channel get to push back at Sean Hannity. Lawrence Jones is one of them.

When Jones was just getting started at the Fox Corp.-backed conservative-news outlet, Hannity took him under his wing, and offered advice, even the chance to start appearing on his well-watched primetime program. At first, “I told him no,” Jones recalls, “I’m more libertarian. You’re more conservative. I just want to be able to do what I do.” Hannity told him the pair could use their differences to create interesting segments. “We will make it a thing on TV,” Jones remembers being told.

Lawrence Jones continues to do things differently at Fox News Channel. At 31, he is decidedly younger than many of the network’s best-known personalities. He is one of just a handful of people of color who hold regular posts on the Fox News schedule. And though he’s a co-anchor on the outlet’s long-running “Fox & Friends” morning show, he often does so from thousands of miles away from colleagues Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, visiting voters in diners and barbershops or talking to people at the center of a natural disaster or shooting tragedy,

“So often when you get behind the desk, you get isolated from the people you are supposed to be serving,” says Jones during a recent interview in his office at Fox News headquarters in New York, where his dog, Nala, waits for his return following a morning broadcast. “I actually enjoy being with the people more than being in the studio,” he adds.

Soon, Jones hopes to travel to a decidedly different venue. “What we are trying to figure out right now that is probably going to be even more of my role is to take ‘Fox & Friends’  and make it TikTok-friendly, Instagram-friendly,” he says. “How do we make it more consumable to the young people?” He had just finished a show during which he told viewers about potential voting patterns in Georgia. Soon, he says, he will have to “make that for the 25-year-old voter, the 20-to-30-year-old voters who wants to understand the state of the race — within a minute.”

Like its rivals, Fox News is under pressure to keep younger viewers coming into the fold,. Many of them don’t subscribe to cable or satellite services and often stream their video favorites in bite-size videos or longer binge sessions at times of their own choosing.  But Fox News must find ways to court them.

Even coverage of the 2024 presidential election, typically the kind of event that draws broader audiences to the cable-news outlets, won’t halt the erosion of their traditional business. Fox News is seen shedding about 10.4% of its subscribers between the end of 2023 and the end of 2025, according to estimates from Kagan, a market-research firm that is part of S&P Global Intelligence, similar to projected declines for MSNBC and CNN.

“There is definitely an untapped audience” on TikTok, says Megan Albano, Fox News’ executive vice president of morning programming and program development, “and we as a network need to figure that out more.” Some other Fox News personnel are also trying their hands in the platform , including Trey Yingst, Dana Perino and Fox Business anchor Liz Claman. The hope is their efforts drive TikTok users back to the cable network, but much of their work is self-directed, and not coordinated centrally by Fox News producers.

His arrival at “Fox & Friends’ in 2023  — he had previously hosted a weekend primetime program and put his hand in the ring to host Fox News’  7 p.m. hour on weeknights — has dovetailed with increases in important slices of viewership. In the third quarter, viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic most favored by advertisers in news programming, were up 11%, according to data from Nielsen.New advertisers from the technology, financial-services and entertainment categories have joined. Viewers between 18 and 49 have increased 25% during the same period. Jones’ age and Texas background add new elements the show’s on-air team, says Ainsley Earhardt, a co-anchor of the program since 2016. He adds so much to our curvy  couch,” she says, referring to the program signature set piece. 

Fox News has touted its ability to capture independent voters and even Democrats, despite the red-state conservative opinion programming it features across much of its schedule. Having Jones, who says he was first inspired to get into political activism by a pre-White House Barack Obama, might help. Jones says he has evolved his stance on issues since that time and is particularly sensitive to the daily cost of life in the U.S. for working class people. He has family members who sometimes ask him for help in getting their bills paid.

“I can deal with eggs being increased by $5, because I’m paid very well here at Fox,” he says. “But for my family members, that’s not the case.”

While he’s only 31, Jones has been appearing on Fox News for years. He says he felt abandoned by the Democrats he worked to get into office and turned to local politics to make a difference after college. He won’t do it again. “I got involved in politics very early and got burned out immediately,” he says. Instead, he turned to conservative media, including Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze. He eventually came to the attention of Fox News.

Not many people get to his status at Fox News at such a young age, but executives think Jones has more road to travel. “He’s had a very fast trajectory, but there is such a future still for him,” says Albano.

Jones is one of just a handful of people of color who host cable-news programs, and he thinks his progress at Fox News has not gotten as much notice as it might “The industry is definitely growing with more people that look like me,” he says. “I feel if I was a liberal black man that hosted his own show in his 20s and now is part oof a franchise, there would be more coverage of what we are doing, but because it’s Fox News, and I’m more of a freedom-loving conservative, that’s not considered progress.”

When it comes to Donald Trump, he says, “sometimes you have to separate the spirit of the argument from the human being themself. Trump “is who he is,” says Jones, and “even I disagree with him sometimes” particularly in some of the things he says. “I’m from Texas. My mom would probably choke me” if he were to say some of things Trump utters.

Fox News has long worked to develop a bench of new hosts, which has helped the network during thorny transitional moments, such as when primetime stars like Tucker Carlson have left abruptly, ousted by senior executives at Fox Corp.  Jones is one of a handful of personalities, including Jesse Waters and Greg Gutfeld, who are gaining new prominence.

Jones is the only one, however, who makes new strides by leaving the studios. Producers think his segments resonate with viewers, says Albano, who want to see people like them talking about issues or making their way through challenges. The only states Jones hasn’t traveled to for Fox News are Alaska and Hawaii, and he intends to visit both places: “That’s my bread and butter, traveling, doing diners, talking with people.”